Delaying Skydiving May Put Airport Grants At Risk

The FAA has cleared one obstacle in a long-simmering dispute between the City of Creswell, Oregon and Eugene Skydivers, saying the city should allow the activity beginning September 1st on an experimental basis. But the skydivers are still grounded because the city says they have not provided the proper liability insurance, and there is no safe drop zone at Hobby Airport in Creswell.

As ANN reported in June, skydivers had been allowed to land at Hobby until 2006, when the city declared the activity unsafe based in part on what it said was an FAA decision that skydiving could not be conducted safely at the airport. Recently, the FAA sent a letter to the city council saying the city had to prove skydiving was an unsafe activity or risk losing federal airport improvement grants for restricting an allowed activity.

Now, the Creswell Chronicle reports that in a conference call August 28th involving Mayor Bob Hooker, City Administrator Mark Shrives, City Attorney Christy Monson and Federal Aviation Administration officials Donna P. Taylor and Brad Pearson,the city was told it was being reasonable in asking for liability insurance from Eugene Skydivers or any skydiving company, but held to the September 1st deadline of allowing a drop zone on airport property on a trial basis. The call was precipitated in part by a YouTube video of an emergency City Council meeting August 13th, in which the mayor and majority of the council indicated they had hired their own consultant, had set an October deadline, and that they would be following those recommendations rather than those made by the FAA. The mayor and more than one city council member called the FAA's timeline "arbitrary", and accused the agency of "changing its rules" during the process. The city attorney said the FAA was operating in a "capricious" manor, and had not proved the need for the September 1st start to the trial.

At one point in the video, Eugene Skydivers Owner Urban Moore tried to make a comment, but was told curtly by the Mayor that there was no allowance for public comment during the emergency session and that if he did not stop trying to speak, he would be removed from the meeting.

At the meeting, the council agreed to send a "strongly worded" letter to the FAA concerning the September 1st deadline, which went out August 19th, according to the Chronicle. In it, the council said in part "Over the course of the last 18 years, the city has asked for and relied upon FAA advice which clearly and unequivocally asserted that the city of Creswell did not have a safe drop zone on airport property and that skydivers should be prohibited from landing on airport property. Based on this long-standing FAA advice regarding safety concerns, at no time were skydivers ever permitted to land on airport property. However, in April of 2008, your agency unexpectedly repudiated its past advice and practices and now declines to issue an opinion regarding drop zone safety or to provide the city with any workable safety standards. Acting upon FAA's advice, the city then decided to hire its own airport consultant to advise the city on drop zone safety and other airport issues. Further, the FAA's most recent August 6, 2009 correspondence now sets an unworkable September 1 demonstration deadline for trial jumps at the airport. This was done despite the city's repeated assertions that it must review the consultant's report and make a determination, after considering all facts, that a safe drop zone exists."

In the end, City Administrator Mark Shrives said "We've agreed to disagree," about the deadline, and that the city was proceeding under the timeline brought forth by the private consultant. But if that consultant agrees that there is no safe drop zone, Eugene Skydiver's ability to provide insurance would be moot, as the city would be very unlikely to approve the activity.

When we reported this story in June, Mayor Bob Hooker was quoted in the Oregon Register-Guard as saying “I have nothing against the skydivers, I would love to see them back at the airport (which makes us wonder what "at no time were skydivers ever permitted to land on airport property" in the letter quoted above means, ed.) but I am not willing to let that happen at the expense of the city. I’m not going to make the city liable.” But given the current position of the FAA, it looks as if preventing skydiving at Hobby may cost the city anyway.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.ci.creswell.or.us