ECCA Phased Closure Stands
Plain and simple, the petition had two problems: not enough valid signatures, and it came in too late. The petition reports are here.
The petition did not get the 78,244 valid signatures required by provincial law to force a binding plebiscite. I put no stock in the conspiracy theories concerning the petition verification process – the City’s clerks are among the most fair-minded process-driven people you’d ever meet. Suggestions to the contrary are insulting to the integrity of hard-working City staff.
There was a lot of speculation about how many signatures would be enough: 50,000; 60,000; 75,000? In the end Council stuck to the threshold set out in provincial law. It is a high threshold, but for good reason, and it should not be undermined.
It became apparent to me in the discussion yesterday that the other problem with the petition is actually more serious: timing is everything, and the Envision Edmonton petition was submitted far too late. Under the Municipal Government Act, petitioners desiring to overturn a Council decision must submit their petition within 60 days of the decision. That clock started running in July of 2009. No doubt that is onerous but the reason for the deadline is that it’s costly and difficult for a city to stop once it begins to implement a decision like this, particularly a decision with impacts upon third parties and that calls for significant city investment.
The date of closure set for the first runway (16/34) was known months in advance. The fact that lease buyouts were under active negotiation is common knowledge. The LRT planning to and through the Airport lands has been ongoing. Key decision points have come and gone, and yet Envision waited to begin their campaign until this summer, and submitted their petition only weeks before this fall’s election.
Mr. Allard, the petitioners’ spokesperson, said Democracy doesn’t have a best before date, and while I have to say that the 60 day rule would be an unduly harsh standard to judge their efforts by, waiting 350+ days was clearly a political move to prime this election season and push Council to take easy political cover by putting the issue on the ballot as a non-binding plebiscite.
A motion was put forward to put the issue on the ballot that might have provided just that political cover. It was roughly: “Do you want the city keep the City Centre Airport open for general aviation – yes or no.” The practical problem with the question is that an affirmative vote means the airport would limp along with one runway for another 10 years, until the question of the airport’s viability inevitably arose once again. This cycle could conceivably repeat until the expiry of the Edmonton Regional Airport Authority lease in 2052. Under that lease, opening it back up to scheduled air service is out of the question, and all costs to enhance the airport would bear upon the City.
One point raised over and over that I need to address is that the 1995 plebiscite question included an afterword that read: “Under both options the City will continue to own and offer general air services (e.g. private planes, small charters, air ambulance) at the Municipal Airport.” So did 100% of people vote to keep the airport open in 1995 as has been argued? Not necessarily. The question was on consolidation of scheduled service at the International. People had no way to give their opinion on closure so we can’t make any conclusions about the public’s will. The statement simply reflects that the Council of the day said they intended to keep it open either way.
So we tried that for 13 years until the question of the Airport’s sustainability was raised at Council 2008. After lengthy study in 2009, my conclusion was that the City Centre Airport was in inexorable decline, and that’s why I supported closure then. That decline has only accelerated with the implementation of Council’s decision over the past year. The appropriate time for the public to petition, or for Council to put it on the ballot, was sometime last year.
Phased closure will continue, and I’m prepared to defend that decision in this fall’s election.
28 thoughts on “ECCA Phased Closure Stands”
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Mr. Iveson
I applaud and congratulate you, the mayor, and other councilors for making the right, and yes, very courageous decision to continue with your July 2009 decision to close the ECCA. I was truly inspired and had my faith confirmed in this council’s ability to lead and follow through on your visions for the city of Edmonton. I was especially impressed with how you and most councilors (and the mayor) spoke with passion and conviction yesterday regarding your July 2009 decision. I believe you made that decision back in July of 2009 based on sound background and information, and feedback from Edmontonians.
You and council not only followed due process, but took accountability for your decision. In my opinion, this will reflect positively for you and other councilors in the coming election.
