Major Justin Elicker, Tom Cavaliere, Director of Community Engagement for Tweed Airport, and Avports CEO Marc Ricks listen as a Ward 18 resident voices input about the airport at annual community meeting: “Both sides have concerns about the long term impact of the airport,” Elicker said in his introductory remarks. Credit: Adele Haeg photos Police Chief David Zannelli spoke with attendees in the middle of the event; many public safety concerns, especially around traffic, were raised during Tuesday’s meeting. Kathleen Spencer stood up in a crowded Nathan Hale auditorium on Tuesday evening and described an errant aviation fuel truck that ran a red light on her street in East Haven.  She expressed that concern at an annual Tweed-focused meeting where residents again warned of increased traffic and environmental pollution associated with a busier airport. “The air fuel trucks should not be coming, we have enough traffic” around the Morris Cove airport, Spencer said. She said she got in her car and followed the truck, then saw it zoom through more stop signs.  “Kathleeen, thank you for following them,” Andrew King responded. King — Vice President of External Affairs for Avports, the airport management company that runs Tweed’s day-to-day operations — moderated Tuesday night’s Ward 18 annual meeting about Tweed. He assured Spencer that he and other airport officials would communicate with fuel truck drivers to avoid another incident like that she reported. She wasn’t necessarily satisfied with his answer, but she returned to her seat.  Twenty more residents would take the microphone after Spencer, some with traffic concerns, others worried about pollution, others about taxes. Very few of them were happy about Tweed’s long-planned expansion. Airport officials announced Tuesday that construction on a new terminal and extended runway is tentatively set to start in 2027. Tuesday’s meeting was the fifth annual gathering to take place between residents and city and airport officials regarding Tweed. The event has become a forum for neighbors to speak up to elected officials, including Mayor Justin Elicker, about safety and livability issues they feel have not been addressed alongside Tweed’s growth.  Along with the mayor and King, other attendees at Tuesday’s meeting included New Haven Police Chief David Zannelli, Avports CEO Marc Ricks, city Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli and Deputy Carlos Eyzaguirre, Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Board Chairman Robert Reed, and New HVN CEO Michael Jones, as well as State Sen. Martin Looney and 97th District state representative candidates Wildaliz Bermudez, Leland Moore, and Paul Garlinghouse. Around 120 residents of the area were in attendance, about half from New Haven and half from East Haven, with a few from Branford and other towns. “This is not a shy community,” remarked Haley Simpson, the director of New Haven’s Department of Transportation, Traffic, and Parking. The annual meetings have often been contentious — procedures like voting on time limits for question-askers (three minutes) have been implemented.  New Haven has had an airport in the area around Morris Cove and East Haven since 1931. Low-cost airline Avelo started operating out of Tweed New Haven Airport in November 2021 — now, between Avelo and Breeze, there are dozens of commercial routes flown in and out of New Haven that did not exist five years ago. Tuesday’s meeting was the first official public presentation of a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) among New Haven, East Haven, the airport authority, and Avports. Reed of the New Haven Airport Authority said before the meeting that he anticipated that having an MOU — which indicates New Haven and East Haven’s willingness to work with the airport as it moves forward with its expansion, pending a federal appeals court’s decision on a contested environmental review — would also help the meeting “become not as contentious, but more of a collaborative, open dialogue.” “The air used to be so thick,” in meeting rooms, Reed said. Now that “the standard has been set by the MOU,” he said, he anticipated the meeting to feel less tense. He said that Tweed is a “pearl” of southern Connecticut. Tom Cavaliere, Director of Community Engagement for Tweed, opened proceedings by announcing improvements already made, some in response to comments made in previous meetings: decompressed departures, off-site parking, new Uber service to the airport and plans to manage pickups and dropoffs, and a new monthly airport working group as well as additional law and traffic enforcement and school safety. Cavaliere said the airport continues to monitor noise in the area, oversee Avelo’s transition to new aircraft, and install residential sound insulation in houses near the airport.  When Cavaliere began to explain the MOU, he emphasized that it was not a mechanism to bypass other regulatory bodies, especially local authorities, and that it did not indicate that the airport and city were not open to “public engagement” with their plans any longer. “It is not a done deal,” Cavaliere said, adding that there is still a “lot of work to do” on airport plans. However, neighbors were not interested in discussing the MOU.  Laura McHugh and her wife Lisa Ventura-McHugh both stood up to raise concerns about traffic from the airport on their street. “The traffic is horrendous,” said Ventura-McHugh, who was the first to speak up. Her wife said they put up a “permit parking only” sign in front of their house, only to find that cars from the airport still parked there, sometimes for days.  Elicker responded to McHugh, emphasizing that parking and traffic enforcement in the area had been a priority for the city. Later, McHugh was approached by both Piscitelli and Zannelli to discuss concerns further. She and Ventura-McHugh have been to the annual Tweed meeting before, part of what HVN CEO Michael Jones called “a core group passionately committed to their causes” in the neighborhood.  Katherine Bennett, who lives on Thompson Avenue in East Haven, brought up environmental concerns that have often been discussed by residents. “This Tweed project is an enormous step backwards in our fight against climate change and the work to protect Long Island Sound,” Bennett said. “I thought they’d never expand it,” she said, after she had spoken to the crowd. Her husband Roger Hankin said it “was not a given” that the airport had to stay in New Haven at all, but she disagreed. “It’s always going to be there, it’s the expansion,” she said.  After the meeting, airport and city officials said that they were not surprised by the concerns. Jones, the CEO of HVN, said that he and others would discuss questions that King, the moderator, kept track of throughout the meeting.  “Having a forum to be able to directly speak with leadership is important,” he said.  Piscitelli approached several attendees during the meeting, and afterwards emphasized the importance of having an MOU, for example, so people can understand how decisions about their neighborhoods are made. He said, “we take it extremely seriously.” The post Neighbors Push Back On Tweed Expansion; City Stands By MOU appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less