Discord Forces Airport Board Chief to Resign : Expansion: Bowman strongly disagreed with new majority on the Burbank City Council.

Brian B. Bowman, president of the board that oversees Burbank Airport, resigned Tuesday, saying he had strong disagreements with a new majority on the City Council that opposes the board’s longstanding plans for a larger airport terminal.

A council member said Bowman was going to be replaced next week anyway.

In a letter to Burbank’s new mayor, Dave Golonski, Bowman said he was leaving the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority after nine years for personal reasons.

But during a board meeting Tuesday, Bowman acknowledged that the conflict with the council was a major factor in his stepping down.

“I want to make clear that the reason for my leaving is that the council and I see issues differently,” Bowman said. “It’s not that one side is right and the other side is wrong. It’s just that the visions are different.”

Bowman, 58, appears to be the first casualty of a political sea change from this year’s elections that swept two ardent opponents of airport expansion into council seats on Monday.

The new City Council has already named two temporary airport commissioners, Philip E. Berlin and Jim Gordon, to replace Robert R. Bowne and George Battey Jr., who have resigned from both the council and the Airport Authority.

A third Burbank commissioner, to replace Bowman, is expected to be selected by the council on Tuesday.

Each of the three cities that established the Airport Authority may name three commissioners to it.

Like four of the five present council members, Berlin and Gordon, the new Burbank commission members, oppose plans that have been under development for years to build a 465,000-square-foot terminal building, nearly three times the size of the present one, by 1998. It would accommodate 5.4 million passengers per year and up to 10 more flights a day than the current average of 93.

Supporters of the project say a larger terminal is needed to cope with an unavoidable surge of air travelers in the near future; opponents worry about the increased aircraft noise and street traffic that would result from what they consider a “mini-LAX.”

Bowman has ruffled some council members by publicly supporting airport expansion. Councilmen Bob Kramer and Ted McConkey, for example, threatened to fire Bowman shortly after they were sworn into office on Monday. But the council postponed taking action until next week to give the public more advance notice.

“We were gonna replace him next week anyway,” Kramer said. “Brian’s been a great commissioner. The problem is, he’s in favor of expanding the terminal and he’s not representing us. It’s just a matter of a change of direction.”

With a month left on his one-year term as the Airport Authority’s president, Bowman resigned from the top post immediately Tuesday and said he would give up his position as commissioner as soon as the council selects his replacement.

The Airport Authority’s vice president, Carl W. Raggio Jr. of Glendale, automatically took over as acting president of the nine-member board, until an election for president can be held at its next meeting.

Bowman said he decided to resign on April 2, when the City Council held a rare Sunday night meeting to discuss the Airport Authority’s $109.8-million proposal to finance land acquisition for a new terminal.

Some council members complained that they did not hear of the proposal until the last minute and accused the Airport Authority of acting in bad faith. At least one of them scolded Bowman for failing to tell the council about it sooner.

Bowman said, “I unfortunately had to bring a message to the Burbank City Council that they didn’t like and I felt at that time that they were shooting the messenger. That was not the kind of environment in which I really choose to operate.

“It was bordering on a personal attack upon me as an individual and not on the issue that was at hand. The issue that was at hand was whether or not the Airport Authority should purchase this land.”

Despite earlier reports that the entire terminal project is doomed because of the council’s opposition to expansion, Bowman remained confident that the two sides could reach common ground and build a new terminal of the same size as the present one.

But, he said, it could mean an end to the voluntary curfew on commercial flights from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. as airlines try to accommodate increased passenger demand by flying planes around the clock.