Kind regards,
Petri Nieminen – Ward 6 resident
Don, you nailed it. Thanks for the concise, honest feedback, as well as sticking to your guns.
Thank you, Mr. Iveson, for your clear response. Casting doubts on the integrity of individuals who are simply following provincial regulations, as is being done by Mr. Allard, just isn’t the decent thing to do. If this campaign by Envision was so very important, it should have been done correctly, in a timely fashion, and according to provincial regulations. Not rocket science, just ‘do it right the first time’ stuff…
Thanks Don. I think council made the right call and I commend you for not bending by taking the cover of a non-binding plebiscite.
Sadly we haven’t heard the end of this yet as there is a definite move to make this an election issue in the next month. I’m not in your ward so I can’t give you my vote but you do have my support.
Most brave and commendable of you to campaign for an issue AFTER you’ve legislated it. Do you ever sit back, have a chuckle and wonder how you got away with it. If so, you’re not the only one.
Don,
Thanks to you and your fellow councilors for being decisive and not caving in to Envision Edmonton’s campaign of disinformation.
While I respect and applaud the many volunteers that contributed their time in what was ultimately a losing cause; Charles Allard’s response was embarrassing to say the least.
I am looking forward to seeing five real visions for the airport lands in December.
I appreciate the transparency with which you and the rest of the city council have approached this contentious issue. I can’t say that I am completely convinced that it was the right choice, but I _am_ convinced that the city council has given it due consideration before coming to a decision.
You mention in your 2009 post that the Alberta provincial government will need to provide some financing for upgrades to signalling systems, helicopter pads, et al, in order to maintain quality medical evacuation services. What is the status of that provincial support, all the more important now that the fate of the City Centre Airport is sealed?
That is a well thought out reflection on the process and explains your position very well. I appreciate the thought you put into your decision making and the enthusiasm you put into your follow through.
well said. I only wish we had more on city council like you, and that you were in my ward so I could vote for you.
I’m prepared to defend that decision in this fall’s election.
Ideally this would have been said 3 years ago.
Don
I’m sure you believe that what you say is right but you have obviously not considered the ramification the extended time it takes to get to the hospital will have on the patients and their families.
Do you know how many tens of thousands of gallons of glycol have been sprayed on that land deicing aircraft year in and out for decades. How much jet fuel, hydrolic fluid and other contaminants are in that land. If this is so easy to clean up and put up housing on top then please explain why have all the abandoned gas stations around Edmonton not been developed into commercial or residential developments?
People move to Edmonton and pay taxes in Edmonton (not Leduc) because they have jobs at the Ecca. You are sending jobs away from Edmonton to Leduc and Nisku which have continued to grow and get a larger tax base due to the decisions made by Edmonton City Counsel and the EIAA.
You have made a huge mistake and it is not too late to correct it but once Ecca is gone it will be gone.
I’m very disappointed by councils decision to take away the
citizens right to vote on the value of the city airport..if the
majority of the voters choose to shut it down,so be it..but
for council to deny this,it is a sad day..you & the mayor have
both lost my support…
Don
You made the point that not everyone who voted in the 1995 plebiscite was voting to keep the ECCA open and that is correct. Now, thanks to you, mayor Mandel, and the other anti-ECCA councillors, no one will ever be able to have that vote.
Why did you and the council decide to not get an explicit public mandate on this issue back in 2008 / 2009? The public workshops and hearings were non-binding on council, so those cannot be used as a basis for a mandate. That also calls into question the excuse that putting the plebiscite on the ballot would be non-binding since that wasn’t an issue before city council’s vote last year.
Why were the costs of buying out the leases of existing tenants at the ECCA not included in the city’s analysis of the benefits of closure? Why were the costs of building the infrastructure at the EIA for medevac not included in the report? Why were the costs of delivering infrastructure to the ECCA lands to support 30,000 residences not included in the analysis? Did the city contact Transport Canada to see if the height restrictions could be eased without closing the ECCA? Many cities in this and other countries have tall buildings close to their municipal airports.
