Advisory committee urges Des Moines City to broaden START membership, prepare focused work plan amid NEPA concerns

Members of the START advisory committee on March 9 pressed Des Moines City staff to pursue a broader membership that would include elected officials or their representatives and to narrow the committee's work plan so it can present a focused set of priority asks to the City Council.

The request grew out of a round-table review of how larger airport-community groups operate. Committee members said groups that include elected officials and other agencies have more clout with legislatures and the port, while START's composition has left it with limited influence. "We'd like to expand the membership of START to include at least three county council members or representatives," a committee speaker said during the discussion.

Why it matters: the committee is coordinating with two other cities that filed an appeal of the port's environmental review process and is preparing both legal and technical responses. At a regional COG presentation, a port study presenter reportedly told the group the draft environmental assessment would show "no impact," prompting members to urge the city to be ready with targeted scientific expertise and a prioritized mitigation ask.

At the committee's recap of the COG commercial aviation meeting, Jeff (committee member) summarized the consultants' aviation-forecasting work and said the draft NEPA/SEA pulled some environmental-justice material out of the document. A port representative present at the COG meeting was quoted by committee members as saying the draft would find no impact. Committee members said that prospect is a major reason the three cities (including Des Moines City) pursued appeals and are coordinating with legal counsel.

Committee members recommended preparing a concise, one-page amended work plan that prioritizes a short list of achievable mitigation requests (for example, night-flight mitigation, targeted sound-insulation canvasses, or defined zoning asks) rather than a long list of disparate issues. Staff advised that a committee presentation at a council study session would allow more dialogue than a regular council meeting; May 7 was suggested as an available date for a committee-of-the-whole or study-session presentation.

The committee also discussed practical mitigation steps. Members said much sound-insulation funding remains unspent because too few housing units meet current FAA criteria; they urged the city to revisit eligibility, create a better inventory of affected properties in Des Moines City, and consider asking the port for targeted funding to support surveys or pilot remediation projects. One committee speaker recommended the group be prepared to hire subject-matter experts (an epidemiologist, toxicologist) to review the environmental record and comment on cumulative effects if the SEA remains limited in scope.

Traffic and land-use effects from projected airport growth were another concern. Members described preliminary calculations that suggested vehicle-trip assumptions per passenger might undercount trips to offsite parking and drop-off locations and urged planning staff and the new planning commission to examine zoning, parking taxation, and where additional parking should or should not be allowed along Pack Highway.

Public comment underscored the need for realism: JC, speaking for STNI, told the committee that experience with other roundtables has not always produced concrete policy changes and asked the committee to be specific about what it can realistically accomplish. "To my group's knowledge there have been absolutely zero successes," JC said, urging specificity before the group approaches council or airlines.

Next steps: committee members agreed to consolidate recommended changes to START's composition and a prioritized amended work plan; circulate a draft through Rebecca and staff; and aim to present the focused work plan at a council study session in May. The committee also committed to following up on a survey of affected properties and to coordinate with the cities pursuing the NEPA/SEA appeals.

The discussion mixed procedural requests (membership and agenda structure), technical concerns about the environmental review, and strategic choices about where to focus limited political capital. The committee did not adopt new formal policy at the meeting; rather, it set a path to refine priorities and prepare for the next council-level presentation.