This is my unofficial summary of the Sept 20, 2010 meeting of the San Jose Int'l Airport Commission. It's just my view as one of the participants, intended to help others interested in the process to follow it. The airport staff will post the official minutes at the Airport Commission page on FlySanJose.Com. This is my point of view of the meeting.
This was my first meeting seated as a commissioner. It's been a while since my term officially started in July. But there's no July meeting due to California's "legislative break" which includes local government. And the August meeting was canceled. So it took longer than normal to get the first meeting.
I was expecting that one issue would be contentious and one would be time-consuming. The time-consuming item (or group of similar items) were the orientation presentations for the three new commissioners, including me.
The item I expected to be contentious was the report on the city's request for proposals (RFP) on development of new private hangars on the southwest corner. There are currently General Aviation tie-down parking and hangars, and the former SJSU Aviation Dept facility. The RFP was prompted by the expiration of SJSU's lease. The facility is currently being demolished. But the tie-downs and hangars are currently in use, the last group of light aircraft based at SJC. To them, it had the appearance that they were imminently being run out of the airport. So now you can also understand why that was expected to be contentious.
So here's what happened...
This was my first meeting seated as a commissioner. It's been a while since my term officially started in July. But there's no July meeting due to California's "legislative break" which includes local government. And the August meeting was canceled. So it took longer than normal to get the first meeting.
I was expecting that one issue would be contentious and one would be time-consuming. The time-consuming item (or group of similar items) were the orientation presentations for the three new commissioners, including me.
The item I expected to be contentious was the report on the city's request for proposals (RFP) on development of new private hangars on the southwest corner. There are currently General Aviation tie-down parking and hangars, and the former SJSU Aviation Dept facility. The RFP was prompted by the expiration of SJSU's lease. The facility is currently being demolished. But the tie-downs and hangars are currently in use, the last group of light aircraft based at SJC. To them, it had the appearance that they were imminently being run out of the airport. So now you can also understand why that was expected to be contentious.
So here's what happened...
As I said in my preview of the meeting, I wasn't posting my opinions until after the meeting. It avoids potential inadvertent violations of the Brown Act. (More below on that.) Now that the meeting has been held, this is all public information.
Top issue: Private Hangar RFP
The meeting began on time at 6PM. Airport Commission Chairman Frank Sweeney brought the Private Hangar RFP to the top of the agenda right after the consent calendar. The consent calendar (list of routine items) was accepted without pulling any items for discussion.
Then the RFP discussion was next. It turned out the airport staff accepted the input from the General Aviation aircraft tenants at the July 21 public meeting (PDF). There was no contention after all. The city's responses (PDF) to the questions from the public meeting showed how many troublesome issues were brought up about the plan. The economic factors didn't add up to a workable business. There was little space to build large hangars due to the proximity to Runway 11/29. There were underground utilities that further complicated any construction in the relatively small area. And of course, the people whose airplanes are tied down or hangared in that area don't want to be run out of a public airport. And there were even more problems.
The staff acknowledged the public input told them the original plan wasn't going to work. Now with a better understanding of the challenge before them, there's no need to hurry on developing that site. So it will be considered as part of a larger plan for a new Fixed Base Operator (FBO) on the West Side of the airport after Long Term Parking moves to the East Side (the former rental car lot, before rental cars moved to the new Terminal B garage.) So demolition of the hangars is no longer imminent or planned.
Doug Rice of the California Pilots Association later made a comment describing the decision as "a breath of fresh air".
With that, there was nothing for the commission to vote on that issue. I'm relieved to see the public input process worked as intended in this case.
New Commissioner Orientation: Airport Organizational Structure
Assistant Director of Aviation (Assistant Airport Director) Kim Aguirre described the airport organization and introduced staff who were present in the room. The org charts on the slides had bunches of boxes in red showing positions that were eliminated in recent layoffs. The down economy has taken its toll, cutting staff from 400 two years ago to just over 200 now.
The only way out of the economic problem for the airport is more flights. Airport Director Bill Sherry and Air Service Development Manager Ed Nelson missed this commission meeting because they are in Vancouver at the "Routes" conference where airlines and airports get together to talk business.
The focus for the next year is to reverse the decline in airline passenger numbers. The "cost per enplanement" (CPE) dictates what the airport can charge the airlines, and therefore most of the airport's budget. Cost is the part of the fraction they can control. When enplanements plummeted in recent years, the cost cutting became necessary. But if enplanements can be brought up again, that will be the path to turning the situation around.