It seems that while you are busy sticking to your guns on this issue you dropped the ball on many of the fundamental questions that should have been answered before deciding to close the ECCA.
Consider closing runway 16/34. Runway 16/34 had the ILS approach which allows aircraft to land in bad weather. Yes, runway 12/30 has (or is it will have?) a GPS approach, but it’s weather minima are not as low as an ILS approach. Also, consider that multiple runways allows aircraft to land in a greater variety of wind conditions. So, by closing runway 16/34 aircraft can now no longer land at the ECCA under the same conditions as they could before. This includes those medevac flights that you say will continue to land at the ECCA.
So, since medevac can no longer land at the ECCA under the same conditions that they could before, they may have to go somewhere else from time to time. They might be able to go to the EIA, but as you said above, there’s the whole issue with medevac not being ready to transfer to the EIA yet. There’s also the issue that the EIA is closed due to weather more frequently than the ECCA. This means that those medevac flights may have to divert even further than the EIA – possibly Calgary. Have you considered that?
Therefore, it seems that City Council is playing games with people’s lives in an effort to ensure that the ECCA is closed without ever letting the people of this city have a say in the matter.
Forgive me if I think that Edmonton deserves better than the likes of you.
I respect the fact that you were fortunate enough to have a democratic vote on this very important and very divisive issue.
I and hundreds of thousands of Edmontonian’s were not so fortunate.
Thank’s in part to you.
Many people will however exercise their democratic right to vote against or for you come Oct18/10.
I will spoil my vote in protest against you.
Timing is bad this go-around as no reasonable candidate has come forward.
I am retired, live in this ward and will work as hard as I can for the next three years to help in any way that I can financially or through volunteering my time and energy to hopefully get you democratically removed from public office in three years time.
In the meantime we watch, we listen, we remember, and we wait.
Dear Don:
Just a short note to ask about the reasons to close the City Centre Airport. Some questions I have are: Was there a study recommending closure? Is it increasing costs to operate the airport? Was the closure of the City Centre Airport part of consolidation of the aviation services at the International Airport?
Thanks: David Dapelazo Ward 10 Resident
Go ahead after reading your comments you have my vote
Keep us informed if you have to change your vote.
BILL
Martin: there has been considerable study of the contamination and results indicate that it is very minor, so that should not pose a great challenge to redevelopment.
The reason some abandoned gas stations have not been remedied is that they are owned privately, as opposed to ECCA which is owned by the city, and unless the province compels the cleanup under their powers then it can sit as long as its not leaching onto neighbouring lands.
We are a regional economy at this point, and many people who work at EIA live in Edmonton, so it’s difficult to generalize about cost and benefit to the city versus the region. Good jobs in the region are generally good for the regional economy, which is generally good for the core city. It bears noting that the jobs and new students at an expanded NAIT could provide an offset to jobs relocated over time from ECCA.
David: As for the cost/benefit analysis, these are linked to in this blog post from last year. Current operating costs are recovered by leases and landing fees – so the airport has broken even in recent years – but there’s nothing set aside for the $35 million worth of pending runway resurfacing and electronics upgrades that would be needed to keep it open long term. To your second question, I don’t think closure came about directly as a result of consolidation. The airport has been in decline for a number of reasons. You can read more about the redevelopment plans here.
The Muni debate has far less to do with the airport and much more to do with a handful of councillors ignoring the democratic process. I really don’t have strong feelings about the airport one way or the other, but I do fear for democracy. Are you afraid of the answer you might get if you dare to ask the question? Edmontonians already told you in ’95 to keep it open. How dare you ignore them! My God, this sort of heavy handed behaviour makes Ralph Klein look like a paragon of democracy! I supported you and the Mayor in the last election, but never again!
