Thank you, Perry and nice to meet you. I fled Los Angeles in great part to get away from the noise and cofounded Studio City For Quiet Skies, https://www.studiocityforquietskies.com/ I've been dealing with airports and FAA for 6 years, although just advising now. The project is a bait and switch, from safety to expansion. I think Kirsch is stretching the truth when he says FAA requires development. A new environment review should be required now that they are proposing an FBO -- surely impacts from an operator that manages so many jets will be more impactful than hangers and parking space. Future operations and impacts will increase. Clay Lacy is at the forefront of aviation development and the facility will be heavily promoted. He even brought up AAM (flying cars) which my group has been following and analyzing for years. They'd be a disaster here.
So if you provide parking for planes, they aren’t used as much. But if you provide parking for cars (in Ketchum) everyone will have more than they need and drive them too much…🤔
News! This case in MA is similar to what we are seeing at SUN. A NEW OR AMENDED ENVIRONMENTAL review must be undertaken NOW. Note that these developers are making the same specious claim about not adding flights. Please comment on Friedman’s expansion by demanding environmental review of a the new “proposed FBO.”
Finally got to Perry's substack discussion on the airport last night on the way to bed. Thank you so much sir, for having the honesty and integrity to call out the establishment government charlatans systematically corrupting process to deliver to moneyed interests. Normalizing corruption (SCOTUS) does not make it acceptable.
To see this place, my home, so wantonly and aggressively destroyed by the motivations of greed, self-obsession, and crass materialism, breaks my heart. A malignant growth agenda promoted by a corrupt local establishment cravenly exploited the cover of Covid for all manner of malfeasance, including this Airport Expansion exercise.
As I am not one of the smart guys and can't afford to hire them, I had to read Perry's gifted analysis of this entire FMAA shit-show a couple of times as it is all so confusing, obviously intentionally so. Perry would know better than I, but it appears to resemble corporate manipulations using shell companies, in this case various organizations with the intention to have everyone chasing their tails and all the money wondering how to remedy all the corruption attached to the administration and future direction (south) of the airport. Jacob, oh that I could wipe that shit-eating grin off your face.
30% of people vote. Many officials are simply installed to run a moneyed-interest agenda rather than represent the best interests of valley citizens. At the beginning of the Covid lock-down a neophyte elected council in Hailey representing a complete turnover had no idea of what constitutes legitimate process, cravenly exploited to deliver real estate development decisions heavily influenced by personal relationships.
A CDD hired without a legitimate HR process who was run out of Ketchum, and is now City Administrator in Hailey, used a special-interest, stacked P&Z to replace legitimate analysis and review with the now legendary "rubber stamp." The stupidity of this being clearly revealed with Hennessey's Quigley Farms which some have identified as a disaster, thanks a lot Frtiz and Ned and Horrorwitch. Scott Boettger kindly responded to some concerns I had with the Conservation Easements, promising they are rock-solid and in perpetuity. Trust is difficult to muster in a culture normalizing corruption. Little to no substantive workforce housing produced in the couple of thousand residential units produced in Hailey. The current mayor of Hailey is a cipher and Chair of the FMAA Board.
Not a coincidence that Trump and Fritz happened at the same time. Both children of privilege believing they are entitled to rule. Punishment enough I guess for Frtiz that he is a doppelganger for Rudy Giuliani. As soon as Hailey Council member Carol Brown who both knew and followed the rules finished her term it was game on, the systemic corruption of local government now achieving new heights with this airport expansion agenda.
I retired when Covid hit. I could see and sense what was going on as Covid eliminated any public scrutiny and/or participation, giving moneyed-interest corruption a free reign. For four years I have attempted to sound the alarm and taken a metaphorical hammer to all these assholes, being summarily discounted and dismissed as a malcontent and trouble-maker. As an outlier, I am okay with that. Since I graduated from Ketchum to Hailey in 1991 wanting to own the dirt underneath my residence, I have attempted to stay engaged regarding development issues as I had some related land-use, resource management studies in college.
The following three paragraphs from a recent diatribe I sent out:
Relocation would reset the board entirely with regards to both labor and housing. Most working families would rather live in a nice mobile home development south of Timmerman than a condo in the north valley. The north valley doesn't want the slaves living on the plantation. Those slaves are subjected to more than enough smugness and pretension in the eight hours of their duties as servants to those delivered mountains of unearned investment wealth through the conservative corruption of the political economy, and dislike spending any time around members of the economic aristocracy for which they are not being compensated.
