Town Meeting Petition Seeks To Limit Airport Use

CHATHAM – Critics of Chatham Municipal Airport have once again filed a town meeting petition to restrict use of the George Ryder Road facility.
Because it had the required number of signatures to be placed on the annual town meeting warrant, the article will go before voters May 10. But in voting to oppose the measure Tuesday, select board members warned that both town counsel and the airport commission’s attorney have ruled that it will not pass muster with the state and federal agencies that regulate the airport.
The petition article proposes a town bylaw that would prohibit aircraft with a wingspan of more than 49 feet, which belong to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airplane Design Group II, from using the airport. Under the proposed bylaw, only planes in Design Group 1, with wingspans below 49 feet, could land in Chatham.
The measure is virtually the same as a petition article that voters rejected by a more than two-to-one margin in 2022. 
Petition sponsor Jerry Stahl of West Chatham said the airport is designed for the smaller aircraft, which have traditionally used the facility, and its use by the larger turboprop planes is unsafe. The airport does not meet the criteria for Design Group II aircraft, he said. Chatham officials have consistently dismissed residents’ safety concerns about the airport, he said at the March 11 select board meeting. At Tuesday’s meeting he added that the airport commission has refused to put limits on Design Group II aircraft use of the facility.
“This has a lot of public support,” Stahl said, noting that the petition was signed by more than 100 residents. “Voters are tired of the airport increasingly impacting the surrounding community without showing concern for the safety and wellbeing of the residents, despite all their talk about safety.”
Data from flight tracker FlightAware show that there were between 638 and 575 “operations” annually by the larger planes during the past four years, Stahl said, “substantially over” the FAA’s 500-operations limit threshold allowed at smaller airports. 
An “operation” is either a landing or take-off, said airport commission chair Huntley Harrison, so the number of Design Group II planes using the airport is approximately half of the operations cited by Stahl.
“Average those out, and that’s not many [Design Group II] airplanes that come into this airport over a year,” he said. By far the largest class of aircraft using the airport is Design Group I, which includes small single-prop aircraft, he added.
“Chatham Airport was not designed for these aircraft,” Stahl said, “the bigger ones, and this is a serious safety issue. FAA design standards for the big planes are very different than for the little ones.” The larger planes, which Stahl said are usually charter flights, should use Barnstable Airport in Hyannis.
Both Town Counsel Jason Talerman and attorneys at Anderson and Kreiger, the airport commission’s legal counsel, opined that the article is not legal. In a memo, Talerman wrote that the state Attorney General “has been clear in determining that local regulation of commercial airport operation is preempted” and falls squarely on the state aeronautics agency and the FAA. The airport commission’s attorneys said the bylaw would violate federal grant assurances, which require that the airport be open to general aviation. Further, it would be up to the FAA, not the state, to determine the bylaw’s validity. 
The proponent “claims to the contrary and assertions regarding preemption, proprietary powers, and the notion that Massachusetts courts are the final authority over airport regulation are irrelevant or wrong, or both,” the airport attorney memo reads. “It is the FAA grant assurances, imposed as conditions for the acceptance of federal funds, that provide the basis for FAA regulation of the airport and thousands of other airports across the United States.”
The town has accepted millions of dollars in FAA grants for the airport over the years subject to the grant assurances.
Select board members said they are sympathetic to airport neighbor’s concerns but could not support the proposed bylaw because of the legal issues.
“This bylaw is not the mechanism to push forward,” said board member Jeff Dykens. “There may be others.”
Stahl said officials should not be concerned about the legal issues raised by the attorneys but should support residents. If the bylaw is not legal, it will be turned down by the Attorney General, he said.
“I’m willing to go with that,” Stahl said.
Proponents of the article are not trying to close the airport, Stahl said. “We’re saying keep the airport the way it always used to be…don’t try to hide the fact that you’re trying to increase the number of large planes each year.”
The airport commission is sensitive to the safety issue, Harrison said. It is working to improve safety for all aircraft capable of using Chatham Airport by removing and trimming trees that have grown into the flight path and upgrading navigation aids, funds for which will be sought at the upcoming town meeting, he said.
“Frankly, we’ve been down this road before,” said Harrison.
Select board members agreed concerns about the airport need to be addressed, but the issues are complex.
“There’s no magic wand,” said Dykens.