Attending: approx 65

Vice Chair Peter Corroon opened the meeting at 7:03 pm as Chair Wynn Johnson was away for the evening.

Announcement: U of U is having a master planning discussion meeting at the end of the month. Contact Ann Floor at 355 4441 to find out details of dates/time and to give input.

City Council Member Eric Jergensen: Mayor's budget last night was presented. There are dramatic changes (parking, golf course, taking out of fund balance to fund CAP projects.) There will be some changes made before it goes through. If you hear stuff in the press please contact Eric with questions. Budget hearing will be 20th May. New development agency on Gateway meeting will be May 15. If you have input please phone Eric at home at 532 4844 or at office 535 7600. Increase in car break-ins/car prowls this month. Working on increasing patrols in avenues. If you leave stuff in your car you are likely to have a problem. Best defense is to take everything out of your car. Somebody left a VCR in front of car and it was gone by morning.

Legislators: Ralph & Paula ---this is the quiet time. Ralph has the only excitement going on. Just happened today as part of state bldg appropriations process--1% of bldg will go for the arts to put paintings etc in the buildings. Only time that hasn't happened is when there is intent language. Division of facilities of construction and management (state's building dept) won't fund arts project. Some of us are quite unhappy and will attempt to pursue that issue. It goes against the grain of what our legislature says. Will see what we can do to prevent that from happening in the future. Want to hear from constituents. It's good time now if you have something you've been concerned about it's a good time to work on issues. Please talk to us about an issue between now and October. We can easily get research done on the subject now. Numbers are in the newsletter to reach Paula & Ralph. Email paulajulander@senator.utah.gov .

South Temple Re-Construction Pat Peterson is the representative on South Temple project. Now have new concrete on 7th east. When will 7th east be open again? We have to do it in quarters. As long as we don't find some Fremont Indian site we should be okay. There will be small closures during water line or storm drain but won't close until we excavate them. I street is tricky because of pipe layout. Don't know what to tell you. Hoping it will be only 2 weeks. E street will be finished about the same time as 7th East. Right now concrete is almost poured to middle of E street. Looks good when concrete is down. Don't know how tunnel will work out at Wasatch. Won't be there until school is out this season. Be probably close to that with concrete for August. Priority is that kids be safe.

Police: Pat & Karrie - we really got killed on car strips and prowls, went from 33 to 41 this month. Aggravated assaults went from 0 to 2 etc. Sex assault became unfounded. Burglaries--19 forced. 10 autos were stolen in area. See details for more on website for city police. Aug 5 is night out against crime. Will leave a notice with the chairman of GACC. (always 1st Tues in August). What does last 5 years look like in Aves? Mostly the numbers reported were between 350-500 car prowls. Year to date we have had 181 incidents reported. "General offense" term means more than $1000 worth of damage. We are seeing an increase. More community involvement always helps. We have been getting our stats out to the officers. Karrie is learning some things she thinks might help in this area. We are hopeful some simple communication will help. Call them at 799 3464 or 799-3466. Had cat crimes and 1 dog crime. We are working in conjunction with animal control to handle these issues. There is a neighborhood watch program for animals. We would like to implement that in this neighborhood. Keep your animals indoors so they can't fall victim to this crime. 3 of them had known owners. Cats were seen the night before and discovered the next morning. Maximum shock value is important to this perpetrator. Animal was placed on owner's property in very explicit manner. Please let us know about any of this stuff. There is strong correlation between animal crimes and human crimes. What area are animal crimes in? Are not scattered. Are in 2 small blocks and one larger block. In larger block there is a 98% chance perpetrator lives in that area. Was one incident on Northcrest. Until we can profile for this person we need to look broadly. Is there a reward -it was in effect last year and was never given-so probably. Are there more patrols sent out to help with this? Police officer is requested to be present when animal is found. Mobile watch is a resource willing to help. That is us and we need volunteers. If we had 30-40 people we could see more of this happening.

School Board: Doug Nelson has done his best in school board meetings to let school board know what we are losing with closing Lowell. It appears the Board of Ed are trying hard to put the issue behind them. Efforts legislatively are not bearing fruit. Large group of avenues parents are suing board of ed & have requested a temporary restraining order to stop closing school. Requirements for that are rather high. Next decision point occurred yesterday to dismiss SOS lawsuit. Does not know if any decision was rendered today. Assume it hasn't been rendered. If it's dismissed it will be dead in water. If not, it will go to trial in mid-June. Contracts are being signed to go forward next fall all while a legal case is going on. Will have to see what the judge will say. Big plans for change are occurring at Wasatch and Ensign. Wasatch construction is nightmare because of South Temple construction and school construction too. Concern is continuing pick-up and drop-off. Have money for studying traffic but won't be finished by summer. What alternatives are being looked at for Lowell? It will house students for other school construction. First year will be from Beacon Heights, following year from some other school. Don't know what happens after this temporary use. Year-round decision is made by local school.

