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Flying club trying to takeoff again

The Smoky Mountain Flying Club is trying to get some wind under its wings again with a campaign to attract new members and buy a sporty plane, or two, for its pilots to use collectively.

Instead of the small planes traditionally flown by recreational pilots, the club is moving in the direction of the burgeoning class of light sport aircraft. These lightweight, maneuverable planes require less training and are cheaper to keep up than their larger counterparts.

Incoming: Jackson airport to land a share of increased casino traffic

fr jaxairportThe advent of live dealers and table games at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino is widely predicted to bring sweeping economic benefits to the region — benefits that are so far-reaching even the tiny landing strip known as the Jackson County Airport could land a piece of the action.

Macon County airport lands federal runway paving dollars

More than $2 million in mostly federal dollars will pay for repaving the runway at the Macon County Airport, likely boosting a surge of business-class jets now landing there since an extension of the runway was added last year.

The state and county will each have to kick in a 10 percent match, while federal funds will comprise 80 percent of the project cost.

Macon County’s airport is the nearest airport to Harrah’s Cherokee Casino and Resort that can handle small corporate jets. Additionally, well-heeled residents with second or third homes in the Highlands-Cashiers area visit this region via Macon’s airport.

“This is another tool in our economic tool belt,” Tommy Jenkins, the county’s economic director, said Tuesday. “We’ve got an asset in the airport that a lot of surrounding counties don’t have. We’ve got to make sure we take care of it.”

Federal aviation dollars come in to the state through the N.C. Division of Aviation, which then disperses the funds based on need to airports in the state.

Macon County, again using a combination of federal and state funding along with a county match, spent $4.5 million building a 600-foot extension and a 300-foot grass safety area over the past two years.

Work at the airport has been a source of controversy, with critics citing the large cost for relatively few users and the impact of the growing airport on the rural Iotla Valley off N.C. 28. But the biggest controversy came when Indian graves were discovered in the path of the runway extension. The county reached agreements with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, however, allowing work to move forward following an archaeological excavation.

Miles Gregory, the airport board’s chairman, said Tuesday that he believes what sealed the funding deal was a firsthand visit in September to the airport by N.C. Department of Transportation Secretary Gene Conti. The state bigwig was in the area to attend a bridge naming ceremony for former state Sen. John Snow, D-Cherokee County.

“The runway is all in pieces,” Gregory said. “It’s been in bad repair for a long time. (Conti) just shook his head, and said he’d do what he could to help us.”

Bids for the repaving project likely will be let this spring.

New airport hangars are in the works, Gregory said. Additionally, there are plans to try to run a 12-inch line and hook into the town’s water.

“We have a drilled well right now. It wouldn’t put out a lit match,” Gregory said. “I’m exaggerating of course, but we could use that water.”

A statewide economic impact study conducted five years ago indicated that Macon County’s airport had an approximate $7.9 million a year total annual impact on North Carolina and supports more than 122 jobs.

Touching down in 48 states: Six days in the cockpit with peanut butter sandwiches

When Mike Schoonover was 10 years old, he had a transformative experience. It wasn’t a religious conversion per se. There was no epiphany-inducing encounter with a sports hero. But there was a cathedral of sky and a 10,000-foot high playing field, and there was born a fledgling devotion to the skies that has lasted five decades.

“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” says Schoonover, who lives in Waynesville.

He’s sitting in the tiny office of the one-runway Jackson County Airport, an unassuming room with faux-wood paneling and the single air conditioner in the small hangar, whirring against the staunch July heat.

He recounted tagging along in the cockpit during a sales call with a family friend who sold used airplanes.

Now he owns his own airplane, a 2006 Maule M4-180V — a throwback, he says, to the earlier days of small-scale flying, and earlier this month he and his 13-year-old grandson, Sam Bolduc, achieved the complicated feat of touching it down in all 48 contiguous states.

