WE make it easier for business executives to engage in commerce; we provide a launch point for NYPD and FDNY personnel rushing to emergencies, and we generate $1 million in fees every year for the Hudson River Park Trust. Yet some outspoken New Yorkers would summarily shut us down.

Why? Because we’re heliport operators – and helicopters have become a favorite target of Not in my Back Yard (NIMBY) activists intent on stopping flights around the city, no matter the cost.

Community Board 4 and The Friends of the Hudson River Park both recently wrote letters to the Hudson River Park Trust calling for an immediate termination of our permit after 26 years of operating this critical transportation hub. They cite the Hudson River Park Act, the 1998 state law that instituted the park. But, while the act did say the heliport should be moved outside the park, it left it up to city and state officials to decide when and how.

While we agree with the community that the heliport should be moved out of the park as the act prescribes, it’s not something that can happen overnight. City and state officials must decide where to site a new heliport, choose an operator and eventually open a new venue; the process could easily take years.

In the interim, it is vitally important that the West 30th Street Heliport remain open.

It is no more realistic to think that a functioning West Side Heliport can simply cease operations without a negative impact on Manhattan than it is to think that traffic flow into and out of the city won’t be affected by the closing of the Holland Tunnel.

We are the only Manhattan heliport open at night, let alone 24/7. Literally hundreds of men and women with business in the city use the heliport to fly in and out of town at all times for meetings with elected officials, Fortune 500 companies and other institutions that aren’t 9-to-5 operations.

Many see helicopter travel as a luxury consumption of only the very wealthy, yet those who would paint us simply as catering to the rich and famous miss three other vital services we provide:

* A starting point for emergency-services personnel responding to dire situations across the city.

* A flight base for news-gathering aircraft providing information to the city’s nine million residents.

* An economic rainmaker for the surrounding area.

Visitors are as likely to see heliport-users wearing the uniforms of the FDNY, NYPD, EMS and DEA as they are to see men and women in business suits. Day and night, public-safety officers use West 30th Street to keep our city secure. On 9/11, they were joined by members of the military, who used the heliport as the flight-staging area for Ground Zero.

All major news stations also maintain a presence at the heliport. From here, reporters fly to locations where they pass on up-to-the-second updates on traffic conditions, accidents and other breaking news.

Lastly, through tourism, taxes and other fees, the heliport provides a seven-figure revenue source to the Hudson River Park – the same park that those who would kick us out claim to want to protect – every year. The funds go toward improvements throughout this five-mile swath of land.

Again, we will continue to comply with the Hudson River Park Act and abandon our little piece of the city when the duties we perform can be done at some more suitable location outside the park.

Until then, our neighbors would be wise to recognize the value that we add to the entire city before they board up our doors simply because we’re near their backyard.

Al Trenk and his daughter, Abigail, operate the West 30th Street Heliport.