IRVINE : City Adopts Copter Law for Home Sales
The City Council has adopted an ordinance requiring home sellers to file a separate disclosure form warning potential buyers about helicopter noise.
The council action was met with opposition from local real estate agents, who said the ordinance is unnecessary.
“It is totally absurd and not needed,” Doreen Benton, a member of the Irvine Board of Realtors, said Wednesday. “We already have tons of forms to fill out that include air traffic.”
This new form would make the third disclosure statement which homeowners are required to produce, she said. The two others also require disclosure of noise problems.
“By law, we have to disclose everything,” said Councilwoman Sally Anne Sheridan, also a realtor in the city. The City Council “didn’t happen to think it (the existing requirement) is conclusive enough.”
The ordinance followed a related action, in which the City Council voted to ask the Federal Aviation Administration and the Marine Corps to consider flying helicopters at higher altitudes. Helicopters fly at between 700 and 2,400 feet. The City Council would like to see the 700-foot minimum height raised.
An estimated 2,000 flights each month come into or out of the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station. What prompted the resolution was a yearlong study by the city to determine ways of cutting noise pollution by aircraft. It found that helicopters that take off to a higher altitude than currently used, will curtail noise pollution.
“It is a very complicated situation, but hopefully it will go through,” said Sammy Rake, an assistant planner who helped to write the resolution.
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