A city committee you may never have heard of–the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, comprised of Second District Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, Fourth District Councilman Patrick O’Donnell and Fifth District Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske–drew the line yesterday at changing the city’s noise ordinance to allow more commercial flights out of Long Beach Airport.

This may remind some of you of one of Tim Grobaty’s great lines from years past–literally years; I think I still worked at the Press-Telegram when he wrote it–about people living near the airport being shocked to learn that making the place into a thriving travel hub would require planes actually landing and taking off. (It sounded better when he wrote it.)

The airport has expanded over the years, and as the Press-Telegram’s Paul Eakins writes today, there have been rumors that the airline JetBlue was considering asking for changes to the city’s noise ordinance.

The airline recently introduced a new Embraer E190 aircraft, which is smaller than the Airbus A320 it now flies in Long Beach, but too heavy to meet the weight restriction on commuter flights. Here’s what Eakins had to say:

“The Embraer aircraft weigh about 115,000 pounds each, while the airport’s requirement for commuter planes is 75,000 pounds or less. [JetBlue CEO Dave] Barger has said he would like the airport noise ordinance’s air weight limit to be increased to allow the Embraers to fill some of the airport’s 25 commuter slots, of which 10 are unused.”

The three-member panel was less than impressed. Schipske said she’d never support changing the city’s noise ordinance. And O’Donnell, the chairman, used the magic word “neighborhoods” in his opposition.

“I believe they are a threat to our local noise ordinance and the sanctity of our neighborhoods,” O’Donnell said in the P-T. “We need to stand by this ordinance. It is a holy grail of Los Altos, Bixby Knolls and those neighborhoods impacted by the aircraft that fly over them.”

“Sanctity of our neighborhoods”–it’s a concept that comes up in interviews with many of our Long Beach City Council representatives, and it’s refreshing.

If you drive around Long Beach and see all the little crackerbox apartment and condo buildings that went up in the 1980s–many times replacing vintage bungalows and Spanish-style homes on previously intact streets–you realize that previous councils didn’t see the same value in low density neighborhoods and old houses.