"birdman" wrote in message
ups.com...
I have a complaint and feel that I was taken advantage of by the court
system in Lakeway TX.

I'm a little confused about what you want us to do about it?

If you truly believe that law enforcement at Lakeway is corrupt, I would
guess that's something you need to take up with the FBI. I would say that
if you cannot get a fair trial in Lakeway, that would amount to corruption.

A $1200 fine for what essentially ought to amount to a traffic infraction
seems pretty unreasonable to me. Surely there's something in the Texas
Constitution about punishments being required to fit the crime. I would
also take issue with the City making this a criminal (misdemeanor) offense,
but seeing as how they've made ALL zoning violations a criminal offense, and
seeing as how I don't actually know how common that is (in other
municipalities around the country), I won't say much more on that.

I honestly don't know anything about how appeals for something like this
work, or if they are even allowed. I would think that for a misdemeanor
offense they would be. If they are, the appeal would eventually make it out
of the Lakeway jurisdiction, to a higher state court. It seems to me that a
good lawyer would be angling for cause for appeal, during the case in
Lakeway, rather than actually expecting to have a chance to win (assuming,
of course, that your claim of a biased court is true).

As far as proving your case goes, I would expect that a record of a
departure time (you didn't happen to depart from a controlled airport, did
you?), along with your legal record of your logged time for the flight,
would be sufficient to prove that you landed before sunset.

Again, I don't know how things are in Texas, but here in the State of
Washington, one benefit (the only benefit?) of a violation being a criminal
offense rather than an infraction is that the standard of proof on the part
of law enforcement is higher. "Proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is
required, rather than the more lax "preponderance of evidence" (i.e. if it's
even just 51% against you). An officer's statement wouldn't be sufficient
in that case; he'd have to have something in the way of solid,
substantiating documentation.

In other words, the burden of proof is on the law enforcement officer, and
the case ought to follow the traditional "innocent until proven guilty"
paradigm.

As for the definition of sunset, the Lakeway ordinance specifies the
definition of sunset. You can find the definitions for August 2004 to July
2005 he
http://www.cityoflakeway.com/shared/..._Exhibit-B.pdf
Assuming July 2004 was similar to July 2005 , by their definition sunset
would have been some time between 8:27pm and 8:38 (depending on what day you
were actually cited). It appears that they simply get their data from
www.sunrisesunset.com

From a legal standpoint, it seems to me that the ticket written would
necessarily have to include the time that the officer witnessed you land,
along with whatever reference of sunset the officer is using. Otherwise,
how can they possibly expect to prove, even by a statement of the officer
(law enforcement almost always wins "your word against theirs" arguments in
court), that you landed after sunset? I would expect that a ticket not
including that information ought to be simply dismissed.

All of the above is hindsight. You apparently did not care enough about the
principle to see the case through, nor did AOPA apparently think it was
important enough to offer legal assistance. If everything was truly as
you've explained it, I would think that you'd have a good case. If you had
a good case, I would think that you wouldn't have accepted what amounts to a
plea bargain. That makes me think that there's probably aspects to the case
that you haven't shared with us that undermined your ability to defend
yourself.

I gather from various sources that Austin and its environs just isn't an
aviation-friendly area. Frankly, looking through their city ordinances, it
appears Lakeway in particular isn't very friendly to nearly anything that
could be construed as undesireable in the slightest way. I've seen CCR's
that aren't even close to being that strict.

The truth is that many airports benefit the community, and a community that
fails to appreciate that deserves to lose their airport. They WILL suffer
because of it, even if they don't realize it. Yes, that hurts us as pilots
too some times, but that's just how it goes. It sounds to me as though
there is insufficient support for the airport from the aviation community to
compete with the anti-aviation sentiment there. As pilots, we bemoan the
loss of airports wherever they happen, but frankly it doesn't do our cause
much good if we, the folks who ought to know best the difference between a
really important airport and one that really just isn't worth the trouble,
act like each and every airport is no less precious than any other.

As far as the other post mentioning deer feeders, if that's a documented
state of affairs, I would think that the FAA (if they really cared...again,
this comes down to just how important the airport is really) would apply the
same rules that prevent growing tall trees in the approach path, or siting a
landfill just off the end of the runway and have the deer feeders removed.
A person is not allowed to interfere with the safe passage of aircraft just
because that interference occurs on their own property rather than the
airport. Though, I wonder at just how much a deer feeder at each *end* of
the runway would really affect deer traffic on the runway itself. Not much,
I'd guess.

The funny thing is that the airport only gets 25 operations a day. That's
basically a dead airport already. But for anyone nearby to take offense
just plain dumb. If I recall correctly, an "operation" is a takeoff OR
landing, so on average there's actually only about a dozen takeoffs per day
(landings aren't usually very noisy), or about 1 per hour. Hardly enough
for anyone to get upset about. I've got a neighbor with a dog that barks
WAY more than that, and law enforcement couldn't care less (in spite of it
violating city, county, and state noise regulations). Of course, if the
city could make $1200 a pop citing the owner of the dog, maybe they'd take
the violation more seriously.

Sorry for the long post. There's just so much wrong about the situation,
both with respect to the apparent handling by the city, and with your
approach to your complaint, that I just had to comment on it all (or at
least the highlights).

Pete