Petition on Burbank Airport Disqualified

City officials Wednesday disqualified a petition that could have stalled construction of a new $300-million Burbank Airport terminal, saying the document failed to meet state requirements for ballot initiatives.

The initiative by the group calling itself “Restore Our Airport Rights” or ROAR, did not include the names of two chief proponents, former Burbank City Councilman Ted McConkey and Howard Rothenbach, city officials said.

“It is extremely difficult for me to reject this petition because I know the great lengths that you and all of the participating citizens have gone to,” Burbank City Clerk Judie Sarquiz wrote in a Wednesday letter to the two men.

“Based on the advice from the city attorney,” she added, “I have no choice but to reject the petition, as it fails to comply with the Election Code.”

Burbank City Atty. Dennis Barlow said state law requires that the signers of an initiative petition have the right to know who the proponents are before they sign.

“Those names were just not included on the petitions, “ he said.

ROAR said Tuesday that it submitted 7,400 signatures to the city clerk for a measure that would bar the City Council from approving a terminal exceeding 200,000 square feet in size.

McConkey said that despite the city’s action, he believed that the form of the petition was in compliance with the formal Election Code. He said a lawyer retained by ROAR was looking at the city’s opinion.

“I can’t say that I expected this to happen less than 24 hours after we turned it in,” he said. “But we knew this was going to be under the microscope.”

The initiative was designed to kill a tentative agreement for a 330,000-square-foot, 14-gate terminal to replace the existing 170,000-square-foot facility. The deal, negotiated by the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority and city officials last year, must still be approved by the Burbank City Council.

Airport officials have proposed building a new terminal to better meet passenger demand and relocate the existing 1930s-era facility, which federal officials say is too close to the runway.

City and airport negotiators signed a tentative deal to do just that in August but the plan has been held up by numerous opponents, including Burbank residents, the airlines, Los Angeles political leaders and the Federal Aviation Administration.

City and airport officials tried to make their agreement more palatable by limiting the operating hours of the terminal, linking expansion to as many as 19 gates to a mandatory curfew, using $1.5 million in passenger fees to offset lost property taxes and permanently banning easterly takeoffs.

ROAR said that wasn’t enough and began collecting signatures for its measure, which would have also imposed a mandatory 10 p.m.-to-7 a.m. curfew, and a 10% cap on future flights and passengers.

The group needed at least 5,214 valid signatures or 10% of registered voters in Burbank to qualify for the city’s next scheduled election in February.

About 100 ROAR supporters combed neighborhoods just south of the airport as well as retail stores in their grass-roots effort.