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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the famed Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey, how you doing everybody? Welcome to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties at the beautiful Sonoma County Airport restaurant Cellini grill and cafe Neil. And we're talking to Spyros and he is the one of the co owners and

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the executive chef. Is that right? One of the things, I think this is new here at the airport, it's lovely if you haven't been out here, by all means come out. But I think one of the things we should ask. What about the food? What about

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the food? That's a good question. The food is gonna be a combination of american southwestern with uh inspiration of mediterranean cuisine. My, my homeland, I'm from uh, from the island of Cephalonia in the Ionian sea originally in Greece. Right, so um, we're gonna do, hoping to

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put a smoker out here, do some excellent ribs, steaks, seafood pasta. Also try to introduce a slightly new concept to the word um, coincide with caffeine. Yo, caffeine is the greek word for cafe um Typically in Greece after a nice evening of dinner or people will

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gather to a caffeine, you know, for some exotic pastries and coffees and just the people watch is a social gathering and that's what a caffeine you is and we're hoping to introduce that here to this area here and Mhm. One of the things, one of the

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things I want to be sure to get, you know, are you gonna do any changing anymore, remodeling or anything? We're gonna do a lot of remodeling. We're hoping to uh change this patio out here and give it a different type theme, although still keep the lawn.

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Um because I think the lawn is beautiful here, we have this nice big solarium that really has a nice view for our guests from the inside and also for our employees and uh us too, it's a beautiful setting to be working. Quite excited. One other thing,

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excuse me for cutting off your word there. Uh one other thing, what are your hours gonna be? We're gonna be a seven day a week restaurant open for lunch and dinner, definitely sunday brunch buffet, we're right now toying with the idea of doing a breakfast. I

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think a breakfast is, I guess you can say a definite maybe for breakfast right, definite maybe right now. And his wife Connie and internet marco toes and her husband john are the co partners in this johnny. That's correct, That's correct. We're cousins from the island of

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Cephalonia. Yeah. Well I think it's gonna be a great thing and I commend you people for being on behalf of, as I said before, welcome. Thank you very much. So far everybody that we've met up here has been very nice and has welcomed, welcomed us with

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open arms and we hope really to get in tune with the, with the community here. It seems a very lovely place And I'm really, you will because I can tell by the feeling that these people is going to be great. Ladies and gentlemen, we've been talking

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to Spirit is one of the co owners and the executive chef of the new Cellini, which is the grill and Cathy O'Neil here at the airport. If you haven't been here, by all means come out, we'll be back in just a moment. I'm going to talk

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to David Andrew the manager of the Sonoma County Airport. First this message, California's most precious resource. No, it's not 1000 miles of coastline or our lakes or our rivers. It's not even our majestic stands of ancient redwoods. It's our Children that are our most precious natural

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resource. We can enrich the lives and the future of our Children by introducing him to the history and the beauty and the fun of California's state parks. How you doing? Everybody? Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties on location at the beautiful

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Sonoma County airport restaurant, Cellini grill and cafe Neil. Really a lovely place. And if you haven't been out here, I certainly advise you to come out soon. We're gonna be talking now to David Andrew and David is the general manager of the Sonoma County Airport. He's

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been our guest on several occasions. But every time we come out and talk to him, we find new things have happened and we find he's doing a lot more unique. And I want to say on behalf of the county to begin with, you've been a heck

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of a good airport manager. I mean, I think your record is auspicious. Yeah. Money making operation flights in and out. Everything that you can help do with an airport you have done. And I think you deserve congratulations. That's enough compliment. Okay, let's talk first about commercial

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airline service. Uh, and perhaps the best way to start with one of the number of flights per day. And that currently, United Express is operating eight flights a day to san Francisco. 118 flights. Oh, I beg your pardon? Hearing aid was down eight flights of 19

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morning. Right onto, that's correct. Started about six in the morning until about 10 at night. The destination is, everything goes to SAn Francisco. So they're just kind of run in the short run from there to here and back and forth. Shuttling people for United Airlines primarily

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now, what about the flying time, that's about a 30 minute flight from here at the city. So once you're on the airplane, you'll be on the ground in San Francisco in about 30 minutes. I, I noticed there here were here earlier and anyone here any minute?

