Businessman Named to Airport Authority Seat

The Burbank City Council on Tuesday night chose Brian Bowman, a businessman who ran unsuccessfully for the council last year, to occupy the seat on the Burbank Airport Authority that was vacated when the council ousted Commissioner Margie Gee.

Bowman, 49, president of Ryan Herco Products Corp., an industrial plastics firm, was chosen over 13 other applicants.

He will take his seat at the next scheduled meeting of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority on Sept. 15, city officials said.

Bowman said he was reluctant to apply for the post because he had campaigned against three of the members of the council and he submitted his application only Tuesday.

But he said he was “quite pleased” by his appointment “because I think this shows that there is moderation and good judgment. They have appointed someone on the basis of who is best qualified.”

Bowman, who has not been involved in airport affairs in the past, pointed out that he is a private pilot and his firm’s offices are just two blocks east of the airport. He said he will bring balance to the authority because, although he is an aviator and conscious of the economic benefits the airport generates, he is also among those most affected by aircraft noise.

Councilmen Robert R. Bowne and Michael R. Hastings and Mayor Mary Kelsey voted for Bowman. Councilwoman Mary Lou Howard, also an airport commissioner, voted for Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Jonas. Councilman Al F. Dossin voted for Francis Archdekin, an energy consultant.

Among the other candidates were Mason (Hap) Arnold, a former structural manufacturing official; John Shelton, a senior computer engineer; Brian Heyman, an airport fireman; Bruno Kotowski, an unemployed engineer; William Newbro, a vice president of the Automobile Club of Southern California; businessman Donald Pyne, and James Roundtree, a retired Pacific Bell employee.

Other candidates were longtime political gadfly Jules Kimmett and housewives Bonnie Lee Hoeschen, Carole Kubasak and Maria Mueller.

Each of the three cities that formed the airport authority is entitled to three seats on the governing panel.

Gee, an anti-noise crusader who frequently clashed with other commissioners, was removed July 29 after the council decided that she had damaged the city’s credibility.

State and authority attorneys also held that Gee had a potential conflict of interest because she is a plaintiff in a noise lawsuit against the authority, putting her in the position of suing an agency of which she was an officer.