Aircraft Noise: A Toolkit for Managing Community Expectations (2009)

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12 C H A P T E R 3 This chapter helps managers of airports of all sizes to consider their goals in communication and look at how their stated goal relates to community goals. It provides guidance on measuring the success of airport communications programs, discusses the consequence of not improving communications, and discusses the decisions airports must make on communications based on their unique situations. The chapter closes with the “What Does the Public Really Want”, a listing of the three essentials that communities seek from noise programs. This chapter is important because airport managers need to decide the goals and objectives of their program and the level of resources and involvement they wish to commit to it. Airport and Non-Airport Communication Goals When interviewed, most airport representatives said that their communications goal was to educate. That implies a belief that: • Noise is primarily a technical issue that requires understanding, and • Public education about noise is the most important component in public acceptance of the airport’s approach to dealing with the issue. When interviewed, most non-airport groups interviewed said that their goals related to: • Cooperation • Communication • Open discussion • Partnership This implies that noise issues are a problem that needs a solution, and that the solution requires a longer-term interactive process involving both the airport and the community. Each airport must determine its ultimate goal and define its objectives before progress can be measured. Potential airport objectives involve education, but also cooperation, communication, and partnership. Potential Communication Objectives • Build long-term relationships with stakeholders based on trust that allows various sides to work through difficult issues together • Encourage the community to meaningfully engage with airport leadership first before going to the press or litigation • Avoid unrealistic expectations by educating the community about what is feasible and what constraints to action are imposed by regulation Desired Outcomes of a Community Engagement Program

Desired Outcomes of a Community Engagement Program 13 • Develop a noise management program that “all stakeholders agree with and carry it out with open and respectful communication” (SDF) • Achieve “a change in public perceptions, less intense complaint calls and a less angry tone of communications from the public.” (LGB) Defining and Measuring Success There can be various levels of success in a communications program. It is easy for airports to know when they have not been sued, but is not easy to objectively measure whether trust and a “good” relationship exists. The academic profession is still trying to devise effective measure- ment mechanisms for public involvement techniques as applied to transportation in general. Without a definitive answer as yet, it is up to each airport to clearly define its goals for public involvement and to use mechanisms that are as objective as possible to measure its success. The value of this exercise is understanding where to allocate limited airport resources—media and public relations, public engagement, staffing, or other. Some possible approaches for defining and measuring success are: • Statistically valid community attitude surveys • Feedback from focus groups of the community and airport neighbors • Use a series of evaluation questions such as those shown below as proposed in “Stakeholder Involvement & Public Participation by the U.S. EPA.” (15) Consequences of Doing Nothing Doing nothing about community engagement means that at some point when schedule is crit- ical the airport is likely to be caught by surprise by an intense community reaction to an airport proposal. At that point it will become much harder to build a relationship of trust with the com- munity. Building the kind of community relationship that will help prevent or resolve storms of controversy takes time. By doing nothing regarding community engagement, the most precious time — the time before the controversy erupts — is wasted. Example Evaluation Questions • What were stakeholder/public perceptions regarding their ability to participate in the process? • To what degree were those expectations met? • What was the level of effort required by stakeholders/the public to participate? Were the goals and steps of the process clearly explained? • To what extent did the effort meet those goals? • Was the process fair? • Was the process competent? (e.g., was the process well-structured? was there proper leader- ship in place to guide the process?) • What major factors contributed to the success or shortcomings of the stakeholder involvement/ public participation effort? • How could the stakeholder involvement/public participation effort have been designed dif- ferently to work more effectively? • What resources (staff, time, dollars) were spent to engage in a stakeholder involvement or public participation effort? • What were the FTE (full-time employee) or dollar amounts required to perform the public participation or stakeholder involvement effort? • To what extent can the level of resources be associated with positive results of the stakeholder involvement/public participation effort?

14 Aircraft Noise: A Toolkit for Managing Community Expectations • How many stakeholders/citizens participated in the effort? • Were all significant stakeholder groups represented? • Did the effort result in a product or agreement that furthered progress towards achieving pos- itive outcomes? “Stakeholder Involvement & Public Participation by the U.S. EPA” (15) How Much is Enough?—One Size Does Not Fit All Airports, unlike other types of transportation agencies, are not required by regulation to do extensive and regular community engagement other than during environmental project planning. Consequently some airports have virtually no experience in community engagement. They may assume that there are technical solutions to all issues and that the public has no role in determin- ing technical solutions. According to O’Connor et al. (13), the highway industry also is subject to complex technical requirements, but has found that public engagement leads to more public sup- port and smoother implementation. The Highway Experience with Public Engagement • Public ownership of policies/sustainable and supportable decisions; • Decisions that reflect community values; • Efficient implementation of transportation decisions; and • Enhanced agency credibility. It is the responsibility of airport leadership to make the decision about how extensive a level of public engagement to require in airport activities, particularly in noise management offices. Airport managers can learn from the experience other industries faced with similar decisions. It is tempting to assume that the correct answer can be found and described in this Guidebook that will allow all problems with communications to be resolved. In fact, many of the experienced “experts” interviewed for this research study emphasized that “one size does not fit all” and that “cookbooks don’t work”. Each airport must work to design and refine a process that may go on to engage the public for decades. As was written in an article entitled “Effective Public Involvement in Transportation A Primer for Practitioners” (16): • An effective public involvement effort will take time, money, and patience; and • Because you got it right once, don’t think you’ve got it down. What Does the Public Really Want? Based on dozens of interviews for this project, what the public wants from airports about noise conditions can be summarized in three basic concepts: • Promote communication: this includes working in an interactive way with one or more orga- nized groups, involving them as partners in pursuit of mutual goals. • Present the facts clearly and honestly: this includes designing websites that can actually be used by the community to both learn and to do their own analysis. • Reduce the noise impacts: this may refer to an overall reduction of noise levels or the abate- ment of particularly offensive single events.