A Different Noise

The East Hampton Town Board should look beyond an apparent impasse on the airport’s budget and finance advisory subcommittee, which has stymied a financial review of planned limits on the noisiest kinds of aircraft.

By all appearances, the problem is a manufactured one in which some members of the subcommittee, those aligned with aviation interests, deliberately derailed the calculations in an effort to depict the proposed changes as costly to taxpayers. In fact, according to other members, the group tried to accommodate the dissenters’ demands for a minority report, among other things. However, when it became clear to the aviation side that a separate analysis would have had to be based on massaged assumptions that would not stand up under scrutiny, they just walked away from the process altogether.

As if on cue Tuesday, a lawyer hired by some of the helicopter companies that stand to lose a lucrative East Hampton route issued a statement. In it, he mischaracterized the deadlock, which, he said, “confirms the true economic hazards of the plan.” But this claim was based on no numbers whatsoever and should be suspect anyway, considering the source.

What is known and was previously acknowledged by the subcommittee as a whole is that the town’s plan to sharply limit helicopter flights would not result in financial Armageddon. In fact, the subcommittee told the town board late last year that fees would cover the expenses of running the airport and that long-term bonds could still be issued to pay for improvements.

One wild card described in that initial report, and repeated this week, was that legal challenges to new restrictions were likely and could be substantial. However, it is safe to say that town residents would be willing to shoulder the costs of litigation if quieter skies were the ultimate goal, and that the money need not come entirely from airport receipts.

In advance of a hearing on the proposed restrictions to begin this afternoon at LTV Studios in Wainscott, the East Hampton Town Board should not be dissuaded from the path it has set toward meaningful reduction in the number and frequency of the noisiest aircraft. This latest objection is just noise of a different sort.