GILROY
– A lawsuit settlement between Santa Clara County and San Martin
citizens was supposed to be a happy ending to a five-month battle
over expansion plans at South County Airport.
It still may be.
GILROY – A lawsuit settlement between Santa Clara County and San Martin citizens was supposed to be a happy ending to a five-month battle over expansion plans at South County Airport.
It still may be. However, the timing of a Tuesday press release announcing details of the agreement – before San Martin parties had blessed it with their signatures – put sour tastes in some mouths.
“I’m purely and simply surprised right now, because I thought all the ducks would be put in a row before something of this significance would go out,” said Sylvia Hamilton, chairperson for the San Martin Neighborhood Alliance, the group that brought the lawsuit. “Until (the agreement) is signed it isn’t necessarily official.”
Since the middle of August, county staff and San Martin leaders have been hashing out details of a settlement agreement, dropping a lawsuit the community’s neighborhood group brought forward in June.
The lawsuit challenged the approval of 100 new airplane hangars at San Martin’s South County Airport and the adequacy of an environmental study concerning them.
The suit alleged that an environmental analysis done by the county violated the California Environmental Quality Act and does not properly address community impacts. The county’s study argued there would not be significant impacts if certain mitigation measures are followed.
As a result of the agreement they reached, the county and San Martin leaders decided to produce two documents, the actual settlement and the press release describing it to the public.
County staff was to write the settlement and then let San Martin leaders make amendments before finalizing the document. For the press release, San Martin was to draft the document and then let the county make its changes.
Everything seemed copasetic until the press release went out Tuesday, one day after the board approved the settlement agreement, but before San Martin leadership signed off on that document.
Legal representation for both parties did not return phone calls before Thursday’s deadline. The keep-mum approach is largely due to one of the issues agreed upon in the settlement.
Both parties have agreed that the press release would represent “the extent of their comment.”
“I’ve answered as much as I can,” county Spokeswoman Gwen Mitchell said after confirming the settlement agreement was approved by the Board of Supervisors at a closed session Sept. 8.
Lawyers for the county and San Martin approved the press release prior to that, Mitchell said.
Hamilton steered clear of accusing the supervisors of rubber-stamping the agreement, but expressed concern that her group’s comments were received and apparently reviewed and then approved all in the same day.
“I want it to be clear. I don’t think the county is pulling something over on us. I’m still pleased and proud of the agreement we reached,” Hamilton said. “There are no major issues outstanding, but there is some legalese we had concerns over. The general points (in the press release) are accurate and important, but the legal wording is important, too.”
In an interview Wednesday, District 1 Supervisor Don Gage said he was unaware of any concerns from San Martin residents and said the agreement required the county to do “nothing” it was not already planning to do, although San Martin officials now have guarantees in black and white.
“Now we can move ahead with the hangar project as planned without doing a full blown (environmental impact report),” Gage said. “We were already planning to do all the things they asked.”
An environmental impact report, the most stringent of environmental reviews, will be done before the county finalizes its 20-year master plan for the airport.
Mitchell said the hangar project will cost between $5.5 and $6.5 million dollars. The 125,000-square-foot construction will begin in January and be completed in July. Gage said it would be at least 30 days before the bonds that will fund the project would be issued. After that, the project would be bid to contractors.
“It’s a metal pre-fab building, so it won’t take long to put up,” Gage said. “The hardest part is laying the pad and putting in electrical.”
As for the settlement, the “major points of agreement” are:
• If any proposal is made to extend the runway at South County Airport, the county will not use the size of the planes occupying the four largest hangars as a basis for justifying the extension.
San Martin residents worried that with larger hangars would come larger planes, and with larger planes would come a larger runway, causing a domino effect that would make South County Airport too large for its rural environment.
• The county will reanalyze noise impacts caused by the hangar project within the full-scale environmental review of the airport’s master plan.
This point eased San Martin concerns that the county would destroy the rural community’s quality of life by trying to piecemeal plans for a full-fledged regional airport.
• Landscaping will be planted around the hangar project and the fire suppression water tank at the airport.
• The lawsuit will be dismissed and each party will bear its own attorneys’ fees and costs.
“I haven’t seen what the legal costs were with this, but it won’t be much since we avoided a court battle. That’s where costs start to run up,” Gage said.
