Boulder City Council formally approves lawsuit against FAA – Longmont Times-Call
The Boulder City Council has approved the city’s decision to pursue a federal lawsuit filed against the Federal Aviation Administration on July 26.
The city attorney filed the lawsuit over issues related to the potential closure of the Boulder Municipal Airport, which comes amid intense community debate over the airport’s future. Two ballots this fall, supported by housing activists, will ask voters to decide whether to close the airport and turn the area into a residential development. Meanwhile, a stalwart airport faction says the airport is a vital economic and educational asset to the community and that closing it would be prohibitively expensive and impractical.
The lawsuit challenges the FAA’s claim that Boulder must keep its airport open in perpetuity unless the FAA decides otherwise because the city used FAA grants to purchase part of the airport property. The city’s lawyers argue that the FAA’s position represents an “unconstitutional interference” that “deprives the city of the ability to provide for the public health, safety and welfare of its citizens.”
Boulder has also accepted FAA grants for airport maintenance, and each time the city accepts such a grant agreement, it is contractually obligated to keep the airport open for a maximum of 20 additional years. The city last accepted an FAA grant in 2020, so closing the airport would theoretically be possible after 2040, when the current contract expires, unless the city is obligated to keep the airport open indefinitely.
City charter allows the city attorney to file or join certain types of lawsuits on his or her own initiative. With the approval of the city council or city manager, he or she may participate in litigation “involving the need to declare the rights of the city when necessary or desirable to enforce or resolve any political, financial, property, personnel or administrative interest of the city previously recognized by the city council.”
The City Attorney may also independently file or join civil actions for any lawful purpose if she believes that “exigent circumstances exist which warrant immediate proceedings without the consent of the City Council or City Manager,” in which case she should seek the consent of the City Council or City Manager as soon as practicable after the event.
Council members voted unanimously (9-0) in favor of the lawsuit on Thursday evening. At the council meeting on Thursday, City Attorney Teresa Taylor Tate emphasized that the lawsuit is intended to clarify the city’s obligations to the FAA and not to determine whether the airport will be closed.
“We want a court decision on how long the grant commitments will encumber the property of these airports. I want to make it very clear that that is the only issue,” she said. “Whether the airport will close or not has not been decided yet, and this litigation will not decide that.”
Tate said the outcome of the litigation will tell the city whether the airport site is encumbered and help it decide whether to accept new FAA grants in the future.
It’s not clear how long the lawsuit will take. Tate said federal courts are currently scheduling trials that take place about two years in advance. She added that she believes the arguments in this case are mostly legal, not factual, so the case could move faster, but “you just can’t predict that.”
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