Relocation is not just an economically advantageous decision for the future of our area. It is a decision already made in 2006 predicated on concerns over the health, safety and welfare of fellow citizens directly and now even more severely impacted by airport operations.
Both ethically and morally relocation is quite obviously the right thing to do, expansion just a another tired exercise in denial about the complete absence of any legitimate long-term planning for growth by local officials and staffs. This absence of legitmate planning requiring analysis of current carrying capacities and requisite added capacity to accommodate development and calculate and assess fees accordingly, has resulted in MASSIVE FUTURE UNFUNDED LIABILITIES, profit privatized, risk socialized. Any short-term economic benefit from malignant growth will quickly vanish as it always has following a 'boom' cycle, with the unfunded mitigation of associated crippling impacts remaining for taxpayers to deal with after the 'bust.' 2008 redux.
Folks, the MAGA AG is not going to provide any accountability or remedy. Time for the smart ones (and any attorneys out there with integrity) to show up like they did with Quigley, and beat back the intentional destruction of our home for profit in delivering to the billioniare class and economic aristocracy by throwing the rest of us under the bus, or in this case the aircraft carriages of private jets.
Marne, I spend a lot of time thinking about that very question and in the end it comes down to who has the power to make the decisions.
In this case it is the FMAA board. So we need to analyze who is on the board and what their individual goals are.
As far as I can tell, the FMAA is controlled by the SUN staff. They are the ones who tell the FMAA what they can and can’t do. That is of course ass backwards, but it seems to be the norm in the WRV for most of our elected officials.
They are telling the Board that because they took FAA money that have to let a second FBO in, and they made that possible by how they did the land expansion. Different leadership probably could have engineered a different outcome.
A strong leader would have a strategic plan for SUN based on the will of the community within the Constraints of resources. That hasn’t been done in a decade.
With weak leadership you get classic bureaucratic/technocratic mission creep that just wants to do more and more of what they are doing rather than doing what is required to achieve strategic objectives.
So, to answer your question, I think it is too late to stop the train for a second FBO. However, there is no reason a second FBO needs to be allowed to offer whatever it wants to maximize its own profit at the expense of the good of the community. But given the current leadership, that is exactly what is going to happen.
I think the independent board member, who clearly has little idea on what is going on, needs to insist being in the loop and needs to team up with three other commissioners to control the outcome. One of those four people has to care enough to provide the leadership that is necessary.
That leader has to insist that no decision is made without a cost benefit analysis for achieving the strategic goals of the people they represent. That will require figuring out what that goal is.
Frankly, I don’t see that happening. It’s just too much work and the FMAA will be cowed by the threats of legal action by the applicants.
So the staff will end up getting what they want.
The only recourse is to sue the FMAA to stop. Which is very hard to do and very expensive and has to be done the instant they vote to approve a contract. You need grounds for the suit, and the ability to show harm (which I don’t think is hard in this situation) which I think in this case would be violation of their duty of care by not insisting on the analysis of how the terms of the second FBO conform to the goals of the community. To do a suit you need to hire a competent attorney immediately to get set to file the suit.
Bottom line, you have to make it harder for the FMAA to make the wrong decision than the right decision. That means making them choose between being sued by the company that stands to profit or by the community.
It is sad that this is how we run things, as it doesn’t need to be this way.
Why reinvent the wheel? Treat the disease and not the symptom. Stay with the plan. Appreciate long term economic, social and environmental benefits of a Regional Airport. The Dual Path was designed for this scenario. Focus on initiating the process of Airport Relocation.
How does FMA prioritize commercial vs private slots for takeoff and landing? Who waits for whom? This could be important as traffic increases, which it will.
Thank you, Perry and nice to meet you. I fled Los Angeles in great part to get away from the noise and cofounded Studio City For Quiet Skies, https://www.studiocityforquietskies.com/ I've been dealing with airports and FAA for 6 years, although just advising now. The project is a bait and switch, from safety to expansion. I think Kirsch is stretching the truth when he says FAA requires development. A new environment review should be required now that they are proposing an FBO -- surely impacts from an operator that manages so many jets will be more impactful than hangers and parking space. Future operations and impacts will increase. Clay Lacy is at the forefront of aviation development and the facility will be heavily promoted. He even brought up AAM (flying cars) which my group has been following and analyzing for years. They'd be a disaster here.
