Groups form to influence airport voters
“Save the Kalispell City Airport” and “Repeal the Kalispell City Airport Expansion” are two political action committees forming as the Nov. 5 referendum on the airport approaches.
Both groups are registered with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices. That allows them to accept donations and spend money.
And each group says it plans to spend the next two months fighting misinformation being spread by the other side.
“It’s a matter of getting information out there between now and the vote,” said Scott Richardson, a member of Save the Kalispell City Airport and former chairman of Kalispell’s Airport Advisory Board.
“The goal is just to get the correct information out there for people to take an intelligent and well-thought-out position.”
Save the Kalispell City Airport held a kickoff meeting at Red Eagle Aviation on Thursday. It will ramp up its campaign activities in coming weeks with signs and other voter outreach activities.
The group supports a proposed airport upgrade through the federal Airport Improvement Program. Its members argue that’s the best way to bring the airport up to design standards, reduce noise, improve safety and allow the general aviation facility to grow as an economic asset. Plus, federal tax money from the aviation industry would pay for 90 percent of the cost and reimburse the city for nearly $3 million that it has already spent.
The more Kalispell voters learn about the proposed upgrade the more they will vote against repealing the City Council’s decision last summer to proceed with it, Richardson said.
Jamey Loran, a member of Repeal the Kalispell City Airport Expansion, takes the opposite view.
The group emerged from the successful signature drive that put the City Council’s decision on the ballot for voters to repeal or uphold.
The group’s goal is to defeat the proposed upgrade and keep Kalispell City Airport maintained in its present footprint and configuration, Loran said. He said supporters of the upgrade are inflating the costs that local taxpayers face if they reject the project and overstating any possible safety, noise, economic or financial benefits of the project.
“From having talked to about 2,000 people, people in Kalispell are probably three- or four-to-one opposed to the [City Council’s] decision,” Loran said.
“The characterization that we are a small but vocal group, which our opponents claim, is completely false. Most of us choose to not really have a lot of public attention drawn to ourselves. But we have done our homework and we plan to make a very fact-based argument against any type of expansion.”
Online:
Save the Kalispell City Airport:
www.kalispellcityairport.org
Repeal the Kalispell City Airport Expansion:
www.kalispellcityairportexpansion.org
Information about the proposed airport upgrade:
www.kalispell.com/mayor_and_city_council/CityAirportInformation.php
Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.