moonwise | Yesterday's civics lesson

Last time we picked up the mail, there was a flyer waiting for us announcing a town meeting at the local town hall regarding helicopter use at the nearby Somerset Airport. The flyer made it sound like Somerset Airport was in line to become the next Newark Airport, and there was a good deal of scare tactic involving how the comings and goings of helicopters and gliders at the airport was going to devalue property and be annoying and OMG TEH HELYCOPTRES ARE GONNA EAT UR BAYBEEEZ.

The issue had caught our attention once before during the local elections, when a rich fat cat in Bedminster tried to win a council seat so that he could block a Medevac heli from being based in Somerset Airport, which I believe borders on his estate. Which is kind of ironic, because you can bet that Mr. Fat Cat would get the best lawyers in the state on his side if he happened to get in an accident and there weren't sufficient facilities to get him to RWJ Hospital trauma center in time.

They had a large crowd there, and it became quite apparent that the flyers had been distributed by the opposition purely to divert attention from the issue at hand, which was whether Somerset Airport had the existing facilities to base helicopters previous to a 1997 ordinance preventing small airports from expanding their facilities to accomodate them. (The chairman of the town board was PISSED.) The owner of the airport, who'd been involved with the place since God was born, gave testimony that he'd had as many as eight helis there in the past, but none within about the last ten years for whatever reason.

At this point, it got to be a real exercise in "bitch, please."

The lawyers for the other side wanted to prove that the owner was violating some precept or another by having helis at his airport, and gave him the fifth degree over some aviation form that amounts to a census of the aircraft at the airport. No, he doesn't keep records of what helicopter was there when other than who's paying for the parking space; no, there is no log of who took off and who landed on what day, or how many times. It's not required. The owner doesn't even get a copy of the census forms unless he asks for them, and it's all legal.

In short, what it amounted to was that people around the airport have gotten used to there not being helicopter comings and goings at all hours of the day and night. For the last ten years, they've been lucky. No helis based at the airport. Now, there's one helicopter used for transporting people who are in big big trouble to the hospital, and they're complaining that it's expanding the use of the airport when in fact the airport just hasn't had any helicopters for a while.

Me, I think that you have to have a lot of balls to complain about a Medevac. So, bitch please, you whinypants should be grateful you weren't living in your grand estates about the time the owner was running a helicopter flight school.