Thanks! Please share this with the FMAA members. They are either being naive or are “in on it.”
That’s a big pot of alphabet soup!
So if you provide parking for planes, they aren’t used as much. But if you provide parking for cars (in Ketchum) everyone will have more than they need and drive them too much…🤔
That’s brilliant. And spot on. (Get it? “Spot on”. I crack myself up)
https://concordbridge.org/index.php/2024/06/24/not-adequate-state-wants-more-from-developers-on-hanscom-expansion/
News! This case in MA is similar to what we are seeing at SUN. A NEW OR AMENDED ENVIRONMENTAL review must be undertaken NOW. Note that these developers are making the same specious claim about not adding flights. Please comment on Friedman’s expansion by demanding environmental review of a the new “proposed FBO.”
Finally got to Perry's substack discussion on the airport last night on the way to bed. Thank you so much sir, for having the honesty and integrity to call out the establishment government charlatans systematically corrupting process to deliver to moneyed interests. Normalizing corruption (SCOTUS) does not make it acceptable.
To see this place, my home, so wantonly and aggressively destroyed by the motivations of greed, self-obsession, and crass materialism, breaks my heart. A malignant growth agenda promoted by a corrupt local establishment cravenly exploited the cover of Covid for all manner of malfeasance, including this Airport Expansion exercise.
As I am not one of the smart guys and can't afford to hire them, I had to read Perry's gifted analysis of this entire FMAA shit-show a couple of times as it is all so confusing, obviously intentionally so. Perry would know better than I, but it appears to resemble corporate manipulations using shell companies, in this case various organizations with the intention to have everyone chasing their tails and all the money wondering how to remedy all the corruption attached to the administration and future direction (south) of the airport. Jacob, oh that I could wipe that shit-eating grin off your face.
30% of people vote. Many officials are simply installed to run a moneyed-interest agenda rather than represent the best interests of valley citizens. At the beginning of the Covid lock-down a neophyte elected council in Hailey representing a complete turnover had no idea of what constitutes legitimate process, cravenly exploited to deliver real estate development decisions heavily influenced by personal relationships.
A CDD hired without a legitimate HR process who was run out of Ketchum, and is now City Administrator in Hailey, used a special-interest, stacked P&Z to replace legitimate analysis and review with the now legendary "rubber stamp." The stupidity of this being clearly revealed with Hennessey's Quigley Farms which some have identified as a disaster, thanks a lot Frtiz and Ned and Horrorwitch. Scott Boettger kindly responded to some concerns I had with the Conservation Easements, promising they are rock-solid and in perpetuity. Trust is difficult to muster in a culture normalizing corruption. Little to no substantive workforce housing produced in the couple of thousand residential units produced in Hailey. The current mayor of Hailey is a cipher and Chair of the FMAA Board.
Not a coincidence that Trump and Fritz happened at the same time. Both children of privilege believing they are entitled to rule. Punishment enough I guess for Frtiz that he is a doppelganger for Rudy Giuliani. As soon as Hailey Council member Carol Brown who both knew and followed the rules finished her term it was game on, the systemic corruption of local government now achieving new heights with this airport expansion agenda.
I retired when Covid hit. I could see and sense what was going on as Covid eliminated any public scrutiny and/or participation, giving moneyed-interest corruption a free reign. For four years I have attempted to sound the alarm and taken a metaphorical hammer to all these assholes, being summarily discounted and dismissed as a malcontent and trouble-maker. As an outlier, I am okay with that. Since I graduated from Ketchum to Hailey in 1991 wanting to own the dirt underneath my residence, I have attempted to stay engaged regarding development issues as I had some related land-use, resource management studies in college.
The following three paragraphs from a recent diatribe I sent out:
Relocation would reset the board entirely with regards to both labor and housing. Most working families would rather live in a nice mobile home development south of Timmerman than a condo in the north valley. The north valley doesn't want the slaves living on the plantation. Those slaves are subjected to more than enough smugness and pretension in the eight hours of their duties as servants to those delivered mountains of unearned investment wealth through the conservative corruption of the political economy, and dislike spending any time around members of the economic aristocracy for which they are not being compensated.
