BURBANK AIRPORT EXPANSION : Opponents of Expansion Will Pay a Big Price : The crowded conditions will worsen and drive passengers away. Then the planes and traffic will go--along with 17,000 jobs.

The proposed new terminal at Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport has been tabled indefinitely due to strong opposition from the Burbank City Council.

The council, in effect, revived the wrong-headed California movement known in the 1980s as “slow growth.” When our home values were rising monthly at double-digit percentages, when our aerospace factories were struggling to keep up with the demands of the Reagan rearmament, when the nation’s best and brightest were flocking to the Golden State, those who were already here decided they no longer needed the goose, now that they had the golden egg.

They wanted freeways without traffic, factories that didn’t smoke and all the benefits that industry cultivates--jobs, tax revenues and economic vitality--with none of the inconvenience. So the slow-growth advocates regulated and controlled and restricted the industries that built our city.

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Then came a recession, and states began to compete for industry. Aerospace companies such as Lockheed moved to regions that welcomed their contributions, abandoning one that took them for granted. They went to states that encouraged their expansion from one that stifled it.

According to the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles, from 1992 through 1994 Los Angeles County lost 80,000 aerospace jobs, with another 19,000 projected to disappear this year. We not only controlled growth, we reversed it.

Now we’re following the same path with the Burbank Airport.

In a January, 1995, study of the airport’s economic benefits, Science Applications International concluded that it generates $878.2 million in earnings and expenditures, including $296.4 million in direct expenditures by non-local visitors who use the airport.

Those are people who stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants, rent our cars, buy our gasoline, shop in our stores, visit our theme parks, museums and theaters--all brought here by the Burbank Airport.

The same study found the airport employs 1,647 people directly and supports 15,468 related jobs, for a total of 17,115 payrolls. That is 17,115 people who pay mortgages and rent, who buy computers, VCRs, furniture, groceries, lawn mowers and school clothes for their kids. They replace roofs, rent videos, have their cars serviced, their eyes examined, their hair cut by us and our neighbors.

The study shows that 91.5% of those 17,000 jobs are in Los Angeles County, including 7,649 in the following cities: Burbank, 3,012; Los Angeles, 2,507; Glendale, 1,098; Pasadena, 1,032. Are there any of us who are untouched by the benefits of this airport?

The slow-growth crowd doesn’t want the airport to get any bigger, saying a bigger terminal would mean more traffic and more noise. In fact, passenger volume continues to increase at 5.4% annually even with the existing overcrowded facility, reaching 4.8 million passengers in 1994, according to Victor Gill, the airport’s director of public relations.

“If we were to start from scratch, and apply normal architectural requirements” to handle the present level of traffic, Gill says, “we’d already have in place a 400,000-square-foot facility.” The present terminal covers 163,000 square feet.

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An ever-increasing number of passengers will continue to squeeze through Burbank’s overcrowded terminal until they decide that it’s just too much trouble and arrange to come to Southern California through some other airport. The $296 million they would spend in the communities near Burbank Airport will go instead to those near LAX or Ontario or John Wayne.

As other facilities expand to meet the demand, they will draw more business from Burbank, and a once-powerful economic engine will shut down. The 17,000 jobs will slowly disappear.

Our skies will be quieter and emptier, like the assembly buildings that once housed 100,000 aerospace employees.

The slow-growth advocates will celebrate another victory. They like it quiet here in the Valley. And thanks to the Burbank City Council, that’s the way it’s going to be.