It appears feasible that the airport is in a position to do that. The construction of Terminal B is done. Now the airport looks great no matter which airline a passenger is flying. Previously passengers in Terminal C saw jet boarding via air stairs, since the terminal pre-dated jet bridges. But now airlines have moved to the renovated A or brand new B. Terminal C is being demolished and will be gone in another 2 weeks.
But until things do recover, for now the theme is "no new initiatives". Staff is at 50% of recent levels. The organization isn't completely settled in to the new offices at Terminal B. The administrative staff is still moving out of the North First office building to Terminal B.
New Commissioner Orientation: Commission Roles and Responsibilities
The Airport Commission is defined in the San Jose Municipal code Section 2.08.400. Basically it "investigate, study or review" any subject about the airport or aviation assigned to it by the city council, airport staff (via the Director of Aviation), a member of the public or from the commission's own initiative. The results of these reviews are reported to the city council and airport staff (again, via the Director of Aviation.)
The commission may sometimes also hear appeals of permit suspensions or revocations from airport concessions and tenants. I've seen where one of those can fill the room with an SRO crowd, at a meeting I attended as a citizen before I was a commissioner. It'll undoubtedly happen again.
New Commissioner Orientation: Brown Act
Deputy City Attorney Kevin Fisher presented California's open meeting law, the "Brown Act". The intent is to provide public access to decision-making in "local legislatures". That includes city councils and also boards and commissions established by them. So the Airport Commission is subject to the Brown Act.
One of the tricky things about the Brown Act is that it defines any gathering of a majority of the legislative members at the same place and time for discussion or to receive information, as a meeting. That's only allowed to happen if the public is invited too - with agendas posted 72 hours in advance, or 24 hours for special meetings. Though San Jose's sunshine ordinance extends those to 7 days for regular meetings and 4 days for special meetings. There are exceptions for public events where a majority of the members happen to attend, and are not discussing business. And people have tried to circumvent this before - so any kind of passing messages can become a "serial conversation" if it expands to include a majority of the members. (The possibility of an inadvertent serial conversation is why I don't post my opinions on the pre-meeting summary.)
So it limits how much we can talk to each other. Though it never restricts people from just talking one-on-one.
The Airport Commission meetings are always open to the public. The Brown Act allows closed sessions for cases of litigation, real estate negotiations, threats to public safety or personnel/labor issues. In all those cases, the city council handles those. So the Airport Commission never meets in closed session.
Airport Commission by-laws amendment
Due to budget cuts, the city has ordered all boards and commissions to change from monthly to quarterly meetings. It cuts costs of staff who attend the meetings to record them. Since the Airport Commission's by-laws document said we meet monthly, it needed to be updated. Deputy City Attorney Kevin Fisher made the minimal necessary changes. Then the commission gave the whole thing a review. Several of us added some minor changes, mainly cleanups.
I pointed out that these by-laws are not available on the city or airport web sites, except as an attachment to this meeting's agenda. The staff accepted my suggestion that it should be posted on the airport web site in the Airport Commission info area. After all, it's the document that says how the Airport Commission does its work. I should point out that this was in compliance with the city regulations, which only require board and commission by-laws to be available at the city clerk's office. But as soon as I mentioned it wasn't on the web site, there was an understanding across the room that today the web is the best practice in openness. So that suggestion went over well.
New Commissioner Orientation: Marketing and Communications Division Roles and Responsibilities
Airport Communications Director David Vossbrink presented his department to the commission. In a similar theme to what we'd been hearing, his staff has been reduced from 15 to 6 over the past 2 years. His group handles the outward-facing roles of the airport.
Air service development works to retain and attract airlines and routes. Customer services had been focused on construction issues. Now the customer experience is the focus. The gov't and legislative affairs role works as part of the City of San Jose for city council issues, and outwardly with the state and federal governments. The communications role handles news media, the web site, social media and publications. The community relations focuses on being a good neighbor, and acts as an ombudsman to help neighbors resolve their issues.
Air Service Development Update
David Vossbrink continued with slides on air service development by Air Service Development Manager Ed Nelson, who couldn't attend because he's at the Routes conference in Vancouver meeting with airlines.
Ed's role is to retain and attract flights and carriers at SJC. With the renovation of Terminal A and the completion of Terminal B in June, we now have a great airport. That big step is done. Another important step is to keep costs competitive. And marketing for more flights is a never-ending task.
SJC's marketing is primarily to the airlines. Currently the flights are running overall 80% full. Some carriers are higher than others. So the only way to increase the overall passenger volume for the airport is to get more flights.
SJC's competition is not just Bay Area airports but across the country. Just about everyone wants more flights. The recession has affected everyone.
