BURBANK : Airport Supporters’ Group Criticized

The Burbank Airport’s public relations firm has formed what it calls a “grass-roots” group of supporters who favor building a new, larger airport terminal, a move that some city officials say sounds suspiciously unlike a typical citizens’ movement.

In a report detailing its months-long effort to improve the airport’s public image, the firm, Cerrell Associates Inc., says it helped create and even recruit members for a coalition called “Citizen Action for a Better Airport.”

While several homeowners groups in the southeast San Fernando Valley fiercely oppose airport expansion, few people--besides airport officials, employees of the facility and airline representatives--have spoken in favor of it during recent public forums.

The group of 75 people was formed in April to balance the public debate, said Cerrell’s president, Hal Dash. The report was distributed to the airport’s nine commissioners last week.

Members of the coalition include two Southwest Airlines managers and several others who regularly do business with the airport.

On Tuesday, Burbank City Councilmen Ted McConkey and Bob Kramer blasted airport officials and Cerrell for what they consider to be a deceptive labeling of the group.

“If they want to form a pro-airport group, by all means, let them do it,” said McConkey, who opposes airport expansion. “But don’t call it ‘grass-roots.’ ”

“Ironically,” he added, Cerrell “was paid to enhance the reputation of the airport, and the reverse has happened. The airport is further away from expansion than it ever was. They’ve managed to stir up a hornet’s nest.”

Airport Commissioner Margie Gee of Burbank echoed some of McConkey’s sentiments, saying the report “might be a public-relations mistake because the airport still doesn’t have its finger on reality.”

“I don’t know how they define grass roots,” Gee said. “I think of a grass-roots effort as being spontaneous. This was solicited; it’s hardly a grass-roots effort.”

The Los Angeles-based Cerrell Associates was hired for $60,000 in November by airport officials, who anticipated a favorable court ruling allowing the multimillion-dollar terminal project to proceed as planned.

The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, which oversees the airport, ultimately got the verdict it expected, but the authority ran into an unexpected obstacle as a result of recent Burbank elections. A new majority on the Burbank City Council is now opposed to the expansion, citing the potential for increased aircraft noise and automobile traffic.

Plans to nearly triple the size of the terminal and increase its capacity to handle more passengers and flights by 1998 are now at a standstill.

“I don’t know what anybody could have done in light of the elections in Burbank,” said the board’s interim president, Carl W. Raggio Jr. of Glendale. “Cerrell did what it could, given the constraints it was under.”

Dash said he sees no problem with the phrase “grass roots.”

“There’s no such thing as a grass-roots, spontaneous movement,” he said. “Everything is organized. Every group has its framework or structure.’