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Three local Democratic members of Congress, Representatives Anna Eshoo, Jackie Speier, and Jimmy Panetta this week released a joint statement about the status of proposed changes to flight paths over their Congressional districts.In the announcement, the three members of Congress said the FAA will send its final recommendations on the Department of Transportation “within a month,” for final review and approval.Action by the FAA had been expected this month, on controversial plans to revise commercial jet flight paths over the Central Coast, Santa Cruz Mountains and the San Francisco Peninsula, to reduce noise and improve safety.The plan endorse by a split vote of local officials would shift many flights  north from the east side of Santa Cruz to the west side of Santa Cruz and the San Lorenzo Valley.In early December 2016, the final reports with recommendations of the Select Committee on South Bay Arrivals and the San Francisco International Airport/Community Roundtable were sent to the FAA for review and action.“Our offices have been engaged with the new Western-Pacific Regional Administrator of the FAA and his team since early this year, and we have continued to relay the public’s interest in a response to the recommendations as soon as possible,” the Congress members said in their joint statement.“Each of us has spoken directly with FAA Administrator Michael Huerta regarding the status of the FAA’s response to the 109 recommendations contained in these reports to address the ongoing issue of aircraft noise in our Congressional Districts.” They said that Huerta confirmed that he has received a draft response from his Western-Pacific team which has completed extensive technical work.Huerta told them his staff in Washington D.C. is conducting a final review of the document at this time.“Administrator Huerta told us that the FAA is committed to this Initiative process and continuing to work on the response to the recommendations,” they said.“We have been advised that the FAA will send their completed document to the Department of Transportation within a month for final review and authorization,” the joint statement said.“It is not known at this time how long the DOT will take to authorize the release of the response; we will continue to follow-up and will release the response as soon as we receive it,” said Speier, Eshoo and Panetta.

The Central Coast Section will be holding the qualifying track meet this weekend on Saturday May 21, at Gilroy High school. Athletes from the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League will be representing the county and a healthy portion of those will be from the Valleys.

Dear Editor, This note is in regard to the proposed management of invasive plants on water district property. The sand hills in question are full of precious rare and endangered species, some of which have just a few hundred acres of habitat anywhere in the...

EDITOR,

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In my most recent column, I wrote about wandering through an unfinished shopping center with my friends when a security guard started roaring epithets at us and gave chase (Page 12, Nov. 30). Under great fear, we kids narrowly escaped. The question is whether we were trespassing.