They did it in six days. The plane averages around 110 miles per hour, so even a cursory encounter with a map and a calculator will tell you it means essentially constant flying.

And Schoonover did much more than a cursory encounter.

“It was so over-planned and, you know, I flew this thing on paper over and over, four or five times — what altitudes will I fly at, what headings,” says Schoonover.

He’s a self-described type-A man, the kind of person who finds precision relaxing. When he says the trip was highly planned, his claims are genuine.

He planned the routes, of course, and the particulars of the plane. But he also made survival plans, mapped out locations where the plane was most likely to go down without radio contact and then researched and packed a survival kit for the eventuality.

He worked out which foods they could take in the tiny, two-seater plane. They subsisted mainly on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and bananas. Apparently, they’re lower on the choke-hazard scale. Because, says Schoonover, you can’t just pull over a plane to do the Heimlich maneuver.

But even with the copious preparations, things went far better than even the pilot himself expected. He blocked out 12 to 14 days for the trip, breaking it up into 48 1.5-hour flights. That’s another fun fact gleaned from his background research — it takes about 1.5 hours to fly from one state to another, pretty much regardless of size.

He got the idea in the doldrums of winter, one of those intricate daydreams that carry us through the gray expanse of winter days.

But Schoonover’s fantasy crossed the portal from dream to idea, from idea to reality. He doesn’t think they’ve set any records doing it, but that part is a little murky, because he couldn’t really find any record of someone else actually doing it. He’s pretty sure people must do things like this all the time. But maybe, like him, they didn’t exactly look for any record books to put it in.

Record breaking or simply noteworthy, it was an exhausting and expensive proposition. Schoonover was the plane’s sole pilot for all 5,951 nautical miles of the journey, and he relieved himself of more than $3,000 on fuel alone.

“I knew it was one of those things that was once in a lifetime, but at a certain level is hard to justify,” said Schoonover. Overall, the trip cost around $4,000. “But to say that we’d done something like this and to have the experience and have it documented and share it with people and family and stuff, I could justify it one time.”

Hearing him recount the tale, too, it’s clear that one unexpected benefit was worth four grand.

“My grandson loved it. He got into more than I would expect. He became more than a passenger, he was truly a copilot,” says Schoonover. He has 11 grandkids, but this particular 13-year-old seemed the right age. So when he was planning the trip, he called his daughter in Cary.

Would Sam like to come?

Sure.

And just like Schoonover’s own inaugural ride into the clouds, he hopes his grandson will remember this voyage as the moment his love of aviation began.

“I know he will because I watched and I saw how he got into it. If you ever have that deal where you can see somebody with a passion, see that passion begin,” says Schoonover, the joy on his face replacing the end of his sentence. That is what he saw kindled in his grandson.

Over the course of the trip, they burned 600 gallons of fuel, flew more than 59 hours and made friends at small airports in every quadrant of the country. They passed over three major disasters and countless acres of untouched natural beauty.

Would he do it again? In a heartbeat, says Schoonover.

“You know, did you ever have a family event, something where you wanted it to be perfect and you hoped it would be perfect, but things aren’t perfect?” he asks, as he pushes the small plane, it’s green stripe gleaming in the sun, out for another jaunt into the crisp summer sky. “Well, this was.”

Macon County airport getting longer soon

A 600-foot extension of Macon County’s airport runway is scheduled for completion by mid-May and plans for a ribbon-cutting ceremony are in the works, Miles Gregory, chairman of the airport authority, told local leaders last week.

The $4.5 million project will allow larger corporate jets to land in Macon County. When finished, the runway will be 5,000-feet long, and include a 300-foot grass safety area. About $1 million was spent meeting archaeological requirements for using the site, Gregory said.

Two years ago, the runway extension provoked bitter opposition, with standing-room-only crowds attending meetings and an environmental group threatening to sue and stop the project. An archaeological assessment in 2000 had revealed about 400 Indian burials.

