A proposal to strengthen municipal controls on any expansion or addition to the runway or other facilities at McClellan-Palomar Airport received support last week from the Carlsbad Planning Commission.

The commission voted 6-1 to recommend that the Carlsbad City Council approve the changes, with Commissioner Peter Merz opposed. The council is expected to consider the issue on November 19.

Merz said he mostly agrees with San Diego County, which owns the general aviation airport, that changes within the airport’s existing boundaries are permitted under a conditional use permit issued years ago by the city. The city’s Community Development Department and local group Citizens for a Friendly Airport say any particular runway changes should require a new or amended permit, which the City Council would have to approve.

“That seems to be the key point of this whole thing,” Mertz said.

The proposal includes a set of amendments to the city’s general plan, zoning ordinance and local coastal plan. The changes would also prohibit the county from acquiring any additional property for airport-related uses outside of the existing airport boundaries.

County officials said the changes could interfere with improvements needed to make the airport safer for its users, who are mostly private and business planes.

“The county believes that the city may inadvertently restrict certain safety improvements approved by the county Board of Supervisors,” states a July 8 letter to the city from William P. Morgan, the county’s interim public works director.

“These improvements include extending the existing runway, installing a material arrest system (to stop aircraft overrunning the runway) and acquiring future runway protection areas,” Morgan said .

Lengthening the airport’s single runway by a few hundred feet is among the county’s long-term plans. However, no funding is provided for construction or for the additional engineering and design work required for this.

The Carlsbad Airport opened in 1959, when it was moved from Del Mar to accommodate the construction of Interstate 5. At the time, the site was outside of Carlsbad, Co. , and relatively sparsely populated. Carlsbad annexed the airport and surrounding properties in 1978 and approved the airport’s conditional use permit in 1980.

The city and county have been fighting over the airport since at least the 1980s. In 1984, the city council passed a resolution opposing any expansion and has since passed other similar resolutions.

Residents strongly supported the city’s new proposal. Their biggest concern has long been noise.

“My neighbors and I are extremely disappointed and frustrated with the county and the way they operate the airport,” said Frank Sung, a 21-year Carlsbad resident representing 186 homes in the Mariner’s Point Homeowners Association .

“Planes fly over our homes, schools and parks at all hours of the day and night,” Sung said. “Single-engine planes are low, loud and dangerous…then there are the big jets screaming above our rooftops…right above the tennis courts and paddleball courts at Poinsettia Park.”

Another sore point with residents is that some pilots are not following the airport’s voluntary noise reduction procedures, which specify a flight pattern to avoid residential areas, and voluntary quiet hours from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. .

Citizens for a Friendly Airport President Vickey Syage requested approval.

“This has been a well-thought-out, well-vetted Herculean effort,” Syage told the commission. “Tonight is the culmination of seven years of work.”

Most commissioners agreed.

“This is a very complex issue and a controversy that goes back not just a few years, but decades,” Commissioner Joe Stine said, adding that there has been litigation before and that ‘there could be again.

A conditional use permit is an opportunity to balance the airport’s potential negative and positive effects, he said, in favor of the proposed changes.

The proposal’s rules are “equal, fair and balanced,” Stine said.

“I wouldn’t say in any way that the odds are stacked against the county,” he said. “We have a neutral process.”

Aside from zoning, Carlsbad has little control over the airport. Ground operations are managed by the county and air activities are the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Administration.