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How big are they? There are 19 passenger airplane, 19. And then what does that require in the way of pilots? They have two pilots, two pilots and a 19 passengers. And it's how long from here? It's about 30 beautiful flight. If you catch the early morning

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flight and catch the sunrise over the bay or catch the evening flight and sunset over the pacific. It's just a spellbinding flight over the bridge. It's beautiful. I know that night, that evening flight back up all the lights and it's really a fascinating sight. I've never

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seen it. How about the air fares for this? David? Well, United Express primarily operates as a carrier for United Airlines. So most of the passengers are people who are connecting on United Airlines flights. Now, if you're not connecting on a United Airlines flights, if you just

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wanted to fly to SAn Francisco, you'd be looking at airfare of about 100 and $2.01 way. Very expensive. But if you're going to be on SAn Francisco on United, then the fair is Much less the add on what they call the add on fare usually is

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around $30 or $40, basically, that's correct basically, the farther you're going from San Francisco, the less the fare would be the number of passengers. This is what we talked about a moment ago about the number of passengers on an annual basis. Run about 65,000 passengers on

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an annual basis. 65,000 people. That's correct. Now that is that is that a big increase over recent years? No it's not a big increase over recent years. In fact it's a pretty stable number. That's been a pretty stable number for several years now, David, before we

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go further, how long have you been the general manager since March of 1981? So 12. 13 years. 13 years. Yeah. 13 years. Lucky. 13. You hope hopefully. How about baggage on these flights? Can you take baggage? How much? Yeah no problem. And we can check your

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baggage straight through from here. Now one of the things that that people always concerned about when they're flying of course is what's called lost luggage but usually it's not really lost. A very very very small percentage ever absolutely disappears primarily gets misrouted. And one of the

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things that we recently had installed that should eliminate a lot of that is a automatic printer that prints the bag tags when they put your ticket in the computer. And one of the problems that would happen in the past is say you were going to columbus

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Ohio when the ticket agent would go to put your bag tag on. He would perhaps take a baggage tag that was columbus but columbus Georgia say. And it could be, you know there's a couple of different dates and so forth. And so that's how bags would

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get routed wrong on a lot of occasions they just inadvertently get the wrong state. Now with this automatic printer, your bags are going to go to where your ticket is too. So that should eliminate that portion of the problem. The biggest problem with misrouted luggage is

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connections. If you don't have about 45 minutes wherever you have a connecting flight, there's a good chance that your luggage is not going to make it. If you have to run between airplanes when you're changing airplanes. Trust me, nobody's down there in the baggage area running

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with your bags to the other airplane. And that's generally what happens is sometimes people schedule themselves with not enough connections and sometimes it's inadvertent, there's a delay on a flight and there simply isn't time to switch the luggage but very rarely is it ever absolutely lost.

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It almost always shows up might be a year later. Generally on the next airplane. Alright. There's another thing here that's very, very important to you and to the job you performed and the excellence of it. I might add one more compliment the enterprise Airport Enterprise fund.

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Tell us about that. The airport is an enterprise fund that is we do operate the airport as a business and so the airport has no general tax fund money has had no tax fund money for more than a decade. It operates strictly on airport user fees.

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So what we collect from folks like our percentage from the restaurant here, landing fees, fuel flow fees, aircraft tie down fees, hangar rental fees. We have a fee for just have had everything. Those are the fees that we use to operate the airport to improve the

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airport. All right now, I've got three things I want to ask you about here first and I know there's usually some money available on these things. Federal grant programs. How do they apply to you with the federal grant program that we have has really been wonderful

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for us. The Federal Aviation Administration has a program that they administer called the airport improvement Program and what it is, it's funds collected from a tax on airline tickets and that is distributed back through the system to airports like ours for projects that the FAA feel

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has merit. Over the last dozen years, we've been getting about a million dollars a year in federal funds back. That's well beyond what folks using our airport pay. And so the FAA has been very generous with us last year, we in fact got about $2.5 million

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in funds. And what the FAA will will do with these grants is give us 90% of the cost of a project. So we've been able to go out and pretty much redo all the operating surfaces on this airport to really better than new condition because we

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put a porous friction code on one runway and anti skid if you will. And we put an anti skid surface on the secondary runway. We're currently going through an upgrading of airport lights and signs on the airfield side. The biggest amount of money we spent in

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the last couple of years has been for land acquisition where we've been buying property on the perimeter of the airport that's impacted by the airport. Last year, we picked up a residential property that was located less than 1000 ft from the end of the runway and

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relocated those folks. And we also picked up about a 13 acre parcel that was impacted by our remote transmitter site for traffic control tower that we needed to protect right now. Two other things a couple of minutes before I break here to other things that are

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important state grant programs and state loan programs. How do they affect us? The state, the state grant program is very similar to the federal grant program, in that we get grants from the state based on a fuel flow tax that they have on gasoline and the

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state aviation gasoline in the state. And the the program that's really been helpful to us is the state loan program where the state has fees, aviation user fees that they've collected that they loan us for projects that generate revenue and we've been able to build I

