She was the only absent city councilor on November 23, although one other participated by phone. The council president is retired Air Force colonel Rosanne Greco who was for years a Pentagon planner and who has identified errors in the Air Force environmental impact statement. She and others have sought the scoring sheets that led to the errors, but the Air Force and the Vermont Congressional delegation have so far stonewalled their fellow government officials on sharing information on which the F-35 basing decision could be based.
The city council's letter responds point-by-point to the text of the petition from the Burlington group (the Montpelier group did not provide the council with the text of its petition).
Citing passages in the Air Force report (the petition used only the summary), the South Burlington response rebuts the petition on issues of noise, protection of children, operations activity, and air pollution -- all of which the petition erroneously minimized.
Why Shouldn't South Burlington Be
Sacrificed?
On "Safety" the petition quotes the summary that "the risks of a mishap are not expected to increase substantially," a conclusion reached in the context of projecting the life of the F-35 compared to the life of the older F-22 (one of which crashed this month, after the petition was written).
This misses the point, as the city council points out -- that South Burlington would be exchanging the risks of a mature aircraft, the F-16, for the risks of an untested new craft going through its testing period, usually the most dangerous period of an aircraft's useful life.
Similarly, the petition seriously overstates the economic
gains likely to be had from the F-35 basing. The Air Force study estimates these benefits as "none" under
its first scenario and "minor" under its second scenario.
What the economic argument fails to make clear is that such gains as there might be and what benefits as there are tend to be spread across the region, while the risks and costs tend to be concentrated in South Burlington and other proximate communities.
Rejecting Class Warfare is Truly
Democratic
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