City’s Airport Director Resigns Post

The city’s airport director resigned Tuesday, the second high-profile department head to leave since Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa took office in July.

Kim Day, who oversees the city’s four airports -- Los Angeles and Ontario International, and facilities in Van Nuys and Palmdale -- said in a letter to the mayor that she will resign effective Oct. 7 “so that I might resume my profession as an architect.”

“I have immensely enjoyed serving the city of Los Angeles and its airport system for the past six years, including the last two years as executive director,” she wrote in the one-page letter. “I believe I leave the city’s airports financially strong and well positioned to do their part to meet the regional demand for air service.”

Day was not available for comment Monday.

Speculation about Day’s future had abounded at City Hall over the last few months, given that she was the chief advocate for former Mayor James K. Hahn’s controversial $11-billion modernization plan for LAX. Villaraigosa was an ardent opponent of much of the proposal.

A spokeswoman for the mayor said he did not ask Day to step down and has accepted her resignation. Villaraigosa will “move quickly” to name an interim director for Los Angeles World Airports, said Janelle Erickson, a spokeswoman for the mayor.

“Mayor Villaraigosa thanks Kim Day for her service to the city and wishes her well as she returns to architecture,” she said.

Last October, Villaraigosa called Hahn’s LAX proposal “an ill-conceived plan whose full cost is still unknown.” He was one of three City Council members who voted against the plan, saying it was too expensive and didn’t spread air traffic among the region’s other airports.

The mayor approves of the proposal’s more popular projects, including a consolidated rental car facility, a transit hub and moving the southernmost runway 55 feet. But he has promised to do away with some elements, including a passenger check-in center near the San Diego Freeway.

Day’s tenure was marked by controversy.

Shortly after she became interim executive director in August 2003, City Controller Laura Chick released an audit that found that the airport agency lacked a formal process for evaluating and selecting bids on lucrative contracts and did not keep adequate records documenting decisions to hire one firm over another. Day questioned the report’s methodology.

The airport agency also took the rare legal step last summer of threatening to remove builder Tutor-Saliba from a $34-million Van Nuys park-and-ride expansion project, saying the firm had failed to fix construction defects in a five-story parking garage.

Day also headed up numerous security upgrades at LAX, including replacing the perimeter fencing, installing a new camera system and a massive project to integrate explosives-detection machines into the airport’s complicated baggage-sorting system.

After 10 years and $140 million spent on planning, a modernization plan for LAX was finally approved by a majority of the City Council last winter.

Day was named the airport agency’s executive director last November. She began her career with the city in November 1999.