Macon County reached agreement with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, however, and the project was able to move forward.

The extension was opposed by nearby residents who fear the additional traffic at the airport will threaten the rural valley, but commissioners supported the project for its economic development potential.

“Planes that could not land here and be covered on their insurance now will be covered,” said Brian McClellan, chairman of the Macon County Board of Commissioners.

New airport hangars are also in the works, Gregory said. Additionally, there are plans to try to run a 12-inch line and hook into the town’s water.

“We have a well right now,” Gregory said. “If we had a fire out here, we’d be in trouble.”

Bringing Franklin town water into Iotla Valley where the airport is located also would benefit the future elementary school near there. Insurance coverage for both the school and the airport would cost less as a result, Gregory said.

Macon Airport runway extension faces more questions

Macon County Airport Authority members are confident their application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is moving forward, but the project may still face significant procedural hurdles.

The airport is planning a 600-foot extension of its runway. In order to re-route a creek in its path, it needs approval from the Army Corp to impact five acres of wetlands and 800 linear feet of stream. The airport authority applied for a permit last fall, but in early January, Army Corp regulatory specialist Lori Beckwith put the project on hold.

At an airport authority meeting last week (Feb. 23), the project’s engineer, Eric Rysdon of W.K. Dickson, said he had addressed the concerns posed by the Army Corps.

Beckwith’s letter informed the authority that its permit application could not be reviewed because it failed to address a number of concerns raised by everyone from federal agencies to private citizens concerned about its impact. The letter also said the Environmental Assessment included in the application was out of date and that the information provided was “inadequate for us to evaluate the proposed project” and assess its impacts.

The authority was given 30 days to respond. In the letter, Beckwith emphasized the volume of public comment that had poured in — 37 letters and emails, most of them against the runway extension. She also stressed the importance of responding specifically to concerns raised by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

While the authority said last week that it had responded to Beckwith’s concerns with a report prepared by Rysdon, the report itself was not been made available for public review.

The authority’s attorney, Franklin Mayor Joe Collins, released a statement saying the report would remain private until Beckwith returns from personal leave on March 9.

“The Authority feels it inappropriate to make public the report until such time as Ms. Beckwith has had the opportunity to review it. The report is very positive and favorable to the project, and the Authority is anxious for its public release at the earliest appropriate time,” Collins’ letter read.

The future of the runway extension project hinges on the Army Corp allowing the airport to re-route the stream.

Under the Clean Water Act, a project must show that it is choosing the “least environmentally damaging practicable alternative.”

Beckwith’s letter asked the Macon County Airport Authority to address all the concerns expressed by entities opposed to the project, but she also asked for a clarification of the project’s purpose.

“In addition to responding to the comments detailed in this letter, please describe any off-site alternatives you considered and explain why these are or are not practicable and clarify the applicant’s main purpose for the project (safety or economic development) and any secondary purpose,” the letter stated.

The airport authority has received heavy criticism for the way it has shared information about the runway expansion project with the public.

Olga Pader, a member of the Save Iotla Valley group, has been an outspoken critic of the project and sees Beckwith’s concerns as a justification of the criticism expressed by the Iotla community.

“What’s interesting to me is the questions the Army Corps of Engineers were asking are similar to the questions we as citizens have been asking all along,” Pader said.

Pader believes the underlying motivation for the runway extension is a misguided economic development program that would adversely affect the Iotla Valley.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s expressed concerns that “multiple federally threatened and endangered species and federally designated critical habitats” downstream of the project could be affected. Meanwhile, the Cherokee voiced concern that the impacts to the ancestral graves and the presence of a historic Cherokee trading path were not properly evaluated.

Should the permit get rejected, the runway project may need to pursue an Environmental Impact Study, a much longer procedural process that could involve more federal oversight and public hearing requirements as it moves forward.

Jackson airport to get repairs, new level of attention

The Jackson County commissioners have breathed new life into the county’s airport authority by taking it over.

