Council to zoom in Monday on city airport
After two scoping sessions, a few dozen discussions at council meetings, hundreds of public comments and uncounted hours of staff research time, Kalispell City Council will devote its entire work session Monday night to Kalispell City Airport.
It’s the next step in a long process.
“Slow and deliberate is the way to go,” Mayor Tammi Fisher told her fellow council members at last Monday’s council meeting.
At the time, she was speaking in support of tabling a decision to qualify Stelling Engineers as the city’s airport consultant. She argued that the decision could be made at this Monday’s work session.
But the motion to table failed, and the council approved Stelling as the city’s engineer of record on a 5-3 vote.
As a result, any questions Monday night that require research beyond the scope of city staffers can be referred to Jeff Walla, Kalispell branch office manager for Stelling. Any work Stellling does will require direct authorization from the council and a budget amendment to pay for it.
Discussion is expected to examine leases at the airport.
The Quiet Skies citizens group alleges leases never were voted on by the City Council as the law requires and may be allowing illegal use of public property by private for-profit enterprises, particularly by fixed-base operator Red Eagle Aviation.
Its flight school, with multiple take-offs and landings, has been a sore point among those opposed to airport noise.
For Monday’s discussion, City Manager Jane Howington provided a copy of the hangar site lease that the city offers to anyone interested in keeping a plane or conducting business at the airport. It was updated in February 2004.
She also provided minutes of the October 2004 council discussion and resolution extending the standard 10-year lease to 20 years if a hangar owner’s bank requires it for financing, and authorizing the city manager to execute those leases.
Howington included a summary of how much each lessee is paying annually and how much it would cost the city to terminate the leases if the airport is moved or closed.
Commercial leases bring in the most money, at $41,360 annually — including $18,620 for facilities that Red Eagle leases and $10,730 for 1.48 acres the Hilton Garden Inn leases. Businesses also pay $150 monthly “commercial” fees and fuel taxes where applicable.
Of the non-commercial hangars, two units are groups of 10 hangars, one has three owners, another has two owners, three are owned singly and four don’t have active leases in place. Collectively those bring in $15,700 annually.
In addition to paying lease fees, owners based at the airport also pay about $69,000 in annual property taxes, Airport Manager Fred Leistiko said.
Terminating the non-commercial leases would cost $2.24 million, city staff estimated.
They were not able to determine what it would cost to terminate leases for the Hilton and Red Eagle. The other two commercial leases are on a month-to-month basis.
Howington’s information packet includes a statement of revenues and expenditures for the airport fund. From 2000 through 2005 it was recorded as a special revenue fund, meaning it was supported by airport-generated money that went to the city’s general fund. Starting in 2006 it was recorded as an enterprise fund that is self-supporting through fees generated from airport use.
In most years it operated in the black, but figures show that expenses outstripped revenues in 2000, 2005 and 2009. Last year it ran $23,000 in the red. Its biggest “income” year was in 2006 when the sale of ball fields, the current Rosauers property and adjoining land left an $852,000 balance.
Another point of friction with the Quiet Skies group is the 2002 environmental assessment that has expired. The city would have to conduct an entirely new assessment to carry out upgrades or move the airport.
The citizen group insists, among other things, that it needs to be an original work rather than following dense boilerplate language.
According to information in Howington’s packet, a new assessment likely would cost between $25,000 and $100,000 depending on the scope of work that the council orders. That money generally is 95 percent reimbursable by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Howington also provided the council background information on:
n Differences between a B-1 airport, which the city now operates, and a B-2, which it would become if proposed upgrades are carried out;
n History of different lease forms used at the Kalispell City Airport;
n Federal Aviation Administration assurances that would need to be discussed if the city accepts federal money.
Howington included an “airport decision chart,” a matrix of issues that have been raised — noise, flight restrictions, size of aircraft, radio tower mitigation and others — and how they would be affected by the four options of closing, relocating, doing nothing or realigning the airport.
Monday’s meeting starts at 7 p.m. in City Hall Council Chambers.
It will be broadcast live on local cable Channel 9 and streamed on the city’s Web site, www.kalispell.com
It also will be available for viewing any time at the site under Meetings on Demand.
Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com