By Erin Tiernan — Erin@concordbridge.org
Select Board member Terri Ackerman is now officially representing Concord on the regional committee that advocates for local interests to the agency overseeing Hanscom Field.
Photo: Celeste Katz Marston/The Concord Bridge
On the Hanscom Field Advisory Committee, Ackerman plans to wield her influence to halt a controversial hangar space expansion project that would primarily serve private jets.
“The bottom line is these private jets are benefiting a very small, small number of people and harming all the other people and the environment,” Ackerman recently told The Bridge.
Ackerman has been a vocal opponent of the proposal backed by the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Hanscom and the state’s other two airports.
“I’m not in favor of this project at all,” she said. “I think we already have too much jet traffic, and I would like to see less of it. It’s very disruptive for ecological reasons, and it could also be bad for our health.”
Focus on the environment
Ackerman said she wrote Concord’s comment during the public input portion of the state’s ongoing environmental review. She’s also weighed in on the airport’s overarching environmental review process, another area of focus for her time on the committee.
She succeeds Mark Giddings, who is vice chair of the Planning Board. The two committees have conflicting meeting schedules.
Ackerman — who worked as a town manager and administrator in Sudbury, Braintree, North Andover, and Sterling before she retired — said her appointment to the airport’s advisory committee “made sense.”
She has served as the Select Board representative to the adjacent Hanscom Area Towns Committee since Linda Escobedo left earlier this year. She said she’s also long attended HFAC meetings.
