LAX leader proposes charging OC to fly

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

Source: The Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA)

Share the burden or cough up the cash.

That's the message airport commissioner Walter Zifkin sent this week by suggesting Orange County residents be charged a special fee to use Los Angeles International Airport. Zifkin dusted off the failed idea to make Orange County literally pay for placing a series of growth caps at John Wayne Airport near Newport Beach, while also voting down an international airport at a decommissioned Marine Corps air station at El Toro. "Their decision to burden LAX should be shared, and I believe a fee would be a very appropriate way to do that," said Zifkin, an executive with the William Morris Agency. "If this is something we are able to do, it is something that needs to be discussed."

But Orange County residents said their wallets shouldn't be squeezed by Los Angeles. "LAX is the principal airport in the region, and it's just natural for people to use it because it's the only way people can get to certain destinations," said Leonard Kranser, a south Orange County resident who successfully led the opposition to building an airport at the El Toro air station.

Orange County officials agreed to limit John Wayne Airport to 10.3 million passengers, growing incrementally to
10.8 million passengers by 2015. A curfew limiting the hours airplanes can land and take off at the Orange County airport remains in place until 2020, under a settlement reached in 1985 between the county and Newport Beach residents who were upset about living beneath the airport's flight path. Renewed efforts are under way to keep the airport from growing any further, according to Newport Beach resident Melinda Seely, president of AirFair, a community group launched five years ago to limit growth at John Wayne Airport.

Read more: http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/10688071.html?showAll=y&c=y

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I'm strongly in favor of this - the NIMBY assholes here in Orange County who have squandered every oppertunity to improve the airport situation around here should have to pay for imposing on the surrounding region. I am however comming to believe that the only thing that will resolve this is a Newport Beach sinking earth quake.

The battle over El Toro had so much fake outrage between screaming douchebags that the cast of Fox News couldn't have kept a straight angry face.

Perhaps the real estate crash will save El Toro from being over-run with sprawl and that stupid park.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Didn't these OC scumbags...

go belly up a while ago because the whing shits didn't want to pay their bills?

Can the rest of California sell them off to another state or country?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

2. we lost 1.6 billion on a derivatives trading scheme in 1994,

Robert Citron didn't do a day in prison despite pleading guilty to six felonies! I don't think he did an hour of his community service either!

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

3. I really would have expected more of a reaction to this.

:boring:

[donco]

7. :shrug: ,from flyover country. nt

[rwenos]

4. The OC Mind

The OC objection to upsizing John Wayne Airport makes sense if one spends any time in Orange County. Most Orange County people CAME from LA County -- or their parents did. So it's, like, OKAY that LA is a shithole, y'know? Since we only go there to take gnarly flights to, like, shitholes like Europe and Southeast Asia, y'know?

[The Sushi Bandit]

5. I lived in Irvine for years and am Insulted by your Crassness!

My home was in the direct path of landings. We never wanted an airport, we wanted a PARK!!
As far as using airports I always used OC and avoided (like the plague) LAX.
Using this logic anyone who lives in NJ or Conn should be taxed to use Kennedy?
and what about Ontario??

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. because if Orange County needs only one thing...

it is another poorly maintained park!