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PDK Open Records Lawsuit --
2nd Update
September 26, 2005 View this document
as pdf
(See 1st Update, dated September 7, 2005)
Court Decides the County Is Wrong.
On August 8, 2005, the DeKalb County
Superior Court declared the County, PDK Airport, CEO Vernon Jones and
PDK Airport Director Lee Remmel in violation the Georgia Open Records
Act for withholding records about operations at PDK Airport.
What Is Happening Now?
Although the County has produced some of the
sought-after computerized records on aircraft operations at PDK Airport,
it has done so very slowly. The County is now saying that it will deliver
the second batch of computerized records to the Feltus legal team on
Monday, October 3, 2005. The parties have agreed to stay (suspend) the
lawsuit until November 3, 2005 to allow the County time to comply with
the Judge’s order to disclose the PDK records. However, if the
County continues to drag its feet on production of records, the Feltus
legal team will be forced to go back to the Judge and ask him to intervene
and make the County produce the records (requested in January 2004)
promptly.
What’s Next?
Right now, the County is commencing formal decision-making
on what kind of airport PDK Airport will be over the next 20 years.
The process is called development of a “Master Plan” for
the Airport and will determine the nature of PDK
operations in the future. As a result, the win in the Feltus case and
the records we are receiving because of it are even more crucial than
previously understood because the County will no longer be able to deny
the activity of more and larger aircraft at PDK as it has done in the
past.
Significantly, it is not yet clear whether CEO Vernon Jones and DeKalb
County will start to adhere to the 1987 contractual weight limit on
aircraft at PDK, reversing a trend at the Airport of permitting larger
and more aircraft on a regular basis and changing the Airport’s
taxiways and other facilities to accommodate use by larger and larger
aircraft.
Why Is Continuing Financial Support Mandatory for Our Community?
The
Master Plan process is going forward, with or without
the County’s
compliance with the agreed-upon weight limit. The
only way to try to protect our neighborhoods
from unlawful, larger, fuel-filled aircraft is
to pressure the FAA and the County via all means
available. That pressure takes significant funding
and IT IS NOW OR NEVER for our community with
regard to PDK Airport. The Feltus team is also
working towards ensuring that DeKalb County taxes all personal property,
including aircraft using PDK, fairly. Accountants conservatively estimate
that $28 Million, over the past seven years, in County
taxes has not been collected from aircraft owners
at PDK.
Do your part NOW by sending a donation to Open DeKalb, Inc. at
P.O. Box 190895, Atlanta, Georgia 31119 (or, see
below to donate via credit card). You and/or your
neighbors may have helped support the successful
first round of this fight. ALL OF US must work
together to make our community goals a reality.
View as pdf
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