The Broomfield City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to leave a board created three years ago to address growing noise concerns at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport.
City leaders and some of its residents are blasting the so-called community noise roundtable as an ineffective waste of time and money.
The airport is owned by Jefferson County and residents in neighboring communities have been raising concerns for years about the impacts of airport noise on their health and wellbeing.
“We discussed a lot of issues in the three years since formation but we saw little recommendations result in action by the airport or Jefferson County,” Broomfield City Council member Deven Shaff said. “The (noise roundtable) is dysfunctional. It's lacking support from our community. It's lacking support from many communities. It's lacking trust.”
As evidence of that lack of trust, Shaff read quotes from a transcript first publicized by a KUNC News investigation revealing former airport director Paul Anslow said he wanted Broomfield and seven other neighboring governments to “waste their time and money” trying to mitigate airport noise.
“I want them to waste their money and time because here's the deal, Centennial Airport had a noise roundtable for (20) plus years, nothing gets done,” Anslow was quoted as saying in the transcript KUNC obtained through an open records request. “It just makes people feel happy. And they're part of the roundtable and they get to bitch.”
Anslow also belittled residents attending the noise roundtable meetings, calling them “nut jobs,” according to the transcript.
Shaff said noise roundtable meetings have been “rocky” and the board’s most recent efforts to adjust flight patterns to bring relief from noise appear doomed.
Shaff is the current chair of the community noise roundtable. He said a vote is scheduled at the board’s next meeting on Thursday, April. 4, to have the group dissolved completely.
He added the noise roundtable “is lacking a cohesive route forward.”
If the group decides to carry on without Broomfield, the city's departure would become effective thirty days from the city council vote to terminate it’s membership.
The city of Westminster considered leaving the noise roundtable this year with some of its members raising similar concerns.
However, the council narrowly voted 4-3 to stay in, with supporters saying they didn't want to miss out on an opportunity to help shape policy at the airport.
Two residents who spoke at public comment before Broomfield voted to leave Tuesday night urged the city to leave the noise roundtable.
“We moved in (to the SkyStone neighborhood) and they did not have all the (flight) training schools,” Russell Heinan said. “We’re subjected to an ongoing onslaught from the planes going around and around. We tried to participate in the noise roundtable. It's ineffective. It's not going anywhere. It's spending money and never coming up with a resolution.”
Heinan urged Broomfield to join a recent lawsuit Boulder County and Superior filed against the airport and Jefferson County aiming to stop a form of flight called touch and gos, where pilots land and take off again without stopping.
Jefferson County Commissioner Tracy Kraft-Tharp represents her county on the noise roundtable.
She said she was disappointed by Broomfield’s decision to leave.
She also defended the group's efforts.
“The community noise roundtable has been beneficial at pulling impacted communities together, and giving a place for citizens to voice their concerns,” she said.
Asked how she’ll vote on the motion next week on whether to dissolve the noise roundtable, Kraft-Tharp wouldn't say.
“I’m counting on you listening in,” she told KUNC without saying how she’d vote. “We want to make sure you’re intrigued. We’ll take it one step at a time.”
She added “people need a place to voice their concerns and frustrations.”
Bri Lehman, a Lafayette resident who helps lead a community group calling on airports to mitigate their noise and environmental impacts, told KUNC she hopes the noise roundtable will dissolve.
"If this group was going to do something it would have," she said. "It’s time to stop throwing good money after bad and pivot toward a solution that might actually benefit communities."
She said affected residents and communities should engage the Federal Aviation Administration and airport stakeholders directly as an alternative to the noise roundtable.
"I think Jefferson County could solve a lot of the problem if they’re so inclined, but I think it’s clear they’re not," Lehman said.