After appointing themselves to five of the six seats on the airport board last month, the commissioners met in their new capacity for the first time this week and began their work of running the airport. They voted to tap $150,000 in federal funds to fix the Jackson County Airport’s failed runway lighting system — a move that required a $16,500 matching grant on the part of the county, despite previous resistance by commissioners to plow tax money into the airport.

Taken together, the actions represent a new relationship between the county and the airport and may revitalize what had been a decaying piece of infrastructure. Jason Kimenker, the sole survivor from the last airport authority, saw the New Year’s first meeting in a positive light.

“I’d been waiting for a long time for the county commissioners to step up to the plate and take responsibility for the appointment of the authority’s members to make sure the airport was managed and maintained properly,” Kimenker said. “What happened today was a pleasant surprise.”

Still, the new arrangement is bound to pose its own challenges. In the first place, confusion over wording in the airport’s charter language led to questions about whether the authority should consist of a five- or six-person board. After determining that the most recent version of the charter stipulates a five-person board, Commissioner William Shelton offered to resign his seat.

That leaves the four other commissioners and Kimenker on a board that has the job of functioning as an independent entity, which means the commissioners must wear two hats.

On Monday, the authority approved bids for the runway lights, went over a list of other needed repairs and standing issues, then adjourned. The commissioners then donned their county board hats and voted to authorize the matching grant of $16,750 from the county’s contingency fund to land the federal grant money.

County Chairman Brian McMahan, who was elected chairman of the airport authority on Monday night, stressed that the commissioners would spend much of the next three months learning the airport’s business and determining the best way for the authority to move its agenda forward.

Commissioner Tom Massie, who had been an outspoken critic of the county’s allocation of money to the airport, was clear about the reason he wanted to take over the authority, pointing out the series of issues that had ended up in the county board’s lap over the past few years.

“If we’re going to have to face those things anyway, we may as well be on the airport authority and make sure it works and it’s safe for the public,” Massie said.

But the airport authority had languished for the past two years as a result of outstanding debts, a lack of county support, and a dwindling board. Monday’s meeting showed that the period had yielded a new string of issues. The lighting system failure, an inoperable fuel tank, lack of a routine maintenance plan, even concerns over the cost of toilet paper, and unresolved legal disputes with nearby landowners about erosion from the airport.

Massie wasn’t happy with much of what he heard.

“I was disappointed because I thought some of these issues had been resolved, particularly with regard to the lawsuits,” Massie said.

A large contingent of pilots turned out for the meeting, including former authority member John Glenn, a flight instructor. Glenn is pleased with the commissioners’ willingness to take on a leadership role at the airport.

“The airport is part of the county infrastructure. You can’t be separate from and part of the county at the same time,” Glenn said. “We’ve been little by little trying to turn the airport back into the county fold. It’s a good move. They’ll have to walk a mile in our moccasins now.”

Kimenker has enjoyed a peculiar transition, having woken up one morning to find himself sitting alone amongst the county commissioners.

“It’s interesting,” Kimenker said. “Now we have all the county’s concerns in the same room and that’s a good thing.”

Jackson commissioners take over airport authority

Facing a moribund governing body and a facility once again in need of expensive repairs, the Jackson County board of commissioners did what it’s been unwilling to do in the past –– assume management of the airport.

The commissioners totally overhauled the Jackson County Airport Authority by appointing themselves to five vacant seats on its board and bringing the governing body up to its full complement.

The move ends a long-running power struggle between an airport authority that largely represented the interests of the local flying community and a county board that had grown weary of contributing tax dollars to a tiny aviation field plagued by problems.

The county has twice attempted to ratchet up its control over the airport in recent years. The authority once functioned as an autonomous body, but county leaders grew displeased with it in 2005 and attempted to remove and reappoint some of its members. The county was sued for overstepping its bounds, however.

