Airport Economic Development Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Hey. What is today? The twelfth. K. Today is June 12. Calling to order the Erie Airport Economic Development Advisory Board. Michael Bowden. Here. Brandon Bell. Here. Kevin Cain. Here. Emma Dowling. Here. Paul Huff Family's here. Miles. Here. Andrew. Here. Jennifer. Here. Great. Not only we have a quorum, we love everybody here, which is awesome.

Yeah.

Welcome, both of you. Pledge of allegiance.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of

The United States Of America and to the republic for which she stands, one nation under God, aided as a soul, with liberty and justice for all. Does everybody have a copy of the minutes from last time? If not, they're right here. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Kind of a silly question, but everybody's had a chance to look at them. Well, were sent out a little while. Any questions, comments, concerns? Question. Neil, what is your drop dead time to get out of here? Another twenty, twenty minutes. Twenty minutes from now? Okay. So I know the agenda.

Is a suggestion. Correct.

And I wanna make sure that the two liaisons have plenty of time to absorb what it is we're gonna go over because we're gonna cover your document for change potential change to

Yep.

K. So we're gonna jump to that and start doing all the other stuff because I wanna make sure you're here too. You can participate. Okay. Do we have that extra copies of that? Actually, I didn't make copies, but I can

see about printing them real quick.

Yeah. Julian probably could Okay. Get us closer. Alright. To now monopolize, you wanna give a just a synopsis of what we're talking about? No. Kevin, why don't you do it? Just a kind of a synopsis for for their benefit as to what we're talking about as long

as I say the audience. So the audience is yeah.

Check this. See. Thank you.

Yep. Let me pull it up here. Just a sec.

The ordinance is this town of Erie ordinance that establishes the airport fund. It's a self sustaining fund and governs how transfers occur between the general fund, which are characterized as loans essentially to the airport fund, which we must be paid back immediately out of airport revenues. So the concern that the board has seen with that is that the airport is in a position where it can essentially not generate its own revenue because it's taking money from town general fund. But as soon as the airport generates any revenue, which would allow the airport to eventually become self sustaining, that's immediately repaid back into the general fund to offset the funds that were transferred previously out of the general fund. We reviewed the ordinance several meetings ago, and Drew put together a draft letter that addresses the recommendations of the board because, again, we're an advisory board, so it's our recommendation of some changes that would impact two dash seven dash two, which is the ordinance provision that would align it to more modern principles and allow the airport

to then begin to fill

in its own revenue and then keep that revenue for expenditures on the airport. When the ordinance was originally written in 1991, that was pretext fair bill of rights amendment to the Colorado constitution, and the fund was referred to as an enterprise. The issue that that you see with that is after the passage of chamber, enterprise has a very specific meaning under Colorado law, and it dictates how an entity can be self governing, take little revenue from other sources, but generate its own and keep it all on that enterprise facility. This isn't operated as an enterprise, so that would eliminate confusion to remove references to it as an enterprise fund and simply call it an airport fund, which is what it would ultimately be.

The

language that, again, is most concerning that we would like, to recommend be changed is that income developed, by the airport, revenue generated by the air airport completely remain on airport. And so we've got a draft here. We'll be getting a copy, here a minute to circulate to everyone. I have a couple of of comments just stylistically to eliminate some references to enterprise. But, otherwise, I think it's a solid recommendation that tracks exactly what we discussed in our prior special meeting.

Otherwise, the airport itself will never be able to generate any of the funds for upgrades to the airport or improvements or anything because they simply go back to the town's general fund, and then they're gonna come back for those type of improvements.

When I get to generating keep them. Yeah. Yeah.

And and the overall goal for the airport is for the airport to be self sufficient and continue to grow. But like many things in this town, there's there's a long term vision, and the long term vision is that that, you know, this this airport generates enough revenue to cover all the expenditures. And and I think aside from this, there's also a push to try and boost revenues by updating the the fee structure at the airport so that we can make this more self sufficient than it currently is.

