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Park Ridge Shut Out From Fly Quiet Voting Seat


Park Ridge and its O’Hare Airport Committee (OAC) lodged a strong protest at Friday’s (May 4) O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission when ONCC Chairman Arlene Juracek denied the city a voting seat on the new permanent Fly Quiet Committee.

Juracek kept the nine member communities from the original ad hoc committee created in 2015. These included Bensenville, Schaumburg, Schiller Park, River Grove, Harwood Heights, Chicago’s 41st and 45th wards and Des Plaines.

A bylaws committee developing rules for converting to a permanent committee had suggested adding only two more seats. It was not clear at the time that the original members would automatically continue.

Who got the new seats was Juracek’s choice. She said she chose Elmhurst and Wood Dale to provide for 360-degree representation around the southern end of the airport.

Elmhurst became vocal when 2017 testing sent more frequent overnight flights on the northeast-southwest routes, a corridor it shares with Park Ridge. Elmhurst did not actually join ONCC until after the Fly Quiet tests.

She said there was already representation all around Park Ridge in existing seats: Des Plaines, Niles (because Joe Annunzio, retired Niles village attorney, lives in Park Ridge); Des Plaines; Chicago’s 41st and 45th wards and Harwood Heights.

Rebecca Mills, representing OAC, its chairman Jim Argionis and Park Ridge Mayor Marty Maloney, noted that when the full runway buildout is completed in 2020, five of the eight O’Hare runways will have arrivals or departures over Park Ridge.

The rotation plans which are being evaluated for the Interim Fly Quiet Plan, tested last fall, sent planes over Park Ridge during all of the parallel and diagonal overnight tests. This is a consequence of being at the corner of the airfield. Day flights are also above the city.

Park Ridge is also impacted by traffic which turns over the city going east and north on departures trying to go west.

Maloney was one of a handful of ONCC members voting against the Interim Fly Quiet proposal earlier this year.

“Park Ridge has not received the benefit of any predictability in overhead air traffic and has not received the intermittent relief the Fly Quiet committee was tasked to accomplish,” Mills read.

“With this background, and in light of past criticism by certain ONCC members that Park Ridge has not fully participated in the ONCC’s endeavors, Park Ridge requested to be a voting member on the now standing committee for Fly Quiet in hopes of assisting in developing appropriate mitigating measures to the noise difficulties that residential areas surrounding O’Hare have been experiencing.”

Park Ridge had counted membership numbers of other standing committees at ONCC. School Sound Insulation has 16 members. Residential Soundproofing has 19, Mills said.

Could not a few more seats have been added, she asked, or just let all the communities that volunteered have a seat?

A decision to “unjustly” limit Fly Quiet to 11 members, she read, “appears arbitrary, unfair, and directly contradicts the stated purpose of the ONCC in purporting to provide a forum for direct citizen engagement and in purporting to replace confrontation with cooperation.”

Juracek, mayor of Mount Prospect, said she grew up in the Park Ridge area, went to a Park Ridge hospital to have her children, and had played in its parks.

“I have no malice against Park Ridge,” she added, labeling Park Ridge’s objections as “the Park Ridge situation.”

Park Ridge’s complaints focus in part on the diagonal runways which cross its space and in part on the unscheduled turns to go west.

Juracek said Des Plaines and the 41st Ward are on the same east-west runway (9L-27R) and told Park Ridge it pays to open up a dialogue with them “so you are heard.”

Other communities which volunteered to serve and were left off included Bloomingdale, Norridge, Itasca and Glenview.

Glenview, impacted by the northeast-southwest diagonals during the later Fly Quiet tests in 2017, came late to the table in objecting to the rotation plans and in asking to join ONCC.

It was accepted as a member this winter, shortly after Elmhurst was.

Glenview questioned why River Grove is still included at all as there are no longer northwest-southeast runways left to fly over River Grove since 15-33 closed in March.

During the current Federal Aviation Administration evaluation of the Interim Fly Quiet proposed plan, Juracek said, “We’re back to the OLD, old Fly Quiet plan.”

The closed runways are gone, so most night traffic uses longer east-west runways south of the terminals. Recognizing that the elected officials representing many of the municipalities may change, usually in spring elections, Juracek said she will pledge to reevaluate the committee membership each year.

She would be willing to consider juggling the membership a little, in future years, Juracek added.

She still expects some non-voting consultants to attend with Bensenville and those representing Suburban O’Hare Commission members who are on Fly Quiet.

Fair Allocations in Runways (FAiR) will also be allowed as a non-voting voice at the table.

Dan Dwyer, who speaks on behalf of FAiR, on Fly Quiet, said most of the key work for the Permanent Fly Quiet Plan (developing a plan to be implemented after the O’Hare Modernization Project concludes) will be happening in the near future.

He urged reconsideration of committee membership happen soon.

“There aren’t going to be opportunities in the future to keep revising this…It’s really going to be in the next year.”

Park Ridge City Hall, 505 Butler Place, as seen from Hodges Park. (Charles Miller/Journal photo)

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