Airpark asks council to reconsider jet provision

Pegasus Airpark's board wants the Queen Creek Town Council to reconsider its failed request to allow jets and helicopters to land at the facility, but so far, no council members have agreed to put it back on the agenda.

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The Pegasus Airpark Flight Association has worked on agreements with nearby airports that it hopes will reduce the potential for collisions with aircraft taking off and landing at Pegasus, which the group will implement once it meets with each of the town's council members, major stakeholders and the public, association officials said.

But two of the flight association's members also sent letters to the council earlier this week asking that the whole plan, which would allow very light jets and helicopters to land at the facility in addition to the piston engine planes currently allowed, be reconsidered as a way of most effectively managing aircraft in the area and allowing the airpark to develop.

Since this proposal was already turned down at the council's Oct. 15 meeting, the Pegasus item can appear on the Town Council's agenda again if two council members, including one who voted with the winning side, ask to put it on the agenda, according to Town Manager John Kross. So far, no one has asked.

Flight association president Dennis Brierton acknowledges his group could have approached the issue a little differently, in a way that might have been more successful.

But he also said his group has done a lot of outreach and a lot of work to make sure residents are following neighborhood rules.

If Pegasus develops, it will bring more tax dollars to the city, Brierton said. But Brierton has also heard from three prospective buyers who didn't want to move in because they wouldn't be able to land jets on the property.

And that doesn't make Pegasus an attractive community compared with other airparks in the area, including Stellar Airpark a few miles away, Brierton said.

"If Pegasus never develops, it's going to be a mediocre place that's going to be a pain for the people who live around it and a pain for the people who live in it," Brierton said.

Brierton said he understands frustrations about aircraft noise that came out leading up to the vote, especially from residents in rural areas who get helicopters doing training exercises in their area.

"If you live underneath where there's helicopters practicing every day, you don't feel remote. You feel violated," he said.

But he also believes that many people didn't understand most of the noise around the airpark comes from aircraft passing through, not the ones coming in and out of Pegasus.

Councilman Craig Barnes, who voted against the Pegasus request, said he would have no problem with the airpark association coming back to the council as long as they brought something new to the table.

Barnes said he'd like to see not only a demonstration of how their proposal would solve problems at the airpark, but the steps they've taken in that direction and how this would benefit neighbors - and not just sell more of the lots in the neighborhood.

Barnes also noted that much of the opposition to the proposal seemed to come from neighbors, while support came from people who didn't necessarily live in the community.

"They need to not just convince me and the other council members," Barnes said. "They need to convince their neighbors."

Michael Tragarz, a longtime Valley pilot and consultant for Pegasus, said the group is starting to take steps to do something.

He said the group has worked with nearby airports to create advisory procedures. Those procedures would basically ask aircraft flying through to avoid certain areas where Pegasus planes are taking off and landing and notify each other at certain points that they are in the area.

But there are no advisory procedures that would allow jets or helicopters to land at the facility, and that's preventing the management plan from being complete, Tragarz said. The group can't do that because publishing helicopter procedures when helicopters can't land would give pilots contrary messages, he said.

"The government should never publish a document with two contrary messages in the same document," he said. "You're telling them that it's prohibited, but then you're giving them a procedure to do what's prohibited."