So for your benefit specifically, kind of the history that the I think we talked about it a little bit when you and I Mhmm. Get together. When this board was formed five years ago now, one of our first things out of the block was to recommend renewing the contract with Vector Air and separating what it was, which was all bundled together to kinda clarify or seek clarity not only with Jason's or Vector Air's agreements with the town, but the fund itself because we really didn't know how much was coming in, what was going out, and how much was the balance.

Do we know now?

Well, we do. Yes. And the

Separation of Kim. Yeah.

Thank you. The separation of the management of the airport for the town and the tenant of the airport for the FBO, which happened to be the same continues to be the same person and the fund. Through that separation and the agreements that will have been signed and are still being, as you know, negotiated with Jason's as a tenant, Became clear to us that this arrangement and the way the fund was set up is probably not in the best interest of the airport and what Emmett was saying in terms of ultimately making the airport a positive revenue entity. As it stands now, one thing we did get the town to agree to is a budget line item for the management and maintenance of the airport that has passed. But even though the budget of $240,000 for the contract for management at the airport exists, and I think it's about a $150,000 in the budget for additional expenses, the tractor breaks, whatever, The ordinance requires, and it says specifically, that the money from the airport fund for through the fence fees, get fuel flow fees, tie downs, any other ground leases, that money must be spent first to cover his contract and any other expenses.

With that in mind, we're concerned that should we wanna do or the town wanna do specific investments in the airport, they won't have the money because it's gonna get sucked up, at least particularly now. We'll forever be in the hole. In the hole. We'll never get out of it. Yes, sir.

I'm I don't remember this, but the 11/28/2023 revisions, do

we know what that was? 11/2823

revisions. So it shows on the

Question for this gentleman. I

think I'm just pulling that off the website. I I can't speak to which specific line was revised where. We run that by council.

The date again?

Shows 11/28/2023, so I don't remember anything about that.

To revisions to what? To the ordinance. And that's it. No. Yeah. I don't think they're There's thirty one twenty twenty three. Let me see if I can hook up the

That was probably the charter stuff.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. It won't be

Probably amended the whole code to reflect council and other stuff.

Ordinance of town council, the town of Erie amending the Erie municipal code to replace all references to board of trustees with Tenneco. Yeah. Okay. So yeah.

Just simply that. Yeah. Yeah. So as liaisons to the airport board and per recommendation from town staff liaison, this meeting becomes important because we're essentially in the process of handing it off to you all. Mhmm. It being the ball to then run with it and move it forward, hopefully, to discussion with the council and attorneys and whatnot staff so that we can kinda get some movement on it. We are

the advisory board for economic development at the airport, which will never happen, whatsoever. Would be no economic.

Could I add anything here?

Just that, you know, this body, in writing that letter, in order to get in front of counsel, really needs the support of you guys. And that that's what Malcolm said in the past is that, you know, regardless how this body advises, in order to get something in front of counsel, it really needs support of the liaisons to counsel. And so I think it's pretty clear this body supports that letter as written. But for Malcolm's position to get it in front of council, really needs you both to understand it, support it, and carry it to that next step.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I mean, we we can talk about it, but I I know I mean, on the time that I've been liaison on this board, I mean, these items have been discussed almost from day one. I mean, I I don't know when we officially started looking at the order outs, but yeah. The I mean, that's kinda always been the plan, so, we can talk about it. I think the other

primary thing right now is questions Yeah. Backstory. That's right. I think we came to that, but we really should change it at the point where we had Yep. On staff and Kevin. Just so you know, Kevin works for Denver International Airport. It's a tab the city of Denver. He's an attorney. Well versed in this stuff. So Although he doesn't give us advice as an attorney, he's he's gonna give the caveat. You're not

my client. This is not me.

There you go. There you go.

So we're not getting a bill

for the Unfortunately. There you go. So, really, it's what do you wanna know? Any other additional information?

I still feel like this is not going to do anything. So the airport revenues, there's no future for it. I'm not convinced yet.

I know you're not, and we talked about it.

