Torrance Raises Airport Fuel Tax, Imposes New Fee

A crowd of outraged pilots and business owners at Torrance Municipal Airport persuaded City Council members Tuesday to reduce a proposed hike in the city’s airplane fuel tax, but the council also decided that pilots and owners will have to pay for annual exemptions to the airport’s curfew rules.

After hearing more than two hours of testimony by 26 speakers, council members voted unanimously to charge a tax of 5 cents per gallon for fuel pumped at the airport. The current 3-cent tax has not been raised in 20 years.

City staff members had recommended raising the tax to 8 cents per gallon, slightly below the level where they say the tax would be had it been adjusted annually to match inflation.

Council members also approved using the Consumer Price Index to calculate annual increases in all airport fees.

In addition, the council approved charging $216 for an annual curfew exemption, which allows off-hour takeoffs by businesses and pilots who can prove a need to fly during curfew hours. There is now no charge for such exemptions.

Staff members had recommended also charging $48 for one-time exemptions, which are issued to pilots when emergencies arise. Council members rejected that charge, however, as inhumane.

Citing a litany of financial woes at the aging airfield, 21 airport supporters said the city’s current restrictions already have caused a serious burden to pilots and businesses there.

“The city should treat the airport as an asset, instead of as a child that they don’t want in their back yard,” pilot Don Bawker said. The fees “just create another restriction to flying out of Torrance airport.”

Bawker and other pilots warned that the proposal to raise Torrance’s fuel tax to bring it more in line with other nearby airports is deceptive because fuel prices are higher at Torrance than at many other airports.

Because of the low volume of fuel sales at Torrance airport, fuel suppliers do not get the same volume discounts as the suppliers at some other airports, pilots said.

As a result, many people fly their airplanes elsewhere to fuel up, saving more than 30 cents per gallon off the $1.89 they pay for fuel at Torrance, they said.

Pilots warned that increasing fuel costs at Torrance would increase flights in and out of the airport, creating more noise, because more pilots would make special trips to get gas at another airfield, draining revenue away from Torrance.

Several speakers lectured the council on the benefits of special evacuation and search-and-rescue programs that operate out of Torrance, complaining that the programs are threatened by city restrictions.

Irritated council members, however, reminded the pilots that the fuel tax had not been raised in 20 years and that the annual exemption fee would apply to only a few pilots. The city last year issued 16 exemptions.

“I don’t see this as a grand way of balancing the city’s budget,” Councilman Dan Walker said, noting that the proposals would bring in between $20,000 and $30,000 annually. The annual exemption fee is designed to cover the cost of issuing the exemptions, staff members said.

Noting that many speakers had alluded to “a grand conspiracy to close the airport,” Walker reminded the audience that the city is completing designs on a $1-million general aviation center.

Talk of closing the airport is nonsense, he said.