Tensions rising over management at Wasilla airport

June 27, 2006

By MARY AMES

Frontiersman

WASILLA - Simmering tensions between some pilots and the city's airport manager flared during a meeting of the city of Wasilla's Airport Advisory Commission last week.

Tom Westall, the man hired by Mayor Dianne M. Keller to be airport manager and armed city constable, is making the airport a hostile environment, according to pilots Dave Glenn, Clint Mayear and Maurice Bailey.

Glenn, Mayear and Bailey all testified that the Wasilla airport environment is unfriendly to pilots because of Westall.

&#8220I've seen people get run off the airport and be harassed,” Mayear, a lease holder at the airport said.

Dogs are raising the most hackles at the city's airport. The code for the city that bills itself as the Home of the Iditarod says any animal at the airport must be in transit to or from an aircraft, on a leash and under the direct control of a handler or owner at all times. If not in transit to or from an aircraft, the animal must be confined in a building, cage or kennel.

&#8220Tom takes great pleasure in running it down peoples' throats,” Mayear said. &#8220He threatened to pull my lease.”

Bailey has a tie-down spot at the Wasilla airport. He told the commission he was &#8220sick and tired” of Westall harassing him.

&#8220I call it discrimination,” said Bailey, an African American. &#8220I'm 67, and I've been hanging around airports since I was 10, but I don't even like going out there. It's very unfriendly.”

Glenn handed the commissioners two letters protesting the code and its recent enforcement.

On June 11, Duke Bertke, owner of Chelatna Lake Lodge, flew an employee into the Wasilla airport, calling a cab to pick up his employee in flight and again after he landed. The employee's dog got out of the plane with the men, but never went farther than 10 feet from them, Bertke said.

His employee was putting a leash on the dog when Westall &#8220came zooming up” and informed them that municipal code says the dog couldn't be at the airport.

&#8220He said we had to put the dog in the airplane until the cab got there,” Bertke said in a later phone interview. &#8220The cab was about five minutes away, but he said, ‘You have to put the dog back in the airplane right this minute.'”

Bertke was so livid he left, he said, and is never landing at Wasilla again.

&#8220That's baloney,” he said. &#8220I've been in aviation here 30 years and it's the most ludicrous thing I have ever seen. He was there in seconds. You don't have to do that at Merrill Field or Anchorage International.”

Westall described the incident differently. The dog hopped out of the airplane and ran across the apron, creating a safety hazard, he said.

Westall said he explained the code and told Bertke's employee he could wait for the cab in the Air Operations Center, but the man worried the cab driver wouldn't see him and elected to wait with the dog outside the gate.

Glenn, who owns Grasshopper Aviation, landed, saw the situation unfolding and went into a flat rage, Westall said.

&#8220His son accosted me,” he said.

But the man with the dog didn't mind at all, Westall said.

&#8220He was such a nice guy I didn't even turn on my tape recorder,” he said.

The cab driver, Josh Brandon, wrote the second letter that Glenn turned over to the commissioners. Brandon was driving for Alaska Cab Valley that Sunday, he wrote. and when he got to the airport, the airport manager came out and started screaming at his fare and another man. Brandon said later he wrote the letter without any intention of giving it to anyone, but his boss faxed it to Glenn.

His company's cabs go out to the airport every day, but that was Brandon's first time, he said by phone. Brandon's experience made him think Westall should lose his job, he said.

&#8220He told me he was the manager and wanted me to get out of his airport,” Brandon said. &#8220I said I thought it was public parking, and he pointed his finger at my face and said, ‘You take that guy and that dog and get it out of my airport.'”

If he had known Westall was armed, he would have been scared, Brandon said.

Westall said he has a commission from the mayor to be a constable and is a &#8220soft enforcer” of city codes. The men don't like the codes and deflect that dislike back onto him, he said.

Keller said she made Westall a constable because of his background with the Federal Aviation Administration and his work with the state defense force. The fact that he carries a concealed weapon had never been an issue, she said. Wasilla code gives her the authority to appoint a constable, she said, citing code 2.16.020, &#8220power and duties of the mayor: supervise the enforcement of city law and carry out the directives of the city council.”

&#8220He's not a code compliance officer who can't carry a gun,” Keller said. &#8220Tom does have a state permit for gun. I can't tell him he can't carry a gun. We want our airport to be better, and we are in agreement.”

A man used to exercise his dog by hooking its leash to a fishing pole and driving around the airport with the dog at the end of the pole, Keller said. The dog got loose and the man was ticketed, but a judge threw out the citation because the code was vague, which led the city to write a clear and specific code, she said.

The intention was not to have animals out there unless they were being transported in order to reduce liability and accidents, she said.

Keller said Glenn is the prime instigator of complaints about Westall. When she first was elected mayor, Glenn came into her office and told her he needed to be airport manager, she said.

&#8220He just came in and sat down and said if I didn't make him manager, I would live to regret it,” Keller said.

Glenn laughed when he heard Keller's comment.

&#8220What a lie,” Glenn said. &#8220I applied to be on the advisory committee and she denied me a seat. She didn't even have the cojones to tell me herself.”

Westall said he was only carrying his Walther .22 at the commission meeting, but usually carries a Springfield .45 as well as the tape recorder. Before June 11, Westall usually didn't turn on the recorder, he said.

&#8220Now I do when they are mean or haughty,” he said.

Westall wasn't breaking any laws by wearing his side arm in city hall, said Don Savage, chief of Wasilla police. Savage didn't know Westall was armed on the job, he said.

&#8220I think his contention is that he is a peace officer,” Savage said. &#8220Even though I may like to know [he is armed], there is nothing to suggest I had to know.”

One of Westall's tapes is from June 15, 2004, when he cited Glenn for having a dog tied to a trailer outside his hangar at the airport. Unlike Westall's other tapes with polite conversations, this one is filled with strings of shouted expletives from Glenn.

&#8220You bottom-feeding son of a b—-,” Glenn said to Westall, in addition to numerous other colorful phrases.

Westall's six-page resume details his decades as an FAA employee, his status as brigadier general for the Alaska State Defense Force, his Ph.D. in aviation technology and science from Pacific Western University, and his status as an expert forensic investigator of aircraft accidents.

&#8220I'm just doing what the boss wants,” Westall said. &#8220I'm trying to do a good job. I've had people screaming at me since 1965.”

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.