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guess three different hanger projects now using these state funds, low interest loans And those funds. Once those those loans are paid back, then those hangers generate significant amounts of revenue for the airport, one of our biggest revenue sources. It's been a super deal for us. And

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those loans allowed you to do what were the hangers? We'll build a hanger project in one case we built roughly 34 units of hangar. When that loan is paid back, those hangers will generate $75,000 a year at today's rates and fees to the enterprise fund with

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virtually no overhead. The hangers are very, very inexpensive to maintain and administer. All right. Um Incidentally, maybe a mention of the beautiful sleek whirly bird that's over here. Behind this makes a magnificent prop for our program and we want to thank peregrine helicopters for this handsome

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problem. We thank you very very much for wheeling and flying that in and parking it there. So we would have it in our background. Thank you again to Peregrine Peregrine helicopters. Now we're going to pause right here for a moment. Let the station bring the public

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a public service announcement afterwards. Dave Andrews and I will come back and we'll talk more about the Sonoma County airport. Its present and its future. First this message. Excuse me, do you wear your safety belt? Why? No, I don't wear

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my safety belt. Thank you you could learn a lot from a dummy buckle your safety belt. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma County in the nineties. On location to beautiful Sonoma County Airport restaurant. The brand new Cellini grill and cafe Neil is here now magnificent

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new place. If you haven't been out here, but be sure to come out and see it. We're talking with Dave Andrews, David Andrews, who is the general manager of Sonoma County Airport has been with us a few times before, but not in the last couple of

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years and a lot has happened since then. And we've got two or three things to get over here before our time goes up. So how about public safety services? Maybe the first one of those would be the Sheriff's helicopter service. The Sheriff's helicopter is based here.

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We feel really lucky to have them here. They make an excellent resource. If we have any kind of problem on the airport, they're immediately available to us. The sheriff keeps the helicopter here. It's immediately available eight hours a day, Seven days a week. They have a

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pilot, a paramedic and a deputy aboard immediately available. And then they're available on about 30 minutes notice the balance of the 24 hour day. The sheriff does three things they do in law enforcement missions. They do search and rescue missions and they do medical transport missions.

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They did about 764 missions so far this calendar year. This fiscal year. So about the last 11 months, they've done a 764 flights, either law enforcement search and rescue or medical missions. 11 quick question on that. Do they go anywhere in the county, anywhere in the

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county? They're immediately available to any law enforcement agency in the county? Any law enforcement officer picks up his microphone, asked for the helicopter. The helicopter, tremendous resource. All right now, there's another organization called Reach. I see red Down here. It's Redwood Empire air care helicopter. Okay,

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the Redwood Empire helicopter is an advanced life support helicopter, ambulance that's based at the airport now reaches here 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They have a pilot, a paramedic and a flight nurse aboard again. A great resource. If we ever have a problem

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here, we've immediately got both of these air ambulances available to us. Reach responded about 624 times. Made 624 patient transports in the last calendar year, 93. Now, they only do medical transport. They do not do search and rescue, nor they do law enforcement missions as the

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sheriff does, their primary mission is transporting people hospital and hospital. So if someone is injured and they need specialized care in a different hospital, they can shuttle people between hospitals very, very routine for them to go from here, say Children's hospital in Oakland or down to

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one of the burn centers or something in the san Francisco Bay area. When somebody needs specialized treatment, they also do seem calls so if someone is involved in an automobile accident or something in a remote area and time is of the essence, they also respond to

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that tremendous, tremendous resource available here. These are really the sheriff and and reach. I'm hopeful. Ladies and gentlemen, you're picking this up because these people are, these people and their projects are vital to you and I in this county. Now one other thing, the California, Department

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of Forestry Air attack base is here too, isn't it? That's correct. We have an air tanker base here. The loud airplane that went by early in the program was tanker 100 which will be our base air tanker here this summer. We generally have two air tankers

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here, one small twin engine airplane And then a large last couple of years, four engine C130, a large airplane, about 120 ft wingspan. They supplement that with a twin engine airplane that basically operates as an air traffic control tower for the tanker pilots on the fire.

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So we'll see a fire. We'll have the spotter airplane head out and then the two tankers will head out and they'll be on station till the end of the fire season probably be october november when it starts raining again and pretty much flying every day Residential

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growth is occurring in the, in the airport area. What about your real estate brochure? How does this affect us? We have a little real estate brochure that we, that I brought along and we had that made up a number of years ago. It might be as

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many as 10 years ago now because the realtors wanted something that they could give to people who would be purchasing homes in the area. And so that all the different realtors were giving people the same information and we tried to write it in real plain english

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so that the, that the average person could read it so it's not in an airplane language if you will be available if you give us a call we'd be glad to mail you one. I really recommend it for anybody who is purchasing property in the area.