We talked about it. The more I look into it, it just looks like a sore place, but no chance of revenue and how the even the things that are contracts with vector and all that are also not straightforward. We just extended it for six months, but I don't see a like, you could convince me, but, like, we talked last time. We still left at a place where we can talk, we can discuss. I'm open to listening.

I know that, and I appreciate it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think what you're saying is in part what we're saying. And part of what we're saying with this is the current construct of the ordinance and even though we've made progress to get farther along the line to that end, we don't see it ever happening if that does get changed.

Even if we change that, it won't happen is what I'm saying. Because if you look at the past from, like, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, like, time it was there. Yeah. There was no revenue as such or no plans for it or any future, but that's not just the arguments. Right? So if you had generated a lot of money and gave it to the city, and then we didn't get anything back from the city to improvement, then there is a issue. But here, it is, like, always a negative, and city has to fund it. So even if you keep it, change the ordinance and say we'll keep the money. There's nothing to keep there. Part of

that was because there was no board like us figuring out how

Yeah. Stealing. I'm not seeing a solid plan that the board is also telling that this is the plan that will generate money. This is first quarter. This is last year. This is five years. This is twenty years. I don't see a plan. Like, all I'm hearing is let's have a restaurant, rooftop restaurant kind of thing, like, ideas, thoughts. You know? I'm not saying exactly that, but I don't see any revolutionized

then. Number one, I would say that you can't really use '70, eighties, and nineties as an example because

I can use, like, 2000, 2010, and, like, last twenty five years, can use. Let's talk about the last

five years since this board has been in place. Yeah. Okay? But there has been development outside the airport. K? And I know the numbers that you're using is $6,000 a year. We talked about that. It's not really a real number. It's a it's coming from a unqualified entity to evaluate those

Even the number that you showed from, like, a third party is also, like, not solid numbers, like, concrete numbers. Those are all predictions. Right? There is

no No. They're not predictions. That's what

I'm getting at. So the office complex that I work out of, that is on it's not on the airport grounds, but it's

Direct access.

Direct access. So with that direct access for all those units, there is a $15,000 commitment per year from that HOA that goes into the airport fund. That's $15,000. That's already $9,000 more than that $6,000 number. However, there's also how many residents at the airport? You know, there's

35, I think, that paid through the 55 total.

Yeah. So they're 30 something actually paid So they're paying how much? 600. They're all paying $600 per year for access to the airport. That is another sum of of money that comes into the airport. There are ground leases for those little porta ports, essentially portable t hangers. They pay ground leases into the airport fund. There is also a percentage of the fuel flow that comes out of the airport for airplanes to fill up their tanks. A percentage of that portion of that goes to the airport fund. A portion of it also goes to the town directly.

But my point being, it is not the same as it was in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. There have been substantive changes. There's also the 10 acre parcel David Nassar's project. That's five buildings. It's approximately 37,000 square feet of buildings that will be required to pay a fee for airport access into the airport fund. It has to go into the airport fund. The problem is that fund, if we generated $2,000,000 this year into that fund

Goes back to the general fund.

It all goes to the general fund. We have no ability to determine what to do with that money.

It's Also, the FAA grants.

So there will no there will be no way possible that the the airport can reach self sufficiency and, quite frankly, generate revenue to the town. For example, I know we all wanna build a building. We all wanna build a road. We wanna build have a, like you said, a restaurant up top. Well, if that happens, great.

But their sales taxes and other revenue that the airport fund will not get, can't get, shouldn't get, those taxes go to the town, not to the airport. So, ultimately, it is beneficial. We hope that it will generate excess revenue for both the airport fund and the town. But as it exists right now, I agree. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's never going to be positive cash flow for either the airport or the town. We're trying to fix that. We've made steps, but we got a ways to go. And we don't feel we can go much further at this juncture without something being changed with that fund.

So a couple things on that. And one, mentioning the the through through the fence fees for the the, their park. Yeah. And in the study, I believe so because we're not charging every house, we're only char is my current understanding, we're only charging the houses that what is it? That that have an airplane on them that are using it or that are

Well, you all jump in anytime. So there are a number of houses there. They do not all have direct access to the runway. And I think the clarification

I think what they're charging right now is for those people that actually have airplanes that are using access to the airport. So there's 30 something. There's 50 something lots that have access to the airport, but 20 or so don't use that access. Okay.

