Airport Group Facing 2 Votes

Fullerton appears on the verge of being the latest city to pull out of the Orange County Regional Airport Authority, which would make it the fourth this year to withdraw support from the principal booster group for a new El Toro airport.

The City Council is scheduled to vote tonight on the issue. The majority of the five-member council has signaled that it approves dropping out of the authority, which backs the county’s plan to build a commercial airfield at the former Marine base.

While the authority isn’t happy about the prospect of Fullerton quitting, a bigger question looms: What happens to the authority after the county Board of Supervisors gives its final approval--expected today--for a new airport at the closed base? Does the authority’s role end, or just change?

“We may simply become the chief cheerleaders for the airport,” said Garden Grove City Councilman Mark Rosen, an authority board member. “But we won’t really know what’s going to happen until our board meets next month.”

Executive Director Art Bloomer ends his one-year term in December but said he will stay on if the authority remains intact as a support group for a new airport.

“My fervor for the airport is stronger than it’s ever been,” Bloomer said. He contends that the results of a Federal Aviation Administration report released last week showing that the county’s design for El Toro is safe prove that “the naysayers are wrong.”

Bloomer plans to be at tonight’s Fullerton council meeting to push his cause, even though he acknowledges that he doesn’t have the votes to keep Fullerton aboard.

“I certainly will be disappointed,” Bloomer said. “But it’s like the president said: You’re either with us or you’re not.”

Tustin, Villa Park and Orange have voted to leave the authority, but Westminster and La Habra have recently joined, putting the authority’s membership at 15 cities. Among them are prominent pro-airport cities Newport Beach, Anaheim and Garden Grove. All of the member cities are in North County.

The authority became active in the 1970s to stop a proposed airport in Chino Hills. When Orange County began looking for a second airport in 1985, the authority became more visible and recruited more city members. It receives money from the county to distribute information about a planned airport at El Toro.

Four months ago, anti-airport forces on the Fullerton City Council tried to end the city’s membership in the authority. The vote was a 2-2 tie, with Councilwoman Jan M. Flory abstaining. Flory sided with those who wanted to pull out but said she got confused, mistakenly thinking that there would be a second vote. “It was my worst moment on the City Council,” she said Monday.

Flory said she no longer will be indecisive: She wants out of the authority, convinced that the group has misrepresented to voters that Fullerton’s membership means that the city is pro-airport.

“We wanted to be an OCRAA member so Fullerton would be at the table, be a part of the process,” she said. “But that rationale has been subverted by OCRAA.”

Flory emphasized that she is not anti-airport. “I could make an argument with the best of them either way,” she said. “But OCRAA is putting on a full-court press, using our name to do it.”

Mike Clesceri was the Fullerton council member who asked that the vote be added to Tuesday’s agenda. Clesceri said he thought he could finally sway Flory’s vote. Clesceri said he is also angry that the authority has not taken Orange off its membership list on its Web site.

Bloomer countered that Orange is not officially gone until 120 days after its vote to rescind membership. He disagreed that his group has misused Fullerton’s name.

Flory also said that dropping out does not mean that the city supports a South County plan to turn the closed base into a regional park.