Website maneuver adds to airport intrigue
Did Quiet Skies have a quiet change of heart and decide to support a project to realign and expand Kalispell City Airport through the federal Airport Improvement Program?
A website, www.KalispellQuietSkies.com, says the group supports the project as a way to improve safety and reduce noise around the airport and secure federal funding to update and maintain it.
No way, says Scott Davis, spokesman for an informal group that calls itself Quiet Skies and has long opposed the airport project. The project is the subject of a referendum in the Nov. 5 election, when voters will repeal or uphold the City Council’s decision to pursue it.
“They hijacked our name,” Davis said about supporters of the airport project and their website that pops right up with a quick Internet search for “Kalispell Quiet Skies.”
Davis started getting phone calls about the Kalispell Quiet Skies website on Monday. At first he thought a member of his group might have launched it. No. “I looked at it and wow, they just took our name,” he said.
Davis called it a “hit below the belt” and “another fraud tactic” by people who support the Kalispell City Airport expansion. “When they do this it just shows they’re super desperate or just downright foul, downright deceiving,” he said.
That’s one of the risks of never formalizing an advocacy group’s existence or registering applicable Internet domain names to prevent someone else from using them for a cause your group might not support.
While some people started noticing the website this week, just a few days before a charged local election, the website has actually been online for almost a year, according to its owner, Scott Richardson.
Richardson is a member of Save Your Airport, a political committee formed to support upgrading the airport through the federal Airport Improvement Program. He said the Kalispell Quiet Skies website is no dirtier than some of the tricks the other side is using.
“For god’s sake, they have a C-17 on one of their posters and a 737 on their fliers,” Richardson said about statements being made that the general aviation airport project will bring in larger aircraft.
“We’re talking about a major financial impact to the city and they’re saying, ‘Don’t need it, can’t afford it.’ Can’t afford it? We’ve already started down the road, we’re already $3 million in,” Richardson said about past city expenditures toward the airport project.
“Can you afford to not get that back and pay another $1.6 million to bring it up? Or can you afford to get the $3 million back for a safer airport, quiet skies and funding that will provide for the ongoing maintenance of this thing?”
Apparently the fight is on for who’s actually fighting for Quiet Skies.
“We’re all about Quiet Skies,” Richardson said. “What I will say for the other folks, everybody in this, not just me, but the Scott Davises, Chad Grahams, Phil Guiffridas and Tim Kluesners, we’re all looking out for the community. It’s just a disagreement about how to get to that end.”
Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.