So the I I remember this was something that came up in the study because it's like, is that and, you know, not not to get controversial, but I thought it was brought up, you know, do you charge the ones that because your your house is valued basically by being in the airport. Right. So That's right. In the air park. So That's right. You know, is that a I guess there is a potential to create additional revenue there. Sure.

If we didn't went down that route,

I'm not saying we do, but just that was something I think came up in study. So there's additional revenue there. There's, again, the development of additional hangers that, you know, wherever we do that, there's additional of future funds. So I hear what you're saying and to an extent that, I mean, I think whether it's going to be 100% self sufficient or whatnot, to me, it's maybe a little bit pick and knit. So I mean, we know from the study, municipal airports are generally tend to be heavily subsidized.

I don't think that's a bad thing. I think, but to your point about the ability to develop future plans for the airport to develop future things that by not it's it's really just an accounting thing because if they can't if you can't hold the money in the airport fund, then you don't have for some of the the grant funding and and so we're we're potentially missing opportunities. So, and I I think that's to to to get the buy in from staff, that's probably the way to present it because on the on the and I don't know, Julie, maybe you could, chime on this too, but I imagine the pushback that we may get from this is that, those general fund transfers in and out or whatever, it's something they have to account for, but CERA's got to account for the budget at the end of the year. So we have other general budget rollovers. I don't know what that number looks like, but if they if it's something where traditionally they had done a transfer into the general fund, then the year they're showing this balance of the general fund.

Well, now that's tech the money that's not available. From from a I mean, from an ideal standpoint, you know, money is fungible. It it doesn't necessarily make a difference as as far as what things we're we're we're paying for, but it does it does affect how the airports utilizing this, but on the flip side, it also I think affects how the town from an accounting standpoint is we've got to somehow realize that, we're allowing that money to stay in the airport fund that's not being recouped. So that's essentially negative balance or negative debt to the general fund. So that's probably the point we got approach and that's my guess is that the form that this takes is that we would have, I would like we were going to have a study session on the budget in July.

This should be a part of that discussion. So, you know, we can fully get staff on board, with us. And then and then, when when we're actually officially adopting the ordinance, I mean, I'll essentially, if there is support from or, really, the mayor can put this on the mayor can put any agenda item on there, himself, or it takes four, counselors to to get something on the agenda. And then then it's, you know, it's really just a matter of getting support, which I think if we get the buy in of staff, we fully understand how this affects the general fund budget and the overall balance sheet, then I, you know, I I don't see this as that big of a deal. It's just it's if it makes sense, it's really just just an accounting problem for from from the the town side of things.

Oh, I think

it is, but then it isn't. Real quick. Mhmm. That August 5 study session Mhmm. Is the airport conversation part of it, or is the whole study session about the airport?

It is not. I know things have been moved around a little bit. There is an airport conversation on a future meeting, but it is currently on for give me a second. August 5, and it is a study session. It is one of two items, and it's the second one. So it'll be about two hours in the meeting. But it's it's airport, everything. It's operations. It's finances.

That's what's that's what the mayor reached out to me, and he said, hey. Here's what it is. It's fifth. We talked about it, but we would like this to be on that agenda. Yep. Yep. I can I didn't tell him that because I didn't know when we were gonna have this conversation? Okay. Yeah. So oh, we gotta add that because he knows nothing about this. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. So And that's purposeful because based on his guidance, Julian's, we wanna make sure we do this according to the way we're told that we're doing it. So it wouldn't be appropriate for me to send that to the mayor. Say, hey. Yeah. I wanna put this on there. I wanna make sure that it comes to you first because that's what we're told. Yep.

There you go. We would like it on that study session, Jim.

And the town owns the airport. It is an asset. We simply want this airport to be able to be as self sufficient and be able to improve that asset without having to drive

Go to the town from from town from the Yeah. So I don't think we I don't think we see very differently. I really don't.