Special Presentation of recognition to Tom DeVroom who has unfortunately announced he is moving from Avenues neighborhood. His tireless work on street fair and many years of commitment to GACC and board deserves an award. Has been here for 9-12 years. Tom's comments: At first board was in charge of all decisions and at some point it was changed so the entire GACC now can vote and have a say in what occurs. Suggests we individually take on less projects and pick your battles. Say no to certain things but participate in others. Overall, do get involved.

Madeline School Choir: Lisa Burbidge is here to update us on another avenues school. We love this property but like any new owner we find many things need fixed or changed. Some things work and some things don't. It's a great process to go through historical landmarks division. Here to give you a quick overview of where we have been and where we would like to go. School is k-8 school now and we have been able to add students. Handout was given to show new plans developed as of now. Existing library and gym are being retained in this plan. Will be less disruptive to community than the plans before. Trying to be sensitive to site. Taking out one classroom building as it's not safe and classrooms are too small. Coming out 9-10 feet with new building. In future may relocate one of those Victorian homes. Met with DRT planning people and doing sidewalk repair and old driveways. Don't like moving children around. By centralizing we will make our day more efficient. These changes allow us to bury those buildings a little bit more. Looking for opportunity to having all classrooms in McCarthy building. Have 158 students on property now. Roland Hall had 520 registered youth last Nov. Next year we will be going up to 220. They are siblings of kids already enrolled in school -only 25 new families coming in.

No one here to discuss re-design of Crossroads Mall--who thinks Aves community council should have a say in crossroad mall? -majority don't care. Not much support for this.

June 6-7 community planning CERT program is being offered

Wasatch School: Peg McKenzie, Karen Chan, Jane Walsh, Tamara Prince. In the beginning when we were approached with renovation of this school, we thought maybe we didn't want or need a change. We were losing our principal, our staff is older every year. We were a little bit grumpy to begin with and it took us a little while to adjust. Change is inevitable and we needed to decide how to deal with it. What we are changing was valuable space. There is a different thing about Wasatch -when they say they are for the arts they mean it. I teach 6th graders. Down the hall a music class goes on all day long. Above is a choir class singing all day etc, etc. Building has a heartbeat and it's music. When we found out buildings actually have music rooms we were elated. If we could have a music room it would be great. We have over 900 sq feet of administrative space and have never had an approach out front so people would know how to enter the building. Now we can have a front and a counselor's office. These are real positive things. When we learned more about the changes and what they offered the change didn't seem so bad. We are excited to accommodate families. As we began to plan we were very concerned about our neighborhood. To begin with we have only 2 streets as drop off points. The change is going to happen and we have to deal with it-and the tunnel will be addressed. It is not a pleasant experience. It has not been dry. Architect has done one of best jobs we've seen in trying to match existing building. Didn't want to block vision of neighbors any more than we had to. One neighbor will suffer the most. Now we are excited for spaces we can use in future. New addition is 2 levels-on upper floor we will have 2 1st grade rooms, a restroom, and a set of stairs. The way we moved the stairways helped make the addition smaller and we lost no real needs. Have 2 stairways and an elevator. Will now have a faculty bathroom on main floor. Construction will start in summertime. Looking for volunteers as crossing guards. Road closures will probably go into October.

Air Traffic Proposals: Judith Locke reported air traffic configuration around SLC. Traffic coming in was in yellow and departing traffic in green. Air traffic has increased in Utah since 9/11. Incoming and outgoing are sharing same airspace and have holding patterns which can't accommodate any more growth. FAA recommended plan #1 won't change anything. Plan #2 is creating a 4-point entry way and separating them out from departing planes. This plan will allow air traffic controllers to separate holding patterns a little more which would give double holding plan space. Airplanes have to land into the wind. Plan #3 will take some of air traffic moving over valley (limited movement) to the East side to land into the wind. Plan #4 would have no limits over our Eastern neighborhood. That is basically it. They say our safety will be enhanced by changing existing patterns and will allow for growth. Going into corners doesn't affect us. Do they need to come over the east side is a question?

Representative from FAA had a family emergency and couldn't make it tonight.

