As noise complaints from surrounding communities near Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport continue to soar, the Community Noise Roundtable was approved for additional funding Tuesday evening.
The Broomfield City Council unanimously agreed to provide the CNR with $7,810 in additional funding. The memo cites the need for funding to hire a meeting facilitator and “an aviation consultant to assist with the development of recommended flight routes that best limit the impacts to surrounding communities.”
The idea for the Community Noise Roundtable for RMMA was facilitated by Jefferson County in 2020 and participants include Boulder County, Arvada, Westminster, Louisville, Superior, Lafayette and Broomfield.
With the additional funding, Broomfield is set to pay a total of $11,410 in funding to the CNR.
Councilmember Deven Shaff, who represents Broomfield in the CNR, said that in the last year complaints have escalated along with increased operations at the airport.
During council discussion, some council members were hesitant to increase funding due to concern that not much can be done to limit or cap the noise and operations at the airport.
Mayor Guyleen Castriotta said complaints that she has seen recently show that flight noise and operations have increased exponentially from when residents first moved to a location near the airport.
“What I hear from impacted residents is when they first moved near the airport there was not this level of noise,” Castriotta said. “The frequency, the volume, all that has increased exponentially. What we need to know is there a cap? How much is too much.”
City and County Manager Jennifer Hoffman explained that the Federal Aviation Administration indicated to other municipalities that it’s unlikely that a CNR would impact noise levels at airports such as RMMA. She explained that a majority of operations at RMMA are not commercial, but that most of the operations come from things such as the flight school, which isn’t as tightly regulated by the FAA. This means they don’t have as much control over regulating noise as commercial-focused airports tend to.
Hoffman said the airport is a “victim of its own success,” by having knowledgeable, welcoming and accommodating staff and operations. Hoffman said where the airport is located creates a sort of butterfly effect, whereas if some flight patterns are changed to better one community it could easily impact another in a negative way.
To counter concern from other council members, Shaff said the CNR has two options for trying to regulate the noise issues, one being recommendations to the FAA, which hiring an aviation consultant would allow them to do, or voluntary measures, which can be agreed to by the airport and operations there.
Mayor Pro-Tem Stan Jezierski said he believes the CNR has had a positive impact on the community by listening to complaints and concerns from surrounding communities and working to take action on those where they can.
Operations at RMMA currently include U.S. Forest Service Fire Fighting Operations, small commercial aircraft, fixed wing and helicopter flight schools and other public and private flights. A number of Broomfield-based businesses use the aircraft based at the airport, according to the resolution summary.