Yeah. But I don't see an opportunity here. I'm sorry.

I have to go.

I understand.

But if we want to discuss more

Absolutely.

I want to see, like, maybe last five years, how much it generated or how much the city gave, like, income versus credit, debit kind of, and how much negative we are each year, and maybe projections for next five years as to, okay, this will be this much. Or if we keep it in the fund or if we borrow it from there, like you said, it's just accounting thing. Right?

How to avoid that? Is that hard to get, like, last five years? I I mean Five years, I mean,

we could

And I know you guys don't know this, but until last year, it was self supporting. You know, money that came in went out for grant grant match. It was when Jason's contract was approved 2023. Then starting January 24, when the town pledged 240,000 for Jason's contract, that started a different direction. Yeah. So in 2024, now the airport fund is in the red by 240,000. Right. And so it up until January 24, it was net neutral. And then since then, it started taking a dive into the red.

It was net neutral on paper, but it wasn't really net neutral.

Yeah. That

that's a different part of Jason was

So if we cannot explain it?

No. We can try to explain it, but, you know, honestly, this was part of the problem was that we, a board, had no clarity as to what was coming in and coming out because Jason's contract, the tenant lease, and the fund were all wrapped into one.

Right. Even with that and as of today also, I don't see that clarity as to where we'll be going and how we'll be self sufficient. It's just that we are talking numbers in the air, and this is that, that is this. And so I I I am not in a place where I'm convinced about Get you there. Yeah. I'm open to listening, though. No.

You are.

Yeah.

And and this is a starting point for discussion

Okay. To Yeah. Progress.

Kevin, is there a legal risk about operating a fund that's been ordinance described as an enterprise post

think

it's tabered. Better note. I'll Okay. Thanks. So

no, because it has been officially designated as a taper enterprise. If it were some of the accounting would Mhmm. And legal issue considering Alignment. The exchange between the town and the airport for the amount or the

percentage of support that the airport got. And then risk on federal grant structures if we're applying for grant structures. So that similarly because we're not there.

And so there's, you know, requirement for matching funds on a lot of of grants. And so the way that things are accounted for, there's not really some clarity for FAA to look at it and determine that, yeah, we qualify for that grant.

Okay. Risk of opportunity, though, not risk of opportunity. It's an update. Yeah. Got you.

It's just you. No. Yeah.

No. I mean yeah. I mean, I I totally understand where O'Neil's where O'Neil's coming from. It it I think that to what you're talking about, the magic math that we did to, you know, move forward Jason's contract and things like that. That's I think coming out of that, that's maybe what that that's the part that we've got. The whole point of doing that was to provide transparency and to really understand what we're actually paying for. And, you know, so to me, this is just the next logical step in that, but I I I think you know?

I think I think clearly we've created our own problem here. Yeah. But By doing moving forward and doing the right thing Yeah. In our minds. I wouldn't change No. What we did. Yeah. I still think it's the right thing to do. I think if anybody disagrees, say now, but I think it was the right thing to do to separate out the agreements that Jason has as both a tenant and a contract manager at the airport, I wouldn't change that decision whatsoever. Matter of fact, I'd probably be more strongly in favor of because of what I do know.

At at some point the problem. If if, you know, Jason just said Sayonara or if Jason got hit by a meteor, you've gotta get somebody to manage the airport, and there's a real cost to that. And Correct. Yeah. You yeah. That's what yeah.

Unfortunately, he does not have the perspective of a long, long period of history and knowing what we've gone through like you have.

Yeah. That's where, you know, I can I can talk with Anil and yeah? Yeah. It's not I don't I don't think he has a unreasonable perspective on things, and that's I mean, if I was coming in and looking at it brand new, I'm probably thinking the same thing. But yeah. Yeah. So curious. Yeah.

Heer, who does have some more history, what have you, have any positive influence.

On Aneel? I can't speak to that. I'm not on the council.

I Yeah.

But I think, really, the best purveyors of additional information for him, which I fully support, is all of us

Yeah.

On the airport board.

