Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009 | When you fail at your primary mission, the reason your group was established in the first place, and you are still in business, then you have to make up something to do. So you go on junkets and invent new tasks until someone calls a halt. Now is as good a time as any to do that.
The airport authority was created to find a new location for an airport that was allegedly going to be too limited to function in a few years, then to manage the creation of this new airport. In the interim, they were given the task, which had been previously performed by the port district, of managing the current facility. After a year of “searching” through implausible new locations, they rediscovered the obvious, that Miramar is the only viable alternative, albeit politically almost impossible, then they failed to get the public to endorse it in an ADVISORY vote following an expensive public relations campaign.
Now, despite the fact that the number of flights from Lindbergh Field have dropped steadily over the last two years, calling into question once again the whole premise of the original exercise, they are pursuing new, grandiose plans to expand and improve that facility, despite the obvious fact that they have no idea where they will get the money.
It’s time the plug was pulled on this boondoggle, the airport authority disbanded and the airport given back to the port district to manage.