Victims of noise intrusion?

Rural Pennsylvanians may be bitter as portrayed by Barack Obama, but we in Southeast Volusia are clearly bitten. At least not snake bitten. Instead, try shark bitten. For the fifth time in the past several weeks, a human being has been bitten by a shark. And if man and beast can co-exist, perhaps we can learn to put our petty not-in-my-backyard squabbles aside such as with the NSB airport. They say you're more likely to get struck by lightning than by a shark. After all, some 10 million of us hit the beaches here in Volusia County. We're not the World's Most Famous Beach for nothing, even if that moniker applies to Daytona Beach. Close enough. Heck, if a 6-year-old boy can get bitten by a shark in 18 inches of water, get stitched up and then go before TV cameras to talk about it, then anything in life is possible. That brave little boy wasn't crying and neither did the four other surfers -- a 14-year-old New Smyrna Beach girl and three young men -- who all vowed to return to the murky waters with their boards once their stitches are out. What else can they do? After all, the sharks were there first. You can't catch them all and relocate them somewhere else, which brings me to the point of the squabbling over the New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport. It's a big to-do apparently to some who live near the airport. NSB Mayor Sally Mackay heard from nearby residents Saturday at the Brannon Center during the second leg of her "town hall meetings." The meeting was really important to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, which ran a story five days later in its Thursday Daily Journal section. In one paragraph, the reporter characterized one of the homeowners as "not the only victim of noise intrusion." Victim of noise intrusion? Hello, the airport was there first. Oh, for those of you noise intrusion victims who are hard of hearing, let me repeat myself: "The airport was there first!" One resident was quoted as suggesting, "Why should I pay for someone else's enjoyment or profit? ... Why not make better use of the airport land, such as an environmental learning center?" Ah, yeah. Right. That would generate sorely neded tax revenue. Of course, Mackay and City Manager John Hagood did discuss the possibility of developing a landing strip near the center of the county for use by flight schools, saying it was worth looking into. According to the Daily Journal story, the mayor was quoted as saying,"The question is, how do you fund it?" Why bring it up if you have no realistic chance of ever delivering in on it? Sounds an awful lot like pandering or politics as usual. Better yet, call it "political intrusion." Well, here's the harsh reality, Madam Mayor: You can't! It's financial intrusion! It would never fly! And what are you going to do with that massive control tower? Place it in the wooded swamps between Samsula and Deltona? Those flight schools are not going to risk pilot lives taking off and landing at some podunk airstrip miles away from fire and paramedic protection, tower communications and their home bases. The NSB police station is falling apart. NSB City Hall, depending which department or even building you go to, is cramped. These are where the finances are needed. Let the Noise Abatement people do their job. Planes are regulated for noise control. Some flight schools are willing to curb flying hours. No doubt, the noise is unsettling for those who live near the airport, but they had to know that when they moved in -- and many at below market values because of the proximity to a natural noise maker. Truth be told, it's a credit to the city that the World War II airport is seeing such tremendous growth -- as witnessed by 100 local jobs, $756,000 in annual operating revenues and $1.05 million in federal grants. Better yet, bulldoze the police station and build a new one in the center of the city where it belongs -- there are two vacant storefronts right on the intersection of Canal Street and Dixie Highway. Put in a multi-story building where the furniture store was and put the parking in the former Dunn Lumber building lot. Then the acreage where the dumpy police station now stands could be used to build a mini light-tech facility with the airport as transportation to and from Central and South America. Rural Palatka's doing it in Putnam County and raking in millions. In fact, it's one of that city's financial pillars while the municipal golf course is a bleeder. That's probably true with the golf course here, too. It's economic thinking like this that would greatly benefit tax-strapped NSB property owners, including those who live near the airport. We all put up with the 500,000 to 600,000 bikers who rumble through here every February, with their loud pipes because they bring in millions. Those who live near New Smyrna Speedway and to a much greater extent, near Daytona International Speedway, deal with the racing noise. At least the New Smyrna airport is profitable. Daytona International Airport could only be so lucky. And those few jetliners still taking passengers locally roar through every day. Whether it's an airport, a prison, a group home, a garbage plant or landfill, the NIMBY voices (not-in-my-backyard) are going to complain. No one is stopping the NIMBY's from moving away from what many of us still consider paradise.