And

Yeah. And you and, of course, you. So I would say if he reaches out to any of us I will tell you, I reached out to him when I met with him at Christos. He thought it was gonna be a thirty minute, hey. How you doing? No. It was two and a half hours. He didn't wanna leave. He took a lot of notes. He was very, you know, forthcoming as he is here with his feelings, which he's entitled to, and I support the idea that he's giving me.

But I will tell you from my own experience, he's very, very open to talking about it and getting as much information as he can. So I would say if he reaches out to any of you all, please spend the time because Absolutely. He's like a sponge as far as I'm concerned. He wants more information. This point, as you can see, he feels he doesn't have enough to be cuckooze.

Yeah. And, you know, I I think, again, having a account that's in the red is the most visually appealing thing, but I I I think I think this thing to my personal opinion, the way to approach this is is is, yeah. The goal would be ideally to have a fully self self sufficient airport fund. As to how long it's gonna take to get there or whatnot is is that's a whole other question, and there's a lot of things that we need to do along the way to get to that point. I I think really the the focus of this and the purpose of this is is that you you have the you then have the tools to get you to where you need to get.

More tools. Yeah. So I that that's where I think we get, and that's why I was saying with with, what Sarah has to do for the budgets and things like that, that's a different side of things because there's a lot of moving parts in in the general fund. And so whatever again, whatever we transfer to the airport fund that's not coming back, that's a debt to the general fund. So that's something that they have to go.

Because on the general fund side, like, we have, reserve minimums and and those types of things that we have to meet that she has to account for that affect everything else in the budget. So that's the part where I think it you know, as long as there's a mechanism to figure out, you know, how the all it is is just they understand what that number is while we're transferring over to the airport fund. That that may affect general fund rollovers for the next year for any other capital improvements funds because those are some of last things that come in the budget. So from that side, that's what they're working on, if that makes sense. So it's it's

Makes total it makes total sense. I mean, the way the the way the ordinance is written, they must do what they're doing. Yep. Yeah. Their hands are tied. Exactly. Yep. They cannot do anything else. Yeah. The font, the ordinance dictates that they must do what they're doing. We're not criticizing what they're doing Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because they have to do it. It's written there.

So it sounds like Anil wants a business plan for the airport from us where it shows a path to profitability.

What I heard. Yeah. It's the same thing.

It's not Is that an anomaly in this town? Is there any other asset that the town has that is got expectations of becoming a profit center?

Well, I I don't typically, towns do not run as as profit. You have cost centers, you have cost centers

and profit centers, There's this expectation that we're

to be a profit center,

and I don't think And

there are there are ways, and I've talked to groups who can who we can retain to kind of extrapolate the math to figure out what it would take to get our account from red to not red. Like, how what would it take as far as fees through the fence fees? How many hangers would it take? What's the what's the formula we need to reach a positive balance? We can do that math. Right now, it's not. But, like, if we're talking about modifying through the fence fees to change if you have airport access, not airplane, you increase the fee. If you instead of 600 is a thousand. Like, we can do that math to figure out how do we get from the negative two forty we are currently to reaching zero. We can do that to become not a drain on the general fund.

But that that's an easy enough study. I think this is a pretty unique asset in a lot of ways. It's kind of treated as an enterprise fund without being an enterprise. We don't have other assets like that. I think the commentary that we've heard from town leadership is, you know, the the request to pull money from general fund to pay a negative balance on the airport fund, whereby the airport caters to or benefits a small portion population compared to, like, the rec center. So when you consider giving general fund money to a rec center for the community at large versus the airport, you know, which one benefits the community at large?

But that's exactly what all of our That's exactly plans are is to

That's right.

Change how much it is available and Mhmm. Mean something to the rest of the community. But

Juliet, that's a that's a great I mean, the rec center is great asset. Mhmm. 100%. No doubt about it. And and I haven't specifically looked at the numbers, but it's my understanding that it operates into the red Mhmm. Probably more than a million dollars. Sure. So how in a simplistic form, how is that accounted for? Do you or

do you know? Because it well, it it serves thousands of people in the community. Right. Whereas the perception the airport is that it mostly serves.

