City and resident teamwork yields a win for southsiders

On May 20, a perfunctory article in the Star Tribune reported that airport commissioners unanimously voted to reject a NWA-sponsored plan to dump hundreds of residents from the home noise-proofing program.

To a reader unfamiliar with the issue, the Star Tribune piece might have given the impression that the MAC vote was just another routine nuts and bolts procedural matter. But to southsiders and city officials affected by the NWA plan, the issue was anything but routine nuts and bolts. The MAC vote closed a disturbing and intense chapter of events that included an unprecedented collaborative effort by southsiders and Minneapolis elected officials.

This spring, under airline pressure to look under every rock for cost citing ideas, MAC staff agreed to test fly a plan to change the traditional protocol for calculating which homes get noise proofed. From the inception of the insulation program in the early 1990s, traditional policy has been to retrofit all homes contained in blocks that were intersected—but not fully encompassed—by Ldn 65 noise contour lines. This policy avoided hundreds of cases where two adjacent homes exposed to humanly undetectable differences in noise would receive full insulation in one case and nothing in the other.

The irrationality of that situation was obvious to airport and city officials ten years ago, and natural demarcation points such as streets, creeks, parks and neighborhood boundaries were adopted as boundary lines for eligibility.

But now, about 600 residents who had a decade-old promise that their homes—which are on blocks that insulation contours lines intersect, but outside of the Ldn 65 contour lines—would some day be noise proofed could have been left standing alone at the insulation altar if NWA had it’s way.

The effort to stave off insulation cuts spawned a historic zenith in teamwork among the mayor, council members, concerned residents and even MAC staff who all met at Roosevelt high school to synchronize efforts against the proposal.

ROOSEVELT RECONNOITER

More than 100 irate residents, City Councilmember Sandy Colvin Roy, Mayor R.T. Rybak, MAC Commissioner Carol Houle (a stalwart neighborhood advocate) and MAC Directors Jeff Hamiel, Nigel FInney and John Nelson gathered at Roosevelt High School early in May to hear comments, answer questions and give advice to southsiders.

Houle acknowledged the scores of letters many residents sent to commissioners at the behest of city officials, and reported they had been copied and distributed to all commissioners. Houle complimented letter writers on the thoughtful and compelling articulation of their concerns.

Sandy Colvin Roy admonished MAC officials, reminding them that the city had dropped some potentially onerous legal opposition to airport expansion in return for the 1996 pledge to finish the home insulation program as agreed to at that time.

Some 30 residents gave testimony laced with feelings of indignation and frustration, many feeling betrayed for faithfully staying in their neighborhoods for a decade because of the promise that the homes would eventually get noise proofing.

Responding to residents’ comments, Commissioner Houle gave friendly advice in the art of testifying to the full MAC commission at their May 19 decision-making meeting: stay on topic and tell your story, be prepared to limit your comments to two minutes, don’t be repetitive; and, most importantly, don’t cave in to airline-bashing impulses.

A show of hands indicated that more than half of the residents at the Roosevelt gathering would be able to attend the May 19 MAC meeting. Mayor R.T. Rybak urged everyone to bring friends to the meeting as well.

MAY 19, ON TO THE MAC CHAMBERS

Rybak’s call to bring a friend looked like it had been followed, in spades. If it wasn’t an attendance record for a MAC meeting, it surely was a formidable contender for that dubious distinction. The commission’s meeting chamber was jammed with residents a half hour before meeting time. The crowd spilled over into hallways and the reception area by the appointed hour. Neighbors who were complete strangers swapped noise stories while waiting for the meeting to commence.

Commission Chair Vicki Grunseth pushed the insulation issue to the top of the agenda, then surprised residents with the announcement that she would support their cause. Grunseth then polled commissioners who all indicated they would follow her lead. That early stunning surprise was the first hint of good news, but further debate and testimony was still to come.

Details of the insulation program—such as the case of 122 residents who, out of some 6,000, declined noise proofing—were discussed. MAC Planning and Environment Director Nigel Finney explained there were probably 122 different reasons for opting out of the program, but most were variations on the general theme of discomfort in having strangers, employed by government agencies, swarming through their homes.

Commissioner Dan Boivin, Mayor Rybak’s appointment to fill the Minneapolis Mayor’s commission seat, reminded commissioners that their responsibility—whether they liked it or not—was to complete the noise proofing to the specifications that had been mandated a decade ago, Mayor Rybak chided commissioners for thinking about chucking their insulation commitments because of airline financial woes, stating that it was well understood even in the early 90s that “details of completing that commitment could get complicated.”

Southside City Councilmember Sandy Colvin Roy vigorously instructed commissioners that as public officials of a government agency they have a paramount obligation “to keep its commitments, and respect the choices made by families who made decisions to stay in impacted neighborhoods and keep them viable with the clear understanding that eventually their homes would be soundproofed.” (A 1995 airport impact study commissioned by city officials documented concerns that a decision to expand MSP, rather than relocate the airport, would trigger a mass exodus from Minneapolis by residents in impacted areas.)

Sarah Strzok, chair of Residents Opposed to Airport Racket (the organization that provided the springboard for R.T. Rybak’s successful ascent to Minneapolis Mayor) reminded commissioners that the home insulation program was not merely a trivial neighborhood perk, but a mitigation of the airport’s noise problem which leaves many bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens and dens only marginally functional for their originally designed purposes. Strzok, along with many impacted residents and activists, believes that if NWA had succeeded with this latest attack on noise proofing it would have added fuel to their fire to extinguish the airport’s 1996 commitment to expand insulation out to Ldn 60 noise contours.

Residents, freshly aware of the commission’s intent to reject the NWA proposal, kept their comments understandably brief—knowing that there was more to lose by making a remark that might change a commissioners mind than anything they could add to the debate.

Finally, a unanimous commission vote renewed the pledge to fulfill the insulation commitment made a decade ago. Another “nuts and bolts” decision—indeed!