The question was asked about the passenger air fare differences between San Jose and San Francisco. SFO has a higher CPE than SJC, and passes that along to the airlines. With what we can control, we don't charge the airlines as much as SFO does. The fares passengers pay at SFO is just a function of competition. The airlines can't charge as much as they'd like/need to at SFO. Our only way to deal with that is to get more flights. And since we've kept our CPE lower than SFO, price doesn't seem to be the obstacle.
We've had recent good news. Alaska and Horizon have been adding routes at San Jose, including Austin, Kahului, Kona, Lihue and Cabo San Lucas. Southwest added Austin, which will compete with Alaska. JetBlue added Boston. And Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris added Guadalajara.
We've also had some bad news. Mexicana collapsed and went out of business. However the route between San Jose and Guadalajara is now handled by Volaris. Traffic is still trending down, partly due to route cuts by American.
The airport has incentive programs to initially waive some amounts of landing fees for new airlines and routes. Mayor Reed considers increasing air service at SJC a top priority. Bill Sherry and Ed Nelson are at the Routes conference in Vancouver, having appointments with a dozen international carriers.
There have been recent visits by ANA (Japan) and EVA Air (Taiwan) considering SJC as a possible destination. Both those routes have previously been flown non-stop from San Jose by American when SJC was their West Coast hub. So we're hopeful about those.
Competitive Strategic Plan Update
This was a quick update by Kim Aguirre on the study that was conducted with the airport staff and the city council rules committee. Most of the material that was discussed with them duplicates what was already presented to the commission in this meeting. For example, to get more passengers, we need more flights. The list of issues about cost per enplanement (CPE) at SJC vs other nearby airports was a focus.
Can of worms opened: Work Plan Update
This was the surprise big issue of the meeting.
The city council has made a rule which came from the City Clerk's office that all boards and commissions must annually make a "work plan" to decide what we'll be doing in upcoming meetings. The work plan can be updated as necessary at any meeting. However... we no longer have our own rules committee to update our agendas. Agendas are made from the work plan. And changes to the work plans of all the boards and commissions have to be approved each time by the rules committee of the city council. Our realization of the implications of this new rule snowballed as the discussion went on.
The work plan items for September are complete. Yeah, duh. That's this meeting.
I added an item to the work plan for the December meeting. There was an incident in Santa Barbara where the owners of King Flight Schools were mistakenly detained with many guns drawn by Santa Barbara Police, over an error in an FAA database. (See the Kings' blog. AOPA reports the FAA fixed their database.) It has brought up a lot of questions about police training for dealing with aircraft. We should learn what we can from it and apply it here. Kim said we can probably bring in the SJPD officer who represents the airport police station for the December meeting. I'll have to make a separate blog entry out of this item.
Commissioner John Salah also added to the work plan to review airport concession and customer service issues quarterly.
Doug Rice of the California Pilots Association and a former SJC airport commissioner pointed out the big problem with the work plans for people who don't have a seat at the table. It seems to add 3 months of delays (due to lag time now that we have quarterly meetings) between a member of the public submitting an issue and getting it on the agenda. The staff and even the city attorney were not sure if the 7 day rule allows members of the public to add agenda items directly or get them onto the work plan for the following quarterly meeting.
These separate budget cutting issues have clearly led to unintended consequences. The city clerk's office was obviously trying to optimize staff time, without realizing how it would add months of delays to public input. Airport staff and possibly commissioners acting as individuals will bring it to city hall. This needs to be fixed.
That was the last item. The meeting adjourned at 8:36pm.
Top issue: Private Hangar RFP
The meeting began on time at 6PM. Airport Commission Chairman Frank Sweeney brought the Private Hangar RFP to the top of the agenda right after the consent calendar. The consent calendar (list of routine items) was accepted without pulling any items for discussion.
Then the RFP discussion was next. It turned out the airport staff accepted the input from the General Aviation aircraft tenants at the July 21 public meeting (PDF). There was no contention after all. The city's responses (PDF) to the questions from the public meeting showed how many troublesome issues were brought up about the plan. The economic factors didn't add up to a workable business. There was little space to build large hangars due to the proximity to Runway 11/29. There were underground utilities that further complicated any construction in the relatively small area. And of course, the people whose airplanes are tied down or hangared in that area don't want to be run out of a public airport. And there were even more problems.
The staff acknowledged the public input told them the original plan wasn't going to work. Now with a better understanding of the challenge before them, there's no need to hurry on developing that site. So it will be considered as part of a larger plan for a new Fixed Base Operator (FBO) on the West Side of the airport after Long Term Parking moves to the East Side (the former rental car lot, before rental cars moved to the new Terminal B garage.) So demolition of the hangars is no longer imminent or planned.