In a second move to exert influence, commissioners got a special bill passed by the state legislature that changed the airport authority’s bylaws and gave the county control over its appointments. The authority has since been plagued by vacant seats, however, as the county commissioners failed to make timely appointments.

The latest move is the ultimate step, giving the commissioners full control of the airport’s future — including its finances, a major sticking point for the county.

While the vote settled the fate of the airport’s governing body, it didn’t represent a unified voice about the airport’s mission in the future.

Chairman Brian McMahan and Commissioner William Shelton, the lone dissenter in the 4 to 1 vote, both indicated that they believe it is the county’s responsibility to maintain the airport and indicated they would be willing to contribute money to help make the airport self-sufficient.

“The airport is here, and I believe it’s something we have to deal with,” McMahan said.

Commissioners Tom Massie and Joe Cowan reiterated their positions that while they supported keeping the airport safe for the public, they did not support any expansion of the airport in the future.

County Manager Ken Westmoreland offered the board a number of improvement scenarios that could help the airport move toward self-sufficiency. The construction of T-hangars, which could be rented to pilots to park their planes, would provide a steady source of revenue, while widening the airport’s runway could bump the airport into a new FAA tier and help leverage more state and federal dollars.

Massie and Cowan said they would not vote to spend county money on those improvements, however.

The airport is currently saddled with a failed lighting system that will cost $150,000 to fix. Planes cannot use the airport after dark, effectively making the airport useless as a site for emergency landings, for example.

The county qualifies for grant money that will pay for those repairs if it’s willing to contribute $16,667 of local matching funds in return for the $134,000 of state and federal grant money.

The commissioners will take up the issue of funding the lighting repairs at their first meeting in January. That will likely be the first in a series of debates about how to get the most of the county’s investment in the facility.

Cowan was adamant that the county not pour more money into the airport.

“If we go with the lights, we’re encouraging people to land at night, and I don’t want to encourage that,” Cowan said.

An unstable past

Located atop a nearly 3,000-foot mountain in Cullowhee, the Jackson County Airport was built to avoid the low-lying fog that often shrouds the Tuckasegee River Valley. Its unique location provides pilots with an alternative landing strip to lower lying airports like Macon County’s.

However, as a result of its location on a flattened mountaintop, the airport has had to continually deal with issues relating to erosion and runoff. Shortly after its completion in 1976, a landslide forced the closure of approximately 500 feet of the runway. The slide progressively worsened until a repaving project finally restored the runway to 3,003 feet.

In 1990, a storm destroyed the two-story terminal building as it was awaiting renovation. But perhaps the most damning blow came in 2005, when the airport’s inability to cope with a heavy rainstorm resulted in a lawsuit by neighbors on the receiving end of a small landslide.

While commissioners had grown weary of supporting the airport, the county responded to the lawsuit by giving the airport $65,000 in 2007 that triggered the release of approximately $600,000, or four years’ worth, of federal matching grants. The airport authority hired engineers to study the site and make a recommendation.

County Manager Ken Westmoreland, who sits on the airport authority, said the study showed the site was structurally sound but incapable of dealing with heavy rain.

“What was determined was the airport proper is stable, but the problem was it could not handle a major rain event properly. It simply cascaded down the mountain and affected local property owners,” Westmoreland said.

The airport authority subsequently used approximately $500,000 to create a detention pond system capable of handling major rain events and also to upgrade the airport’s communication and approach lighting systems.

Future of Jackson airport up in the air

The Jackson County airport has reached a crossroads.

For years the little aviation field above the clouds has been a financial burden on the county. Now, with its governing body dwindling in number and its revenues lagging behind its operating costs, the board of commissioners has to decide whether to invest in its expansion or put a lid on it.

For County Commissioner Tom Massie, the decision is pretty clear.

“The airport has been somewhat of a millstone around the board’s neck since the 1970s,” Massie said. “A lot of people in Jackson County don’t even think we need an airport.”

