11/19/2024 Changes to the Noise Hearing process?

On 11/18/2024, Michelle Ramirez (Community Development Director) held a "meet and greet" for her noise abatement department at the airport. I did not attend, but I received a call afterward from Reza Birjandi (owner of Pacific Skies flight school), who did attend.

Reza said that Ms Ramirez relayed the following at the meeting:

• "Violations" of Torrance Municipal Code (TMC) will be charged against both the pilot AND the aircraft. In other words, if one of a flight school's aircraft are found "guilty" 3 times within a three-year period, the aircraft will be banned from the airport.
• This is not codified in any current Torrance Municipal Code, but Michelle said that the City Council will consider this change at a meeting in mid-December.

This would clearly be an existential problem for a flight school with many, many people flying a few airplanes. An aircraft could be banned from the airport even if the “violations” were made by three different pilots. Also, any pilot executing three missed approaches or aborted landings (defined by TMC 51.5.4 as a “low approach”) on weekends during a three-year period could also face banishment.

Four Torrance pilots were called before the Hearing Board during the past two years--two for doing low approaches, one for touch-and-gos and one for training and taxi-back. Lawyer Chris Harshman responded to these with letters to Ramirez, noting the legal problems with the construction of the Hearing Board process.

The letters written by Mr Harshman pointed out that the Airport Noise Hearing Board, made up entirely of city employees, illegally acted as policeman, investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner with no judicial review. As a result, all four of those cases were either rescinded, dismissed or "postponed." All of the pilots NOT based at TOA were not represented by counsel and were found "guilty."

Two weeks ago, we were notified that the Hearing Board was discontinued until after the start of the new year.

I spoke with Matt Liknaitzky (co-CEO of Sling Pilot Academy), who also attended the meeting. He also had some discussions with Ms Ramirez and she offered the following:

• Matt pointed out that the banishment of a flight school airplane from the airport after being found "guilty" could expose a small flight school (which had many pilots flying that aircraft) to being forced out of existence. Ms Ramirez had not considered that aspect and, Matt said, she agreed to revisit that aspect of the proposed Municipal Code changes.
• Matt says Ms Ramirez relayed that the city plans to replace the Board with a non-employee "negotiator" or some non-employee committee. The details will be in a staff-recommended change to the Municipal Code to be presented to City Council in mid-December.

There was no further explanation of how this solves the conflict of interest problem. Unless this "negotiator" and/or the committee are volunteers, they would likely need to be paid by the city. Furthermore, there is no assurance that this "negotiator" or committee world be any more impartial or mindful of aviation regulations than was the all-employee-staffed Board. No explanation of the criteria for selecting this "negotiator" or committee is available.

The Airport Noise Hearing Board, during the past two years, has not heard ANY noise violation cases--all have been about flight violations of questionable validity (see summary table below). A federal court case has been filed by Zamperini Airfield Protection Society challenging the city's ability to regulate any of these activities due to pre-emption by the FAA's exclusive authority to regulate aviation. The first test case for the city’s new process might be the Chris Alessandra case (low approach"violation") that was "postponed" last fall.

Torrance Municipal Code §13.4.7 (Duties of the Airport Commission) states that "The Commission shall address all airport noise-related issues and shall advise the City Council on noise mitigation measures." To my knowledge, the Airport Commission has not been consulted or even advised on these proposed changes to the Airport Noise Hearing process.