"Affirmative," the tower chief reported. "We're holding all outbound traffic at the gates, then sending them the long route to the other runways.»«Pretty slow? ««Slowing us fifty percent. Right now we're holding ten flights for taxi clearance, another dozen waiting to start engines." It was a demonstration, Mel reflected, of how urgently the airport needed additional runways and taxiways. For three years he had been urging construction of a new runway to parallel three zero, as well as other operational improvements. But the Board of Airport Commissioners, under political pressure from downtown, refused to approve. The pressure was because city councilmen, for reasons of their own, wanted to avoid a new bond issue which would be needed for financing. "The other thing," the tower watch chief said, "is that with three zero out of use, we're having to route takeoffs over Meadowood. The complaints have started co i g in already." Mel groaned. The community of Meadowood, which adjoined the southwest hinits of the airfield, was a constant thom to himself and an impediment to flight operations. Though the airport had been established long before the community, Meadowood's residents complained incessantly and bitterly about noise from aircraft overhead. Press publicity followed. It attracted even more complaints, with increasingly bitter denunciations of the airport and its management. Eventually, after long negotiations involving politics, more publicity and –in Mel Bakerfeld's opinion-gross misrepresentation, the airport and the Federal Aviation Administration had conceded that jet takeoffs and landings directly over Meadowood would be made only when essential in special circumstances.