Don,
How much has the city spent on the closure so far? I am referring specifically to competitions, penalties for terminating leases early, environmental contamination study, buying the STARS building, etc.?
How much is the city expecting closure to cost over all?
How much will AHS (i.e. Alberta taxpayers) and the ERAA have to pay for transferring medevac to the EIA? I am referring to infrastructure and ongoing operations?
Can you answer these questions? If not, can you honestly say that you did your due diligence on this issue?
I commend Don and the rest of council for the decision and for sticking to their guns despite how Envision Edmonton seems to be warping the issue.
It seems too have become too focuses lately on the pennies involved in this change. Yes, I agree the direct tax revenue, as Envision has pointed out, from a new development on the land will probably be relatively minor (in comparison to city-wide revenue). And yes, there are some costs associated with moving some services / lease breaking, etc.
But I think this narrow focus has obscured the fact that council’s decision is based more on the future of Edmonton as a city. As Don has pointed out, though the airport is breaking-even for the moment, the future costs of required upgrades to the city in the future are going to be substantial. But more importantly, the opportunity costs the airport is draining on our city as a whole really need to be considered. There’s a good connection why we’re basically the last North American city to have a city-centre airport, and why we also have one of the worst downtown cores for a major city in North America. No one wants to develop a downtown with economically unfeasible building restrictions. Which is why our city is, instead, an endless sea of vinyl boxes.
Development of the downtown as a whole, and helping to steam the endless urban sprawl we’ve become addicted to, ultimately is going to be where the real tax value will be. Yes, it will be long-term, but the more efficient use of infrastructure and a concentrated tax base from a real downtown core are going to be what gives the real boast to the city’s coffers. This is not even to point out the environmental gains / the general improvement in quality of life in the city.
Don,
No answers for the tough questions?
Alex,
The city has already spent more to close the ECCA in the last 2 years than it would have cost for the upgrades over the next 10. Also cramming 30,000 people into the ECCA land will not stop urban sprawl. The only way to do that is for city council to stop approving new development on the city’s outskirts.
The fact us, any decision of this magnitude should have gone to the people.
d: I don’t have the exact number spent to date handy. $24 million is budgeted for lease buyouts. While you are correct that this is an amount of similar magnitude to the $35 million required for rehabilitation of the facility, the key difference is return on investment. The costs of decommissioning will be recovered against future development revenues. The expense of rehabilitation had no return on investment – in other words, no way to pay it back.
Nobody has argued that ECCA redevelopment will stop sprawl. I’ve argued that it can represent an alternative to sprawl, without which people will simply sprawl in the counties if we shut down development inside city borders. ECCA is a piece of this shift, but no
As for the question going to the people, it did indirectly on the ballot. Fact is, all of the people who voted against putting it on the ballot and who ran for re-election won. Several with strong majorities, including the mayor – whose race was a clear proxy for the airport issue. So our stand was validated and the matter is closed in my view.
Don:
Among other things, you are forgetting the cost of buying the STARS building, the costs of facilities improvements at the EIA, changing traffic patterns, and increased operating coarse to handle medevac (more helicopter trips).
The ECCA had no way to return the investment? Despite the stranglehold city council and the ERAA put on the ECCA (contrary to the commitment to operate it as a GA airport), it generates $18 million in taxes to three levels of government and $380 million in overall economic output annually. If it was allowed to operate according to the commitment it could generate more revenue without jeopardizing business at the EIA.
I would also argue that you would not have had to spend the full amount if you’d kept runway 16/34 open until medevac was ready to transfer to the EIA. So, basically the return you were looking for is in continued public safety until a safe and proper transition could be made. That seems like a good ROI to me, but I guess that’s not a concern for you, right?
Also, did you contact Transport Canada to see what could be done regarding height restrictions without closing the ECCA? Considering that many cities have buildings closer to their municipal airports that are taller than those close to the ECCA, it seems nonsensical to suggest there was no way to address that problem other than closing the ECCA.