Doug Rice of the California Pilots Association later made a comment describing the decision as "a breath of fresh air".
With that, there was nothing for the commission to vote on that issue. I'm relieved to see the public input process worked as intended in this case.
New Commissioner Orientation: Airport Organizational Structure
Assistant Director of Aviation (Assistant Airport Director) Kim Aguirre described the airport organization and introduced staff who were present in the room. The org charts on the slides had bunches of boxes in red showing positions that were eliminated in recent layoffs. The down economy has taken its toll, cutting staff from 400 two years ago to just over 200 now.
The only way out of the economic problem for the airport is more flights. Airport Director Bill Sherry and Air Service Development Manager Ed Nelson missed this commission meeting because they are in Vancouver at the "Routes" conference where airlines and airports get together to talk business.
The focus for the next year is to reverse the decline in airline passenger numbers. The "cost per enplanement" (CPE) dictates what the airport can charge the airlines, and therefore most of the airport's budget. Cost is the part of the fraction they can control. When enplanements plummeted in recent years, the cost cutting became necessary. But if enplanements can be brought up again, that will be the path to turning the situation around.
It appears feasible that the airport is in a position to do that. The construction of Terminal B is done. Now the airport looks great no matter which airline a passenger is flying. Previously passengers in Terminal C saw jet boarding via air stairs, since the terminal pre-dated jet bridges. But now airlines have moved to the renovated A or brand new B. Terminal C is being demolished and will be gone in another 2 weeks.
But until things do recover, for now the theme is "no new initiatives". Staff is at 50% of recent levels. The organization isn't completely settled in to the new offices at Terminal B. The administrative staff is still moving out of the North First office building to Terminal B.
New Commissioner Orientation: Commission Roles and Responsibilities
The Airport Commission is defined in the San Jose Municipal code Section 2.08.400. Basically it "investigate, study or review" any subject about the airport or aviation assigned to it by the city council, airport staff (via the Director of Aviation), a member of the public or from the commission's own initiative. The results of these reviews are reported to the city council and airport staff (again, via the Director of Aviation.)
The commission may sometimes also hear appeals of permit suspensions or revocations from airport concessions and tenants. I've seen where one of those can fill the room with an SRO crowd, at a meeting I attended as a citizen before I was a commissioner. It'll undoubtedly happen again.
New Commissioner Orientation: Brown Act
Deputy City Attorney Kevin Fisher presented California's open meeting law, the "Brown Act". The intent is to provide public access to decision-making in "local legislatures". That includes city councils and also boards and commissions established by them. So the Airport Commission is subject to the Brown Act.
One of the tricky things about the Brown Act is that it defines any gathering of a majority of the legislative members at the same place and time for discussion or to receive information, as a meeting. That's only allowed to happen if the public is invited too - with agendas posted 72 hours in advance, or 24 hours for special meetings. Though San Jose's sunshine ordinance extends those to 7 days for regular meetings and 4 days for special meetings. There are exceptions for public events where a majority of the members happen to attend, and are not discussing business. And people have tried to circumvent this before - so any kind of passing messages can become a "serial conversation" if it expands to include a majority of the members. (The possibility of an inadvertent serial conversation is why I don't post my opinions on the pre-meeting summary.)
So it limits how much we can talk to each other. Though it never restricts people from just talking one-on-one.
The Airport Commission meetings are always open to the public. The Brown Act allows closed sessions for cases of litigation, real estate negotiations, threats to public safety or personnel/labor issues. In all those cases, the city council handles those. So the Airport Commission never meets in closed session.
Airport Commission by-laws amendment
Due to budget cuts, the city has ordered all boards and commissions to change from monthly to quarterly meetings. It cuts costs of staff who attend the meetings to record them. Since the Airport Commission's by-laws document said we meet monthly, it needed to be updated. Deputy City Attorney Kevin Fisher made the minimal necessary changes. Then the commission gave the whole thing a review. Several of us added some minor changes, mainly cleanups.
I pointed out that these by-laws are not available on the city or airport web sites, except as an attachment to this meeting's agenda. The staff accepted my suggestion that it should be posted on the airport web site in the Airport Commission info area. After all, it's the document that says how the Airport Commission does its work. I should point out that this was in compliance with the city regulations, which only require board and commission by-laws to be available at the city clerk's office. But as soon as I mentioned it wasn't on the web site, there was an understanding across the room that today the web is the best practice in openness. So that suggestion went over well.
New Commissioner Orientation: Marketing and Communications Division Roles and Responsibilities
Airport Communications Director David Vossbrink presented his department to the commission. In a similar theme to what we'd been hearing, his staff has been reduced from 15 to 6 over the past 2 years. His group handles the outward-facing roles of the airport.
