The vote Monday evening was unanimous.
“This is what we needed to do,” council Chair Helen Riehle said at the meeting. “In some ways we were backed into a corner and didn’t really have a choice but to say yes. I’m very concerned with the loss of affordable housing in our community.”
The special meeting to vote on the covenant was announced last week after the council passed a resolution calling for an end to the airport’s home acquisition programs. The buyouts have resulted in the demolition of more than 100 South Burlington homes since 2009.
For the three Lilley Lane homeowners to sell under the affordability covenant, the maximum purchase price allowed was about $290,500, and a stipulation of the sale required the homes remain in residential use.
The homeowners had already reached agreements to sell to the airport when Councilor Meaghan Emery, the author of the resolution, told the residents at last week’s meeting that their contracts were illegal.
The three Lilley Lane properties are included in a round of buyouts announced last fall and funded by a $14.5 million grant from the Federal Aviation Administration. The grant pays for the purchase of 40 homes surrounding the airport and is based on a noise impact study from 2015. The 40 homes all fall in a 73.3-decibel noise area.
However, some councilors believe the 2015 map to be outdated already because it doesn’t take into account the noise expected from military F-35 planes expected to be stationed at the airport beginning in 2019, or the decrease in military plane noise since the Vermont National Guard deployed overseas in December.
The recently passed resolution calls for a new noise impact study, a halt to the home acquisition programs, and a city role in future noise mitigation planning. Although the airport is in South Burlington, it is owned and operated by Burlington.
“I think the resolution is poorly written and inaccurate in many ways,” said Gene Richards, the aviation director at the airport. “We want to purchase as few homes as possible and find an alternate program.”
Continued noise mitigation programs are needed for nearly 900 homes, which lie within a 65-decibel noise level area, the threshold for the previous round of buyouts based on the 2006 noise impact maps.
“If it were up to the FAA, they’d have us buy all 900 homes,” Richards said.
According to Richards, the airport recently received a $450,000 grant from the FAA to come up with a new noise mitigation program as an alternative to the continued home buyouts. The airport is working with consulting firms over the next 12 to 18 months to come up with a replacement program, he said.
A process of data collection and public meetings will lead to a written policy, which could then be approved by the FAA. The new program could include new windows, doors and insulation for the 900 homes as opposed to buying and demolishing them.
However, officials say the new programs are contingent on the completion of the current home buyout program and that any efforts by the City Council to block the sale of any of the 40 homes could prove detrimental to future federally funded noise mitigation efforts.
“The FAA funded acquisition of these 40 homes in 2016 because they were the homes experiencing the most noise around the airport,” FAA spokesperson Jim Peters said in an email. “Federal regulations consider areas with these noise levels to be ‘incompatible with residential land use.’ It would be difficult for the FAA to consider noise mitigation for less noisy areas if we cannot agree on noise mitigation in the areas with highest levels.”
