If one County official has his way, the Town of Ghent could become the County’s red light district—literally.
A presentation by Ghent resident Michael Schrom and attorney Ken Dow at Friday’s airport committee meeting focused on a sleeper issue for the County: the enormous number of easements which must be acquired from a dozen or more neighbors if it goes through with its eminent domain plan.
The County would need to spend an additional half-million dollars or more to cut down hundreds of trees obstructing the flight path to the 5,350-foot runway. That runway was expanded from roughly 3,500 feet in the 1980s, without all necessary easements being acquired. So either the runway must be shortened, or moved, or a huge “taking” must be made from neighboring property owners.
None of those owners have been officially notified of this aspect of the plan. (Schrom provided the committee with an inventory of the parcels and names of owners, in case they wanted to correct this 13-year-old oversight.)
Moreover, these removal plans and cost estimates date back to 2001, meaning they do not account for continued tree growth over the past 13 years and the increase in property values, let alone inflation. Worse, the cost estimates are wildly inconsistent, with some property owners being offered as little as $127 per acre of disruption, and others more than $24,000.
Once all these complications and costs were presented, committee chair Art Bassin piped in with a suggestion passed along from David Robinson of the County Department of Public Works. According to Bassin, Robinson had pondered the obstruction issue before, and had a solution: instead of cutting them down, attach a red warning light to the top of each tree.
The standing-room-only audience erupted with guffaws. But the laughter died down as it became clear the suggestion was not intended as a joke. Bassin did appear to absorb the public’s reaction to the idea’s aburdity, and it was tabled at least until Robinson could appear at a future meeting.
[More on this latest airport meeting in another post this week.]
