Some people are wondering “What is SOC’s strategy?” While we have been addressing multiple issues, we do have a plan. The following 3 points guide our actions:
- Any airline that wants to come into Paine Field should pay its own way. There should be no taxpayer subsidies at the Federal, State or County level. This is true for most businesses; it should be true for the airlines as well. Terminals should not be built with taxpayer funds or subsidies. If an airline business cannot survive without subsidies, then it’s not a sustainable business. The airlines should pay all costs without subsidies.
- Any airline that wants to come into Paine Field should pay for mitigation. Airline noise and pollution impacts health, traffic and the environment. There will be direct and indirect costs to the community attributable directly to airline service. If an airline business cannot survive without costly impacts to the community, then the community should not be expected to shoulder that liability. The airlines should pay for impacts.
- Paine Field should be an Aerospace Center of National Significance(ACNS.) We should emphasize high wage jobs for Boeing and other aerospace manufacturers, not low wage baggage handlers and rental car attendants. In the next few years, Boeing’s Everett facility will manufacture the 747-8 freighter & passenger models, the 787, the 777 and hopefully the 767 tanker. We want and need those high wage jobs. If commercial service starts at Paine Field and grows, how will that be compatible with Boeing? Answer: it won’t. Airline service at full capacity and Boeing at full production are incompatible as both will fight for the same limited runway space. This will only encourage Boeing to go elsewhere, an idea that is no longer conceptual but a real and living threat to us. Other communities will fight to win Boeing’s business. We need to fight to keep them here.