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And certainly if you just have some interest in where you might be and how you might be, how you might be located relative to the airport. We'll be sending you one brochure about the flight. We talk about the flight paths and attitudes and all those type

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of things so it makes a really good resource. What we find with most realtors anymore is they, they will not tell people how the airport might affect them. They'll have the people make an appointment and come and talk to us and then we can sit down

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with the brochure. We can put up to mark right on their where their house is going to be and talk to them about how they will be impacted. And my recommendation is that people spend time on the property during that today that they're going to be

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on the property and see how they're affected really. When we when we look around the airport there's hundreds, probably thousands of houses within the airport traffic area. Conversely we've averaged probably less than 100 complaints a year over the last several years. So if you're talking about

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100 and 60,000 aircraft on the average taking off and landing and when you're talking about emergency vehicles like the sheriff like region like C. D. F. That have to respond that not necessarily you really can't deal with noise abatement because human lives are in the balance.

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People's homes are in the balance, then that's really not very many complaints. So we don't have any kind of a big problem but some people are are real sensitive to that and they need to be aware of how they might be affected before they purchase a

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home. Well, another thing that comes to mind and and I'm sure you have this in the brochure to or at least you will discuss this with people noise impact. That's probably very important isn't it, to people. Yes but in handling the noise complaints here and one

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of the things that we try and do is that either my assistant or my answers every complaint, we return people's calls and talk to them trying to investigate what was the problem. And so people understand what's happening and that works really well for us. I'd have

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to characterize though a lot of the complaints as overflight complaints more than noise complaints because with with a few exceptions like the air tank, most of the airplanes relatively quiet that the amount of noise that the majority of the airplane makes compared to 10 years ago

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is phenomenally less. So a lot of times today when you talk to people about how noisy was the noise relative to other noises in their in their home and their life, they'll admit that the aircraft noise isn't that big a factor. It's overflight. That's really a

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problem. Now that doesn't mean if CDF CDF has a fire when they leave they turn to the fire they don't try and do anything noise abatement because what they found on a couple of occasions on big fires in California last year is that a couple of

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minutes made the difference between stopping the fire of people losing homes. So when there's a fire they take off as soon as they break ground they turn to the heading and they go straight to the fire and so that can be pretty loud. But most people

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are absolutely understanding when you explain that it's C. D. F. And they're on the way to a fire. Well what about the future of the airport now? The number of operations in the future? Well we've been running about 160,000 takeoffs and landings on the average over

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the last five or six years moves up and down, maybe 10,000. But basically at about 160,000, there's no projections around. That would lead me to believe that that's going to change significantly. I think we're gonna be looking at about the same number of takeoffs and landings

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over the next couple of years. There's nothing out there to believe that we're going to make any significant changes, either the number of operations or the type of airplanes using the airport. Speaking of chopper, there goes the Sheriff out for save a life perhaps. What type

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of aircraft are we going to be looking for here in the future? I don't think we're gonna see any significant change from what we have here Now. I think the commuter service we have is pretty much what we're going to see. Even if we were to

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double the number of operations with that type of aircraft, we'd only be talking 16 a day. And those aircraft are very, very quiet, very, very rare to get a complaint on United as the noisier older airplanes, particularly the corporate jet type aircraft. The noisy ones aren't

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welcome anywhere. And as a consequence, corporations are pretty much facing those out and going to much quieter airplanes and the new technology jet airplanes are incredibly quiet. Unbelievably quiet. So I I think things are probably really only going to change for the better. All right. One

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other thing I want to catch with you in about a minute and a half commercial air service destinations. Will they be enhanced to change? The only thing that I, that I see in the future that is perhaps more san Francisco service, maybe a similar service to

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Oakland. What we really like to see is a direct flight to the southern California area. I think probably the Burbank or Ontario would be be a good destination. But I don't see that in the, in the next couple of years, there'll probably be something beyond that

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time frame. Yeah. Thank you again. Always a pleasure to visit out here. Uh, this man in my opinion, ladies and gentlemen has done a marvelous job as our airport director for the past 13 years. Uh, the airport has grown, it's grown intelligently. It's grown with the

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blessing of the people around it. All the things we discussed here have been accomplished and they've been accomplished with courtesy and with discrete action. And I think that this airport is something to be very proud of. My name is Rich McGlinchey. The program Sonoma County in

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the nineties. I'll be back with you next week with another member of the government family or a important executives such as David Andrews our airport manager. In the meantime we're saying so long for Sonoma County in the nineties on location at the beautiful airport restaurant Cellini

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grill and cafe Neil. And if you haven't been out there, by all means, come out until next week, Good luck, good health and good bye for now. Yeah. Mhm.