James Leas launches bid for city council seat

I am running for city council to serve you and our city. Key issues I will work on include the economy, jobs, affordable housing, a healthy and safe environment for our children and their learning, climate change, protecting remaining open space and racial and class justice.

These are hard problems. Many solutions are needed for each. But all of them are made far worse and the solutions are all sabotaged by the 115-decibel F-35 training flights in our city.

Fortunately, our city council has both federal and state authority to act. Passage of ordinances by city council can require National Guard commanders do what they were trained to do and what U.S. Department of Defense regulations require: keep dangerous military operations, like F-35 training, away from any city, town or village. That’s Military Regulations 101.

Even if not sufficient to fully solve each problem, halting F-35 training in South Burlington is one of the necessary steps.

According to VTDigger, affordable housing in the Burlington area is so tight that some job applicants are turning down employment offers because they cannot find a place to live. That’s not good for local businesses, workers and the economy. But once the F-35 goes away Federal Aviation Administration agreements with the airport require housing to be restored on the 44 acres where military jet noise caused hundreds of affordable homes to be demolished.

What’s more, remaining housing stock near the airport is downright dangerous for habitation because of the F-35. The Air Force says nearly 3,000 affordable homes in South Burlington and neighboring cities and towns are unsuitable for residential use because military jets are so loud that repeated exposure can cause hearing loss and impair reading, attention, problem solving and memory of the 1,300 children who live in those homes.

The Air Force admits that the noise burden falls disproportionately on the working class and families of color.

By keeping 44 acres of central-city land bereft of housing and by rendering 3,000 homes dangerous for children, the F-35 forces sprawl — building houses away from the city center in open fields. One example is the 32-house development proposed in the grassland bird habitat within the Wheeler Nature Park. Neighbors, including me, are fighting that development in court right now.

The F-35 is also a climate catastrophe: Each F-35 burns 22 gallons of fuel a minute. The F-35 training emits as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as all the regularly scheduled civilian airliner flights at the airport combined.

This all means that training flights with the F-35 in our city location is a house destroyer, job eradicator, child abuser, climate and environment wrecker and it discriminates based on race and class.

More solutions are certainly needed for each of these issues. But just one measure is essential to improve each of them: halting the F-35 training at the airport.

And there is no downside to the relocation of the F-35. Jobs may move but they won’t be lost.

Fortunately, city council has the power. The Constitution and federal law delegate to the states the authority to control the training of their own state national guards. Vermont law delegates to cities, towns and villages the power “to regulate the operation and use of vehicles of every kind” to promote “the public health, safety, welfare and convenience” of the people, including by adopting and enforcing ordinances.

Our city can and must use that power. Doing so will ensure that the military’s own regulations are respected and enforced to protect our families and children.