Yeah. You're not when you have I mean, overall revenues in the town, you've had them, you know, going up for, what, the last, you know, five five to ten years, you know, they're they're that kind of thing gets messed up if you're looking at it as an individual and and see, yes. But there's always the money there to, to account for that. So, really, it's the, honestly, the you know, our the town's biggest cost center is is is public works.

And Mhmm.

That's, you know, that's where we're really scrutinizing the money to go in there because public works then? No. No. No. It's the rec center will be under parks and rec, but but I'm just saying that that when you're dealing with the the general fund as a whole, I mean, you know, we have all the revenue all the general fund revenues going in there.

If you look in an individual item like that, it's it's operating in the red, but the the funds to the town overall have been on an upward trend. So we're we're still maintaining cash reserves, all those things that we need to do. So it's it's not as prevalent where the you we have really very limited, if any, funds going in the airport fund and a lot of expenditures coming out of there. So that's how you get to whatever it was negative, yeah, two fifty, and there's there's no way to mask that.

You know, I funded some this agree to just your basis of what you're saying because going back to you, I think the number was, like, the rec center cost $4,000,000 each year to operate, and they bring in a million and a half. Yeah. Yeah. But he's telling you, and I wouldn't either, telling you to shut the rec center. No. I agree. Yes. 2 and a half million dollars. Okay? I I'm just saying What you're talking about here and what we're having this discussion about right now is less than $500,000.

I I agree. What what I'm saying is is that all everybody's property tax, everybody's sales tax

Yeah.

That's funding into the general fund.

That's right.

So you don't you don't see that, you know, $3,000,000.

And the rec center right. The rec center is never going to be No. It's never going and that's yeah. Nobody expects it to. Nobody is going to anticipate that it will ever reach that point. We sit here for a half $1,000,000 investment from the town, believe, and it's not even a half $1,000,000 because we take in about a $160, something like that, each year in all the revenue that is generated. Yeah. K? So it's it's right now less than that by the tune of about a $160,000. So the overall percentage of the entire

The pool can be have to get some. Point Yeah.

Zero zero zero whatever. I find it incredibly frustrating to be having these conversations and having to compare an asset like the airport to an asset like the rec center because you can't. It's comparing apples to oranges. And the town got this asset for free. Yeah. They didn't pay Yeah. They didn't get the bills. No. No. I'm Pay anything.

I hear you.

So, you know, I've been critical of the town in past meetings of having never invested anything in the management and operation of the airport because of the arrangement

that Yeah.

That they had with Jason. Do you have a way of pulling up Nassar's potential project and determining the total square footage footprint of each one of those buildings?

The the new phase?

Yeah.

It's about a 170,000 square feet.

Okay. So a 170,000 square feet. Just doing the hard numbers.

Yeah. Five buildings.

But that's all five buildings, a 170,000?

Yeah. He'll phase it out. I think he'll do the first four and then the last one triggers the traffic signal.

Right. And he's he's asking a five year plan. So a 170,000 square feet times and we'll use today's number, which we don't expect that it should remain at today's number, which is 25¢ a square foot. K? That's $42,500 a year in additional revenue to the airport fund just by virtue of his project. Yeah. That's what we could anticipate. So, again, we're talking about potential revenue in the future. So when someone says, what have you done? What has improved since the seventies, eighties, and nineties?

Well, a lot, and there's stuff in the future that will improve it even more. Will it get us there? No. Will it get us closer? Yeah. Yeah. And any other projects that we're contemplating, I don't wanna use it as a hard concrete example because we're so far away from anything into that nature. But that closed runaway has a potential to generate revenue.

Sure. Yeah.

But it's revenue by selling or developing what the airport owns. Right?

Yep. Yep.

As it stands right now, somebody comes forward and decides that they wanna purchase because the town decides. I don't know. Again, I'm on public record here. The town is not deciding anything, and we're a long way from deciding. But hypothetically speaking, if someone came as a developer and decided to plop down a million and a half dollars for that's the value. They're gonna do it. They wanna develop it. Everybody's agreed. The residents are fine with it. I'll tell you right now. If that ordinance isn't in place and we don't change it,

we Yeah.