Tim Campbell from SLC airport is here to report. This chart is FAA proposal and shows FAA's current program. The plan to take planes over the East side would be 6600 ft above ground level but if non instrument landing is used (which is most of the time) would likely be lower than that. This would have air traffic from U hospital to temple Square on East side. Don't know how departure tracts would work. Have concerns about southeastern post over ski areas and canyons. Should be some opportunities to make adjustments there. Don't' think forecasts are accurate because they are based on data that is old and not like circumstances are today. We have serious questions about FAA's comments that it's congested up there. FAA cannot operate unsafely. They are designed by law to be operated safely. Any new procedures will have to likewise be safe but they must be doing things today that are perfectly safe. We don't believe we are close to overloading our airport. The 4-corner post concepts look very workable although can be improved on themselves. Current flight tracks were designed and developed as part of 150 noise mitigation program. This involved a lot of input from community and is a result of that effort. Idea was to put airplanes over low pop areas. East downwind plan is a concern to SLC airport group. Some of airline hub operations are expanding peak hours so they don't have as many planes in same time. Would ask are there other downwind tracts that should be looked at --perhaps on other side of the mountains, or one further west, or stacking them higher-- we would ask them to look at. East downwind one should be last one considered.

Save our Canyons representative Tom Hale takes the position that their focus is in the mountains. Southwest corner post flies right over our prime backcountry area and resorts. FAA is proposing 4 alternatives 1) no action and other 3 are really 1 alternative each one uses 4 corner areas and only changes the downwind. There is not a reasonable range of alternatives presented here. In terms of the overall process they are not exploring the options. There are variations for plans where downwinds are located. Pretty obvious to me that FAA is desirous to doing it this way and those options have not been studied well. They are projecting a sharp incline in air traffic when we are likely going to see it remain stable for now. Tim recommends we ask for an extension for public to comment if we need it. Just now getting to the point that people have enough information to form an opinion about it. Let's ask for another 60 days additional contemplative period to develop a reasonable opinion either as a council or individually as you choose. We won't see an immediate need to do this. Would want to see a reasonable range of alternatives. Study of noise, socioeconomic impacts, visual flight rules verses instrument rules, most of what you are seeing will be lower because visual landing is lower. 2000 ft is typical above ground level for sight landing

Eric Jergensen commented the real plan here is to reverse what is happening to the East side. Proposed change East flight route would reverse existing plan. What now exists would be mirrored on the East side with a lot of traffic here. Should not be described as an East/West issue-it is a citywide issue.

Questions:

Low flying aircraft and life-flight aircraft have said they would not be in conflict.

Is avoiding doing this a detriment or liability to airport or will it be bad for our community since the airport is one of the lowest delay airports in country? -certainly not an issue right now

One expression was of suspicions of FAA from experience near Grand Canyon.

FAA seems to give different stats depending on who they talk to.

What will noise levels be? What is position of various carriers. Don't know where the airlines are in this issue. 4 corner posts options will probably increase flight time. Don't know precisely noise level issue. FAA has black box model they use and was built on large urbanized areas where they don't have the tools to model it accurately. Delicate sounds they don't deal with.

One way could be to schedule more flights during non-peak times? Would airlines lose business if they could not schedule flights at non-peak times? We have quite a ways to go before we get to that level.

Is there a precedent for establishing communication with commercial airlines regarding this?

Is this plan simply a copy of standard mode of operation that works elsewhere or is it for us specifically? Do we know from whence that growth our airport has seen comes?

Plan is combination of both -4 corner plan is standard and East/West is standard -concept is basically one used around the country. Our East downwind muddied water in Tim's opinion.

Have had growth in operations because commercial jets have replaced a mainline with 2 or 3 smaller planes which is what's driven our increase. Will see that leveling off but will see more growth immediately for a time. Will become more cost effective to fly bigger plane than smaller plane because of labor costs. Small planes will eventually go away.

Sandy meeting quoted FAA saying you will probably have an East downwind because they anticipate 100 more new flights coming to SLC.

Question is there a limit to how much air traffic we can have or do we continue to add air routes until we are saturated? When is enough really enough? So many variables in this mix there is no definite answer to this question.

They have holding areas in the South too don't they? Yes.

Motion to extend proposal consideration for 60 days from earlier date of May 16.

Motion: Assumptions have been made that have not panned out, so the need is not there. Proposals are similar and concensus here is that FAA proposals are inadequate and they should come back with more viable alternatives: (to be made part of previous motion)

Adjourned at 9:12 pm