The people voted on the ECCA ‘indirectly’? Weren’t you and the other councilors trying to tell the people that this election was about more than one issue? Therefore, it is impossible to know how people would have voted on the ECCA if a separate question had been placed on the ballot. Simply put, you and the other councilors were afraid to give the people of the people of this city the opportunity to give you an explicit mandate.
d: Third party cost impacts, for changing medevac or enhancements are EIA, are fair questions, but they are not the city’s concern so long as the third parties are willing to take them on, and they are.
You are making a very common mistake in thinking about the economic activity facilitated by the ECCA – while it is true that some of it is particular to the site, the vast majority of that economic activity will continue in the region at other airports. In other words, the ECCA is not the only reason that business occurs, and thus it will continue elsewhere in the region and province, and therefore the taxes will still accrue to the provincial and federal governments who realize most of the associated tax revenues you’re citing. The city will initially forego under a million annually in property taxes, but will more than replace that with tens of millions once redevelopment is complete.
You can try to cram words in my mouth about medevac and public safety but remember that’s in large part why the airport is still open at this point rather than shut down outright.
Heigh restrictions were never a major motivator for me in the decision.
I wasn’t afraid to put it on the ballot – that would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. I chose very deliberately not to put it to a vote for reasons outlined above. My mandate is to make decisions in the best interests of the city. More than three quarters of the people I represent who voted, and by the way turnout in Ward 10 was highest by percent of eligible voters in the city, sent me back to continue doing just that.
The other thing they sent me to do was be transparent and accountable for my decisions, which is part of the utility of this website. There is, however, a reasonable limit to the number of times I will respond to you here, particularly since I’m guessing you are not a constituent based on a quick look at 411.ca.
Don,
How does AHS have a choice in paying for the upgrades and other costs for transferring medevac to the EIA? I was under the impression that this was a decision made by city council and everyone is just going to have to deal with it. Since AHS has the responsibility of delivering the best possible health-care, they’ll do what they have to in light of city council’s decision. Also, considering that the money AHS will use to pay for those upgrades and operational costs comes from our taxes, I would argue that those costs should have been factored into your decision.
You are making a common mistake of neglecting the fact that any taxes you see from developing the ECCA land would be realized by developing anywhere else in the city. When you say the city will lose the revenue from the ECCA “initially” but will make that up in property taxes later. I think it’ll be decades before we see anywhere near the amount of money you are predicting. What time-frame are you expecting a positive RoI?
I’m not putting words in your mouth. I am trying to explain that your decision to close runway 16/34 before ensuring medevac was ready to be transitioned to the EIA is contrary to public safety. Were you aware of the increased risk when this decision was made?
I don’t understand how height restrictions couldn’t have been a concern for you. The height restrictions imposed by the ECCA was claimed to be a major impediment to the development of taller, higher density buildings in the downtown core. I thought being able to stuff 30,000 more people into downtown was a significant driver behind city council’s decision to close the ECCA. I would have thought you would look at all possible avenues of achieving that goal before making a decision, especially if one of those decisions may result in increased taxes to pay for it.
You think a plebiscite would have been easier but you voted against it because the petition missed the required number of signatures by less than 1%? I should point out that the number of signatures was equal to about 12% of eligible voters and 48% of the number people who actually voted in the 2007 election. It seems to me that you are using loopholes to prevent the people from having a choice on the future of their own property. Remember, the ECCA doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to all of us.
You’re right. I’m not a resident of your ward, but I don’t think I ever claimed to be one, did I? If that means you’re no longer going to respond to my posts, I guess I’ll have to live with that. If you’re wondering why I even bothered showing up here, you can blame one of the people I work with who *is* a resident of your ward who was trying to drum up support for you at work.
Anyway, good luck with the coming term, and on achieving mayor Mandel’s goal of improving communication with the residents of this city. It’s a good goal, even if it is a few years too late.