Agenda Packets - 1999/11/15 - Laserfiche WebLink

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l0A November , 1999 The Honorable Jesse Ventura 130 State Capitol Building 75 Constitution Avenue St. Paul, MN 55155-1099 Dear Governor Ventura: On behalf of the Reliever Airport Coalition, we are writing to congratulate you and your administration's efforts on dealing with the issue of urban sprawl. The Reliever Airport Coalition is a coalition of metropolitan cities and townships that are committed to reforming airport policies for the entire metropolitan area. Coalition members include the Cities of Lexington, Circle Pines, Lake Elmo, Eden Prairie and Mounds View. We believe, like you, that growth will happen but that such growth should be managed in an orderly way to ensure that the entire Twin Cities area remains competitive with other regions of the country. In addition, we believe that a part of managing our urban sprawl involves the State's active involvement in managing the growth of our air transportation system and spending public funds raised by the airports wisely. As you may know, the Metropolitan Airports Commission ("MAC") owns and operates five "minor use" airports in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. The minor use airports include Airlake, Anoka County/Blaine, Crystal, Flying Cloud, and Lake Elmo. The MAC also owns and operates an"intermediate use" airport at the Saint Paul Downtown Airport. Currently, all of the Reliever Airports (i.e., minor use and intermediate use) are under capacity. However, the MAC is currently proposing to expand the minor use airports at Lake Elmo, Flying Cloud and Anoka County/Blaine to accommodate bigger planes and more traffic. In essence, the MAC is attempting to expand these airports into de facto intermediate use status airports. This proposal is shocking in light of the fact that the MAC has acknowledged that the St. Paul Downtown Airport (an intermediate size airport) is substantially under utilized and desires more air traffic. At this time, we do not need more intermediate use airports outside of our urban core. Rather, we should work to fully utilize the capacity of our existing intermediate use airport in downtown St. Paul. Expanding the Lake Elmo Airport and the Anoka Blaine Airport into intermediate use airports while the St. Paul Downtown Airport has tremendous existing capacity, is not only a waste of public money but it will encourage "leap frog" urban sprawl at the rural fringe of the metropolitan area. Building a new runway at a minor use airport when there is capacity at the intermediate use airport is like adding a new lane on a highway when the existing lanes are only half full.