Massie and fellow Commissioner Joe Cowan see the airport as a county service that is more a luxury than necessity.

“Just to cut to the chase, a lot of people have felt from the beginning with the airport that it really couldn’t be justified in terms of taxpayer dollars when less than 1 percent of the people in the county use it,” Cowan said.

But defenders of the airport argue that it’s fallen victim to local politics and bad luck, and that it offers more than just a luxury playground for handful of private plane owners.

Jim Rowell, a local pilot who sat on the airport authority before being removed and reinstated in 2005, believes the board is punishing the airport for what amounts to political grievances.

Rowell said the airport is an important piece of infrastructure that the county can maintain without a huge investment, thanks to state and federal matching grants. Essentially, the county is eligible for $150,000 of matching grants each year in return for an annual investment of just under $17,000.

“If you want to know the value of an airport to a county, talk to a county that doesn’t have one,” Rowell said. “I don’t understand the mentality of county commissioners who will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawsuits they know they can’t win, give large raises to their highest paid employees when they can’t afford it, and they can’t come up with $17,000 for the airport.”

But the argument over the airport’s future is not just about money. It’s about whether the county can forgive its past.

 

Economic development or financial drain

In 2005, a major rainstorm became the airport’s latest calamity. It cost the county more than $60,000 in legal fees to beat a lawsuit brought by neighboring property owners whose land was inundated with mud and runoff from the airport.

The county eventually won its lawsuit, but the fallout and expenses are still on the minds of the commissioners, who see the airport as a drain on the budget and not as an engine of economic development.

“We’ve virtually been in lawsuits from day one,” said Massie. “Whatever it’s generated we’ve probably paid out to lawyers. I don’t believe anyone can point to concrete proof that it has created economic development.”

Bill Austin, a local pilot who has been heavily involved with the airport authority, said the airport has both direct and indirect economic development benefits, basically because it offers a way for businesses and property owners to find Jackson County.

Austin relocated to the area after his retirement from the military because of its airport, he said.

“I knew nothing about Jackson County when I bought my first piece of property here,” Austin said. “I saw the airport on the chart. I flew in and said ‘This is it’.”

Austin believes the airport has played a role in bringing in high-profile national corporations like Wal-Mart, because their site development scouts had an easy way into the county. Austin has seen executives with Harrah’s Casino fly in and out of the airport, more anecdotal proof of its importance to the region.

Rowell doesn’t understand how a regional airport that carries the county’s name could be such a low priority for its commissioners.

“This is the Jackson County airport,” said Rowell. “One way or another you’ve got to put some money into it. The airport is working hard to make itself a viable entity and all they need is matching money.”

The ongoing struggle between the airport authority and the county commissioners over the $17,000 required to release the federal matching grants has come to a head.

Board members like Cowan and Massie argue that the airport should generate its own revenue to meet the match. Rowell and Austin argue they would already be self-sufficient if not for the landslide following heavy rains and the county’s stinginess.

 

The power struggle

The current airport authority’s chairman, Greg Hall, announced recently that he was stepping down from his position at the end of the year. The airport board was already operating with just three of the five members it is supposed to have, due to failure by the county commissioners to appoint the additional members.

Hall’s departure will leave only the board with just two members –– County Manager Ken Westmoreland and Sylva business owner Jason Kimenker.

Kimenker appeared at the board’s meeting last week to urge them to appoint new members to the authority.

“I am here to make it pretty clear that we are having trouble at the airport with only three out of the five people were are supposed to have,” Kimenker said. “As of January 2010, we will have only two members. I would appreciate it so much if the county commissioners could have appointments made appropriately so we can run the airport as we have been tasked to do so.”

The airport authority is a state-sanctioned governing body independent of the county. Its original charter set it up as a self-promulgating board with the power to name replacements when a member stepped down.

The county board, unhappy with its lack of oversight, took over the role of appointing airport members in 2007, a move that required special state legislation setting up the new power structure.

