Ontario Councilman to Talk Airport Takeover Effort

The push by the city of Ontario to regain control of its airport will be the topic at tonight's Rowland Heights Community Coordinating Council.

Guest speaker Alan Wapner, an Ontario city councilman and a former member of the Ontario-Montclair School Board, will discuss the status of the Free Ontario movement. 

Ontario wants to regain ownership of the international airport from the Los Angeles World Airport, which also runs LAX.

Earlier this year, Ontario officials offered Los Angeles a $250 million package, including an initial $50 million payment, to gain transfer control of transfer title and operations of the airport.  Los Angeles World Airports operates Ontario Airport under a joint agreement signed in 1967. That offer was not accepted.

“Under local control, ONT will simultaneously reduce its cost structure and increase its marketing, advertising and promotion spending to provide the airport capacity Southern California needs in the long term to protect its tourism economy,” officials wrote in the airport recovery plan.

Similar sized airports in Burbank, Orange County, Long Beach, and Palm Springs all are operated locally.  Ontario officials have said local control would enable them to run the airport more cost effectively.

In the past four years, the Ontario Airport has lost more than a third of its passenger traffic, which has cost the Inland Empire region $500 million annually and 9,250 jobs, officials reported earlier this year.  The number of domestic and non-stop flights offered at the airport has dropped almost 57 percent since 2007.

Several local cities have come out in support of the Free Ontario effort, including Walnut, Diamond Bar, and the City of Industry.

Besides Wapner's talk, the council will get reports from representatives from local law enforcement agencies and state and county legislators' offices.

The council also requests that those planning to attend the meeting bring a new, unwrapped toy to donate to the California Highway Patrol's CHiPs for Kids toy drive.

The meeting is at 7 p.m. tonight at Pathfinder Community Regional Park in Rowland Heights, 18150 Pathfinder Road.