A select group of local community planners will meet with state Sen. Christine Kehoe today, Oct. 22, to discuss the future of the San Diego International Airport. At the meeting, Kehoe will address a letter the Peninsula Community Planning Board (PCPB) sent out to local lawmakers in August. PCPB Airport Committee chair Suhail Khalil and five other PCPB members are scheduled to attend the meeting. District 2 City Councilman Kevin Faulconer and representatives from the North Bay Community Planning Group, Ocean Beach Planning Board, Point Loma Association, Warren Walker School and Peninsula Chamber of Commerce are also expected to attend. The letter documents 13 themes from a PCPB Town Hall meeting held in July to discuss the future of the airport. The letter, which is two pages long, was also sent to Congresswoman Susan Davis, Mayor Jerry Sanders, Faulconer, airport CEO Thella Bowen and San Diego County Regional Airport Authority chair Bob Watkins. One of the issues that will be discussed with Kehoe is departure fanning at Lindbergh Field, an issue of jet noise over a wider area of the Peninsula that has heated up in the last couple of months. The airport has used a 250-degree takeoff heading to alleviate traffic during its Taxiway C construction, which started in August. “The development that we would like to see is mitigating that use,” Khalil said. “Unfortunately, what is happening is the control tower is using the 250-degree heading daily and they’re using it generally to keep the flow of traffic off the taxiway.” Sites for future airports were also part of the letter. According to the letter, Proposition A, a 2006 voter-defeated measure to put an airport at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, was a no-win situation because it became an issue of military versus community in a time of heightened security. Another site at East Elliot, located east of MCAS Miramar, will be discussed at the meeting. The letter said some Town Hall meeting participants believe a commercial airport there can co-exist with the Marine base because military flight patterns are similar to those of Naval Air Station North Island. It also urges the Airport Authority to restart communications with the base to negotiate the land. The Green Build program and other future airport expansions are also a point of the letter. One point it makes is that once The Green Build is completed in 2012, the San Diego International Airport will already have reached its capacity of 260,000 operations per year prior — well before the original estimates of maximum capacity at 2030. Khalil said the governing body of the airport will also be discussed at the meeting. He said, as it stands, the Airport Authority, which oversees the operations of the airport, also oversees the Airport Land Use Commission. Khalil will suggest to Kehoe at the meeting that these bodies be separated, citing a conflict of interest because they cannot be objective when voting on issues such as land-use compatibility. “What they’re doing is basically putting on another hat,” Khalil said. “There’s no way for the Airport Authority to be objective when they make land-use decisions on our community because they’re the cheerleader for the operations.” For more information about the scheduled meeting between planners and Kehoe, visit www.pcpb.net/airport.html.