Sunday, March 4, 2001

         El Toro's Bottom Line
           A complete overhaul of planning is needed
 

             In recent weeks, developments on the county's controversial aviation front
         have demonstrated how poor planning decisions can create problems later on. On
         the face of it, these events appear to be unrelated in the changing regional aviation
         picture. But there is something fundamental in what they reveal about the El Toro
         debate. Eight years after the closure of the Marine base was announced, important
         decisions are being made, battle lines are being drawn and suggested plans to meet
         the region's needs all are being floated without the benefit of a clear set of facts
         about what the county's aviation obligation really is.
              At the heart of this confusion lies a simple truth. The county has never provided
         a satisfactory answer to what its own real future aviation need is, nor has it
         determined exactly what its basic contribution to the region should be. After three
         initiatives and years of turmoil, the county still does not have a bottom line.
              The various El Toro airport proposals have shown a county planning apparatus
         that puts the cart before the horse. The county goal from the beginning was to turn
         El Toro into a major international airport no matter what. Had the discussion on
         what to do taken place first, it might have been possible to construct more modest
         scenarios.
              Either a smaller aviation facility at El Toro, working in tandem with John Wayne,
         or no El Toro airport but lifted passenger and flight caps at John Wayne without
         facility expansion might have resolved the dilemma. Either approach would
         necessitate a public conversation about how many millions of passengers Orange
         County needed to serve. It would be a painful discussion for some on both sides of
         the airport debate, because there is a hard-core group that wants no airfield at El
         Toro under any circumstances, and there is a determined Newport Beach
         constituency for whom El Toro provides the chance to get planes out of the skies
         over the bay. But if the numbers had been addressed directly before public opinion
         began to harden, it might have been possible to bring enough people around on one
         airport scenario or another to build a kind of enabling consensus.
              The county planners and their bosses in the thin majority of three on the Board
         of Supervisors have been no help. Precious time was lost arguing over the huge
         38-million-passenger airport idea. It was an inflammatory proposal that died hard.
         All the while, opposition to the idea of any El Toro commercial airport reached
         critical mass in surrounding communities.
              For John Wayne, the best the county could do was float an expansion alternative
         to El Toro that was so outsized that it produced its own shock wave in Newport
         Beach.
              Through its failure to serve as an honest broker in the airport debate, the county
         actually fueled hostility between Newport Beach and communities surrounding El
         Toro. Instead of producing defensible numbers, it aggravated the debate by
         manipulating various unrealistic proposals at two airport sites. By the way, it also
         produced the kind of confusion that brought the nation's largest airline pilots union
         again into the debate last week when it made support for El Toro contingent upon
         different flight plans.
              All of this is the important backdrop for understanding the recent rift between the
         El Toro Reuse Planning Authority and the Newport Beach City Council. When the
         latter voted to recommend moving cargo flights from John Wayne to El Toro, the
         former moved to reverse its support of flight and passenger limits at John Wayne
         Airport, which will expire in 2005. ETRPA, meanwhile, has supplied its own answer
         to the central question of what the county needs to do. It says the growth is mostly
         occurring in other counties and that John Wayne has room between its current caps
         and its physical capacity to accommodate Orange County's contribution.
              The county's inability to work toward a politically viable solution is also
         producing consequences in the fallout from the recent Aloha Airlines decision to start
         flights to Honolulu from John Wayne. The airline's plan is tied in with an approval
         of cargo leases for El Toro because room must be found for the Hawaii flights at
         John Wayne. However, there are two county supervisors who say that they don't
         want to sign off on a cargo proposal that also effectively would commit them to
         what their colleagues want to do at El Toro. Everything is related to everything else
         in the tangled mess.
              Finally, the Southern California Assn. of Governments' act of assessing various
         airport scenarios has been a constructive exercise, because it gives the best window
         on Orange County's place in the regional mix. But what the county really has needed
         is realistic numbers. Since it's never brought the local community through this
         exercise, any regional proposals remain unconnected to the conflict still being waged
         in Orange County. Sooner or later, this conversation about county needs and
         obligations must be conducted as a prelude to any satisfactory resolution of the local
         battle over airports. 

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