Relocation is not just an economically advantageous decision for the future of our area. It is a decision already made in 2006 predicated on concerns over the health, safety and welfare of fellow citizens directly and now even more severely impacted by airport operations.
Both ethically and morally relocation is quite obviously the right thing to do, expansion just a another tired exercise in denial about the complete absence of any legitimate long-term planning for growth by local officials and staffs. This absence of legitmate planning requiring analysis of current carrying capacities and requisite added capacity to accommodate development and calculate and assess fees accordingly, has resulted in MASSIVE FUTURE UNFUNDED LIABILITIES, profit privatized, risk socialized. Any short-term economic benefit from malignant growth will quickly vanish as it always has following a 'boom' cycle, with the unfunded mitigation of associated crippling impacts remaining for taxpayers to deal with after the 'bust.' 2008 redux.
Folks, the MAGA AG is not going to provide any accountability or remedy. Time for the smart ones (and any attorneys out there with integrity) to show up like they did with Quigley, and beat back the intentional destruction of our home for profit in delivering to the billioniare class and economic aristocracy by throwing the rest of us under the bus, or in this case the aircraft carriages of private jets.
Thanks so much Perry!
William F. Hughes
Hailey
https://iflysun.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/ATCT-Ops-Record-March-2023.pdf
What can we do to stop this?
Marne, I spend a lot of time thinking about that very question and in the end it comes down to who has the power to make the decisions.
In this case it is the FMAA board. So we need to analyze who is on the board and what their individual goals are.
As far as I can tell, the FMAA is controlled by the SUN staff. They are the ones who tell the FMAA what they can and can’t do. That is of course ass backwards, but it seems to be the norm in the WRV for most of our elected officials.
They are telling the Board that because they took FAA money that have to let a second FBO in, and they made that possible by how they did the land expansion. Different leadership probably could have engineered a different outcome.
A strong leader would have a strategic plan for SUN based on the will of the community within the Constraints of resources. That hasn’t been done in a decade.
With weak leadership you get classic bureaucratic/technocratic mission creep that just wants to do more and more of what they are doing rather than doing what is required to achieve strategic objectives.
So, to answer your question, I think it is too late to stop the train for a second FBO. However, there is no reason a second FBO needs to be allowed to offer whatever it wants to maximize its own profit at the expense of the good of the community. But given the current leadership, that is exactly what is going to happen.
I think the independent board member, who clearly has little idea on what is going on, needs to insist being in the loop and needs to team up with three other commissioners to control the outcome. One of those four people has to care enough to provide the leadership that is necessary.
That leader has to insist that no decision is made without a cost benefit analysis for achieving the strategic goals of the people they represent. That will require figuring out what that goal is.
Frankly, I don’t see that happening. It’s just too much work and the FMAA will be cowed by the threats of legal action by the applicants.
So the staff will end up getting what they want.
The only recourse is to sue the FMAA to stop. Which is very hard to do and very expensive and has to be done the instant they vote to approve a contract. You need grounds for the suit, and the ability to show harm (which I don’t think is hard in this situation) which I think in this case would be violation of their duty of care by not insisting on the analysis of how the terms of the second FBO conform to the goals of the community. To do a suit you need to hire a competent attorney immediately to get set to file the suit.
Bottom line, you have to make it harder for the FMAA to make the wrong decision than the right decision. That means making them choose between being sued by the company that stands to profit or by the community.
It is sad that this is how we run things, as it doesn’t need to be this way.
Why reinvent the wheel? Treat the disease and not the symptom. Stay with the plan. Appreciate long term economic, social and environmental benefits of a Regional Airport. The Dual Path was designed for this scenario. Focus on initiating the process of Airport Relocation.
With the previous agreement to Relocate Friedman, the Federal Government had agreed to cover a third of the cost.
Greenburg, Strauss and Linnet serve on the Airport Authority but are not elected public servants.
How does FMA prioritize commercial vs private slots for takeoff and landing? Who waits for whom? This could be important as traffic increases, which it will.
Good question.
They don’t. First in the pattern gets priority.
Most air traffic at SUN is Air Taxi Service.