Printed in the State-Journal, Frankfort KY, 21 July 2013

As President of the Berry Hill Homeowners Association, I have been following the changes planned by the National Guard for the Army Aviation Support Facility. Our neighborhood is relatively new, and we are unfortunately coming late to the concerns expressed by others about the planned expansion. I applaud The State Journal for their continued coverage of this issue, since it appears that many of our local officials have no concept of the problems some of us deal with on an almost daily basis by the overflights by the current helicopters used by the Guard.

For instance, I recently began recording the times and dates of those flights over my own home which shook my home enough to cause the dishes to rattle, not to mention the associated noise. I noted only those that caused this result and only when I was actually in the house. During a 90-day period, I recorded 84 flights that met the above-mentioned “requirements.” My neighbors have all had similar experiences, and we believe that, contrary to the Guard’s assertion in the 2013 Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) that flights only occur between 6:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Tuesdays thru Thursdays and at an altitude of at least 500 feet, this is not the case; and actual physical damage is resulting from these flights. My reading of the JLUS indicates that future flights, regardless of how many helicopters the Guard has, will more narrowly focus the flights to leave and return from the ends of the Capital City Airport. This means that my neighborhood, and those to both the east and west of the ends of the runway, will experience more flights – and damage – not fewer, and thus increase the problems we are experiencing.

My neighborhood has joined together in signing a petition that is being distributed to all local and state officials, as well as our Congressional delegation, outlining our concerns, both immediate and long-term. We believe that this expansion (which is really what it is, regardless of Mr. Sanderson’s assertion in a previous editorial) will negatively affect property values of not only my neighborhood but all of Frankfort and Franklin County and also result in an increase in the insurance rates of those most directly affected. This will not happen overnight, but the impact of a military facility in the city limits of a place the size of Frankfort can have no other effect.

Also alarming are the proposed “Notes of Disclosure” contained in the JLUS. For those not familiar with this, the JLUS proposes to put a note on the deeds of all properties “impacted” by a radius around the airport and AASF that will require any potential buyer that such property is subject to aerial overlights and resulting noise, vibration, dust and potential aircraft accidents. This will obviously cause any potential buyer to think hard about whether to buy that property and can have no effect but to lower its value.

I understand the safety issues that face airports, and those of us at Berry Hill knew there was an airport nearby when we purchased our property, but what is now being done is a material change from what we bought into. We have no quarrel with fixed-wing aircraft, but the physical damage being inflicted on our property currently by the helicopter traffic, much less the increase that will occur with the changes identified in the JLUS, is unacceptable.

Adjutant General Tonini is quoted in the July 14 article about the groundbreaking for the AASF as saying “. . . moving the AASF will make the Boone National Guard Center a better neighbor for those living near the base.”; “We are going to be better neighbors for everybody regardless of how you measure being a good neighbor”; and “Everything’s going to be a positive rather than a negative, and I just think that people that express their displeasure were just not well informed about what the real situation is.” I respectfully request that he meet with me to explain how these changes will improve my neighborhood’s quality of life; I look forward to hearing from him.

Paula Moore, President
Berry Hill Homeowners Association