Air service development works to retain and attract airlines and routes. Customer services had been focused on construction issues. Now the customer experience is the focus. The gov't and legislative affairs role works as part of the City of San Jose for city council issues, and outwardly with the state and federal governments. The communications role handles news media, the web site, social media and publications. The community relations focuses on being a good neighbor, and acts as an ombudsman to help neighbors resolve their issues.
Air Service Development Update
David Vossbrink continued with slides on air service development by Air Service Development Manager Ed Nelson, who couldn't attend because he's at the Routes conference in Vancouver meeting with airlines.
Ed's role is to retain and attract flights and carriers at SJC. With the renovation of Terminal A and the completion of Terminal B in June, we now have a great airport. That big step is done. Another important step is to keep costs competitive. And marketing for more flights is a never-ending task.
SJC's marketing is primarily to the airlines. Currently the flights are running overall 80% full. Some carriers are higher than others. So the only way to increase the overall passenger volume for the airport is to get more flights.
SJC's competition is not just Bay Area airports but across the country. Just about everyone wants more flights. The recession has affected everyone.
The question was asked about the passenger air fare differences between San Jose and San Francisco. SFO has a higher CPE than SJC, and passes that along to the airlines. With what we can control, we don't charge the airlines as much as SFO does. The fares passengers pay at SFO is just a function of competition. The airlines can't charge as much as they'd like/need to at SFO. Our only way to deal with that is to get more flights. And since we've kept our CPE lower than SFO, price doesn't seem to be the obstacle.
We've had recent good news. Alaska and Horizon have been adding routes at San Jose, including Austin, Kahului, Kona, Lihue and Cabo San Lucas. Southwest added Austin, which will compete with Alaska. JetBlue added Boston. And Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris added Guadalajara.
We've also had some bad news. Mexicana collapsed and went out of business. However the route between San Jose and Guadalajara is now handled by Volaris. Traffic is still trending down, partly due to route cuts by American.
The airport has incentive programs to initially waive some amounts of landing fees for new airlines and routes. Mayor Reed considers increasing air service at SJC a top priority. Bill Sherry and Ed Nelson are at the Routes conference in Vancouver, having appointments with a dozen international carriers.
There have been recent visits by ANA (Japan) and EVA Air (Taiwan) considering SJC as a possible destination. Both those routes have previously been flown non-stop from San Jose by American when SJC was their West Coast hub. So we're hopeful about those.
Competitive Strategic Plan Update
This was a quick update by Kim Aguirre on the study that was conducted with the airport staff and the city council rules committee. Most of the material that was discussed with them duplicates what was already presented to the commission in this meeting. For example, to get more passengers, we need more flights. The list of issues about cost per enplanement (CPE) at SJC vs other nearby airports was a focus.
Can of worms opened: Work Plan Update
This was the surprise big issue of the meeting.
The city council has made a rule which came from the City Clerk's office that all boards and commissions must annually make a "work plan" to decide what we'll be doing in upcoming meetings. The work plan can be updated as necessary at any meeting. However... we no longer have our own rules committee to update our agendas. Agendas are made from the work plan. And changes to the work plans of all the boards and commissions have to be approved each time by the rules committee of the city council. Our realization of the implications of this new rule snowballed as the discussion went on.
The work plan items for September are complete. Yeah, duh. That's this meeting.
I added an item to the work plan for the December meeting. There was an incident in Santa Barbara where the owners of King Flight Schools were mistakenly detained with many guns drawn by Santa Barbara Police, over an error in an FAA database. (See the Kings' blog. AOPA reports the FAA fixed their database.) It has brought up a lot of questions about police training for dealing with aircraft. We should learn what we can from it and apply it here. Kim said we can probably bring in the SJPD officer who represents the airport police station for the December meeting. I'll have to make a separate blog entry out of this item.
Commissioner John Salah also added to the work plan to review airport concession and customer service issues quarterly.
Doug Rice of the California Pilots Association and a former SJC airport commissioner pointed out the big problem with the work plans for people who don't have a seat at the table. It seems to add 3 months of delays (due to lag time now that we have quarterly meetings) between a member of the public submitting an issue and getting it on the agenda. The staff and even the city attorney were not sure if the 7 day rule allows members of the public to add agenda items directly or get them onto the work plan for the following quarterly meeting.
These separate budget cutting issues have clearly led to unintended consequences. The city clerk's office was obviously trying to optimize staff time, without realizing how it would add months of delays to public input. Airport staff and possibly commissioners acting as individuals will bring it to city hall. This needs to be fixed.
That was the last item. The meeting adjourned at 8:36pm.
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