Editor:
Until there is a codified, comprehensive long-range plan for the Santa Monica Airport, including various scenarios pending the outcome of challenges to its existence, it should remain with its fully functional services that it has now. Through [a] series of three-year leases offered by the city, at market rates, any eventual outcome would be reasonably fully supported.
Partially closing the airport in 2015 without the codified plan would only succeed in severely reducing its first rate capabilities while reducing the desire to determine any particular plan. I can see how some people may take the position to close part of the runway in 2015. These gestures are made in order to appeal to a few residents that bought houses or businesses near the flight path, who knew the issues at that time. I say they will continue to survive with those expectations while a comprehensive plan is developed and they will make a better, more forceful, contribution to the process if it remains as it is during the interim, three years at a time.
We need more open, full discourse over time to "codify" the plan for a park or whatever it will become, before anything else.
Ken Robin
Santa Monica