Under the new setup, the authority recommends its picks for the board, but ultimately, the commissioners can appoint whoever they want.

Rowell said the board has stood by and watched as the authority’s numbers have dwindled, however.

“Three times the airport authority has submitted names to the (commissioners), and they’ve not chose either of the names nor have they brought forward anyone else,” Rowell said.

At a time when the airport is in need of open, honest discussion, Rowell believes the board is circling its wagons.

“The trouble now is you don’t have the pilots and the public and the commissioners and all the stakeholders sitting down to say what are we going to do with this thing?” said Rowell. “But that’s exactly what we were doing a few years ago.”

The county board and the airport authority worked closely together at one point, working out a 10-year plan and setting aside money from N.C. Department of Transportation grants for the potential construction of revenue-generating “T-hangars,” which are essentially personal parking spaces for private aircraft.

In 2005, the relationship between the commissioners and the airport authority fell apart when the commissioners removed two members — its chair Tom McClure and Rowell.

Rowell said the political struggle that resulted in his removal was merely fallout from a separate controversy over the Economic Development Committee, which McClure chaired as well. The county decided McClure was doing a poor job heading up economic development, and in the process of removing him from that post unseated him from the airport authority for good measure.

Rowell and McClure sued the county over their removal and won. Rowell believes bad feelings from that power struggle have made certain board members opposed to the airport’s best interests.

 

Where to go from here?

Earlier this month, Cowan said the board needed to revisit the issue of the airport and come up with a mission for the airport authority before appointing replacement members. He said the commissioners would take up the issue at a workshop in December.

The decision facing the commissioners is essentially what to do with an airport they don’t want to run. Because of commitments attached to federal matching grants, the county can’t shut its airport down without paying back nearly a million dollars.

The airport authority has urged the board to release its last two years of matching grant funding. According to Westmoreland, the authority has the potential to tap into as much as $300,000 in grant money currently on the table — essentially two years worth of federal allocations — if the county is willing to put up a 10 percent match.

Coupled with existing money in the airport’s reserves, the grants could fund construction of eight T-hangars at a total cost of $424,000. The airport has more than 50 people on a waiting list for permanent hangars for their private planes. Austin said the hangars would generate about $24,000 per year of revenue to supplant operating costs at the airport.

Meanwhile N.C. DOT and the FAA have indicated they would supply grant money to give the airport a GPS approach system if the airport would widen its runway by 10 feet, a project that would cost around the same amount as the hangars.

“The authority is going to have to make a decision which way it goes first,” Westmoreland said. “We don’t have the money to do both at once.”

Massie, though, said the board is not in the mood to spend any more money on the airport besides what is required to protect the public.

“We will do what is necessary to make sure the flying public is safe and the citizens of Jackson County are safe, but I don’t think our board is going to participate in any kind of expansion of those facilities,” Massie said.

Commissioner William Shelton said he is also against any expansion of the airport. He believes the airport is useful to the county on some level, but he is concerned that it has become a drain on the budget.

“Anytime you can spend $16,000 to get $150,000, that is hard to pass up,” Shelton said of the grant. “But it is still tax dollars so you have to justify it to the taxpayer. So how do you justify it?”

Austin rejects that reasoning.

“$16,000 a year out of a $61 million budget? Is there really such a drain on the taxpayer?” Austin said.

A major sticking point in the argument is that for a long time the airport authority has talked about becoming a self-sufficient entity, capable of covering its operating costs and supplying the money to obtain matching grants, but that goal has yet to materialize.

Recently, the airport suffered another freak setback when its brand new lighting system was hit by a lightning strike. New lights would cost nearly $150,000.

The airport’s defenders claim that if the county releases its portion of the matching money, then the airport will be back on the road to self-sufficiency. But the commissioners say they’ve heard that line before, which is why they refused to release the matching grant last year.

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