City answers some airport questions

People calling for a public vote on the future of Kalispell City Airport stepped to the microphone once again Monday night, this time with a little more insistence.

During a work session of the City Council attended by about 45 people, answers and more questions surfaced as a part of the second meeting in the city’s scoping process for the airport.

The council is poised to dive into the next step on proposed upgrades at the airport during February.

That includes a Feb. 1 discussion on whether to qualify Stelling Engineers as the city’s airport consultant and a Feb. 8 workshop dissecting the primary issues and deciding how to tackle them.

Monday’s session, however, was focused on laying out answers to many of the questions raised at the first scoping session on Nov. 30.

It’s a work in progress, City Manager Jane Howington explained, a progress report on the answers that city staffers could supply before the council makes any decision on going to consultants for more technical answers.

During her presentation, Howington discussed concerns over aircraft-generated noise, management techniques, a runway reorientation, aircraft size limits and a possible oversight advisory committee, among a host of other topics.

For more on this story, read Wednesday’s Daily Inter Lake.