El Toro Talk Heats Up as Vote Nears

At least one councilman has been threatened and a woman said she has been accosted in a grocery store in the last two weeks as discussions about the proposed El Toro airport continue to escalate in the community a month before the March 7 primary election.

“The city is very divided on the airport,” Mayor Tracy Wills Worley said. “They seem to be getting more and more passionate and more and more vocal.”

The division is apparent between East Tustin and Old Town Tustin. In the east, Tustin Ranch residents are concerned that plane traffic and noise over their homes will increase if a new airport is built.

But in Old Town Tustin, many residents support a new El Toro airport at the former Marine Corps base because they don’t want John Wayne Airport expanded, therefore increasing the already heavy air traffic above their homes.

Airport opponents and proponents became more vocal after the council, which had previously taken a neutral stance, voted Jan. 17 in favor of Measure F, the anti-El Toro airport initiative.

The council voted 3 to 2 to support the initiative on the March 7 ballot that would require two-thirds of county voters to approve any projects involving airports, hazardous-waste landfills and large jails within a half-mile of homes.

As a result of the vote, pro-airport Councilman Jeffery M. Thomas requested the council withdraw from the Orange County Regional Airport Authority, a group supporting development of an international airport in South County, and to join the anti-airport El Toro Reuse Planning Authority.

The council voted 3 to 2 Monday to remain with the regional airport authority.

Along with the residents, the council is clearly divided with members Thomas, Worley and Jim Potts against the airport and Mike Doyle and Thomas R. Saltarelli for the airport.

Doyle said he talked to a Tustin woman who said she was approached by an angry airport opponent at a supermarket the day after she publicly spoke in favor of the airport at the Jan. 17 council meeting.

The woman had to leave the grocery store because she had her 6-year-old son with her and was scared, Doyle said.

“The woman exercised her constitutional rights,” Doyle said. “Now she will not come to any more City Council meetings. She is afraid to give her address out.”

Doyle said he has received several anonymous threats to his safety at the restaurant he owns, the Revere House, and all the council members have received letters from angry residents on both sides.

“It’s just the way it is,” Worley said. “There are so many unknowns, and unknowns create fear.”

Marissa Espino can be reached at (714) 966-5879.