10/15/2026
====================================================================
REGIONAL POLICY ALERT / NOTICE OF LIABILITY
====================================================================
ISSUED BY: The Southern California Aviation United Working Group (SCAUWG.ORG)
DATE: October 15, 2026
DISTRIBUTION: Executive Office of the City Manager, Honorable Mayor, and Members of the Santa Monica City Council
====================================================================
Dear City Manager Oliver Chi, Honorable Mayor Caroline Torosis, and Members of the City Council:
The Southern California Aviation United Working Group (SCAUWG.ORG) is issuing this formal policy alert and notice of administrative liability regarding the planned decommissioning of Santa Monica Airport (KSMO). As you move forward with the October 17th master plan presentation, this legislative body is being placed on the public record regarding the massive legal, financial, and risk-management liabilities confronting your offices.
- The Upgraded FAA Stance: The Federal Enforcement Precedent
Your administrative strategy relies on the outdated premise that local closure timelines are immune to changing federal enforcement priorities. The federal landscape has fundamentally shifted. Per Federal Register Doc. 2026-20859, the FAA Associate Administrator for Airports has officially established that federal policy mandates the retention of aviation assets to advance public safety, law enforcement, and emerging advanced air mobility technologies. On October 9, 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officially rescinded its prior approval for the permanent closure of the Indianapolis Downtown Heliport, effectively halting a high-profile municipal commercial redevelopment project. Federal supremacy is actively freezing local airport decommissioning plays across the United States.
- The Revenue Diversion Blurry Accounting: A Documented Bad-Faith Record
Your legal exposure is already severely compounded by active federal non-compliance findings. As ruled in the December 22, 2025 FAA Director’s Determination under Grant Assurance 25, issued by Director Michael Helvey, the city stands in active federal non-compliance. The city was officially caught manipulating its aeronautical fee schedules to illegally stockpile an estimated $19 million airport revenue surplus with the explicit intent to siphon those funds into general municipal services following a potential runway closure. This active compliance order remains an un-expired public record of administrative bad faith, which national aviation interests are currently leveraging to petition the federal government to invalidate the 2017 Consent Decree entirely.
- Premature Economic Strangulation and Arbitrary Flight School CapsWhile the 2017 Consent Decree outlines a potential closure timeline at the conclusion of 2028, the City of Santa Monica remains legally bound by federal administrative law every single day the runway remains active. Under FAA Order 5190.6B, the city is strictly prohibited from executing a pre-closure strategy of economic containment or unjust discrimination against public airspace users.
The public record reveals an alleged highly calculated, artificial strangulation of airport commerce designed to manufacture a false narrative of economic decline. Mirroring the exact regulatory overreach currently being litigated in state court at Torrance Airport (KTOA), Santa Monica implemented a restrictive administrative cap limiting active flight schools to a maximum of six. The operational mechanics of this cap are a matter of public record: had the city not spent $450,000 in public taxpayer funds to allegedly evict Joe Justice and force Justice Aviation to cease operations after 25 years of pristine service, modern newcomers like Sling Pilot Academy would have been legally blocked from establishing their new campus. The city is weaponizing a rolling moratorium to prevent the aviation industry from naturally scaling, directly violating FAA Grant Assurance 22 (Economic Nondiscrimination) and Grant Assurance 23 (Exclusive Rights) prior to the legal 2028 boundary.
- The Westside Isolation Trap: Financial Liability for Broken Mutual Aid
Your push to replace a concrete runway with park sketches completely ignores the immediate physical survival and fiscal metrics of the Westside. Following the intense October 2026 heatwave, the current climate shift has triggered immediate coastal flooding and high surf, underscoring the fragility of our regional corridors. The California Geological Survey's active regulatory maps verify that the Santa Monica Fault Zone cuts directly across your urban corridors, leaving the Westside vulnerable to complete physical isolation when an earthquake shatters overpasses and buckles surface streets.
When the ground fails, survival comes from the air. KSMO represents the Westside’s only flat, non-structural mesa infrastructure capable of landing heavy C-130 relief aircraft and staging regional aerial firefighting assets. By willfully moving to demolish this runway, Santa Monica's leadership is deliberately breaking from the core principles of regional reciprocity underlying the California Master Mutual Aid Agreement. You are permanently destroying an irreplaceable asset, rendering your population entirely dependent on external Los Angeles City and County resources.
Be advised: neighboring jurisdictions and LA taxpayers are under no obligation to permanently subsidize the self-inflicted infrastructure liquidations of a wealthy coastal enclave. While initial mutual aid responses provide short-term relief, any extended extra-jurisdictional deployment of specialized aerial assets and emergency routing into an isolated Santa Monica might possibly result in staggering, non-reimbursable financial invoices billable directly to Santa Monica’s treasury. Paving over this runway does not eliminate disaster risk; it guarantees a possible multi-million-dollar emergency debt burden that Santa Monica taxpayers will carry for generations.
- The Concrete Real Estate Precedent and Internal Litigation
The narrative that this property will remain a permanent, open-space park is an economic and historical illusion. The historical precedent of Hughes Airport remains an undeniable warning: despite early promises of open space, the runway was paved over to become the high-density commercial and residential sprawl of Playa Vista due to municipal deficits and state housing mandates.
Furthermore, your internal closure coalition is actively collapsing into litigation. To meet basic consent decree parameters, the city was forced to bring commercial flights to the field via JSX turboprops. Today, your own anti-airport neighbors (Measure LC Defense) are actively suing the city in Los Angeles Superior Court over environmental review bypasses, maybe paralyzing your presentation timelines. True environmental justice requires managing your own regional footprint, not practicing environmental colonialism by outsourcing your corporate flight volumes and emergency dependencies to the neighborhoods surrounding Long Beach and Compton.
With independent FM3 Research polling proving that 67% of local voters favor keeping this field open, SCAUWG.ORG strongly advises this council to pause all decommissioning frameworks, realign with your federal statutory obligations, and protect KSMO as an unassailable public safety lifeline.
Respectfully submitted,
Ron Berinstein, Director. The Southern California Aviation United Working Group (SCAUWG.ORG)
"We Make Safety and Airport Advocacy Happen"
Visited by Thousands Weekly