Airport neighbours want out
Peterborough Airport neighbours scheduled to address city council about loudness of city’s growing airport
Bill Fields says the house on the Otonabee River that he renovated at great expense isn’t turning out to be the dream home he imagined it would be – in fact, it’s his main source of stress.
When he bought it in 1991, it was a cottage by the river on Greenwood Rd. in Otonabee-South Monaghan Township.
There was a small airport to the east that wasn’t very busy.
“If you saw three planes in one day, it was a big thing,” he said.
Today, all that has changed: Peter borough Airport has expanded so much over the last decade that it has been called Canada’s busiest small airport.
And the home that Fields renovated – along with six others on Greenwood Rd. – is in the flight path.
There are planes coming in for a landing or taking off overhead every five minutes, Fields said, from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.
On his property on Thursday afternoon, several small planes approached the airport one by one for a landing to the east.
Each one had to clear the tall willow trees on Fields’s property, on the descent. There are similar trees on his neighbours’ properties too.
“They (the planes) just clear the treetops,” Fields said. “It’s scary and it’s loud.”
Last year the city tried to purchase an easement that would allow the municipality to remove the trees, Fields said – but he and his six neighbours refused.
Later the neighbours asked the city to buy their properties outright, Fields said, at a price determined by them.
But Fields says the city wasn’t prepared to pay as much as he and his neighbours were hoping: the offer was too low, he says, so they all declined.
But now they all want to move, and they are going to speak up about it. On Tuesday, Fields and two of his neighbours plan to go to City Hall to ask council to buy them out.
At that meeting council will consider adopting a 20-year plan to invest $48 million in expansions and improvements at the airport, and Fields thinks the city should settle with him and his neighbours first.
He said he looks forward to speaking with council.
“I’ll say, ‘Will you please make a decision and buy me out?’” he said. “Let’s quit playing games.”
Meanwhile the city has bought a couple of private properties along Greenwood Rd. over the last few years: one large farm for $850,000 (in 2013), and the small house two doors down from Fields for $256,500 (in 2016).
City solicitor Patricia Lester confirmed in an email on Thursday that Fields and his neighbours haven’t yet come to a resolution on the matter even after the city offered to purchase a tree easement or buy the properties outright.
Lester also stated that city staff will be providing council with a report on the matter soon, and that in the meantime city staff “remains open” to coming to a “reasonable” agreement with the property owners.