That you're right. That that's where yeah.

To keep the money Yep. I'll oppose selling anything. And I'll I would guess some of these folks here, if not all of them, would agree with me. Because what's the point?

No. I I agree. Yeah. That this is your this is the mechanism to get you on

Nothing happened just Yeah. Future of the airport in my mind Yeah. Without that being changed.

Yeah. I I'm just saying that for from his perspective, this thing of of, you know, the the, you know, the the negative 2 and half dollar balance, those things, that's just because of what I get is today. That is

I don't disagree with what he's telling me. But it becomes a situation of which comes first, the chicken or the egg.

Yep. I mean, in a lot of other towns, the airport manager is an employee of the town. So it Yeah.

And that that's a real that that's the other reason why we did this because that's a real expense. You have to know what that is. So it was hidden it it was a hidden expense the way we were doing things before because they're basically That is correct. So yeah.

That is correct. So really wasn't self balancing. Yeah. Really wasn't. And I think if Jason was here, he would tell you, speak for him, but I think he would tell you. Yeah. It's because I was doing it in a way that ensured that there was funds preserved for the matching portion of the grant money that we would have to come up with every time we wanted a new way project that was approved.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank god for that. Alright. Anybody else? Comments?

I kinda think that no one's looking at the current industry right now. Like, we have incredible growth opportunities just in aviation itself. It's a different moment in time, like, when you're comparing it to the seventies or eighties. Like, it's amazing right now.

I agree.

We also have the intangibles, which is our neighbors to the West wanting to shut their airport. Yeah. Which Our neighbors to the Southwest who want to limit as much as possible what's going on at that airport. Wanna scale it back. Yeah. No. We're fighting, and the what did we hear? You're the one who told us, Jennifer, last meeting that you got a notification from Fort Collins that they don't want people doing touch and goes.

It's not touch and goes. It's limiting how many people they allowed to have.

Oh, is that right? So they're restricting the traffic.

Restricting traffic. Yeah.

So Number of people in flight schools is up from

Yeah. Two. I the number sales

of airplanes, the desire to put those airplanes into hangars, everything is increasing.

I've I've been approached by a number of residents about that, and and my own personal feeling, it's like, we we we have an airport manager. You know? Wait. That's that's that's not our yeah. That's not my place to tell, you know, how many flight schools we allow in here or where we need you know? There's an airport here. It's gonna do airport activities. I mean, we're probably never gonna have seven forty sevens rolling in there. So I heard that. Yeah. So there there's Everyone would go over

Yeah. Town's town's public works. Yeah. Yeah. So

there there's some scope limiting, but it is the word it is now. Yeah. And it's I mean, you know, to the economic side of this, I mean, it's a major employment center for them. You work out there, you want a business out there, you have it. Yeah. You yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. There's everyone talks about getting employment centers in Erie. Well, got one right there that we that we got for free.

Yeah. It it it in deference to David Nasser, he is a pretty visionary guy and he has expended a lot of his own money and taken a huge amount of risk, but the end result is pretty obvious. Mhmm. There's a lot of business generated Yeah. Not only in phase one, which I consider where I have my business, but in phase two, I know it's kinda backwards. You're talking about a 100 and what did you just say? 170. 170,000 square feet of business. That's a lot. That's a lot, and it's common.

Yep. Yep.

There's no stopping it, which I think is great, but that will bring additional impact positive impact both to the town and to the airport just by virtue of the way everything's set up.

There's huge growth opportunities. Like, we talk about flight most the time, but it's like a mechanics and their agency and drone opportunities and the innovation right now is just incredible. So there's so much potential right now at this moment in time.

Right now. No. We're all And that's

what we got. That's what we gotta that's what we gotta convince him. I think we'll all work on it. And

Yeah. Yeah.

We'll turn them around.

Why are you laughing? You are here because if we're good with this, we don't have any more comments. I'm gonna segue directly into our hanger call. Questionnaire. Questionnaire. Yes. Are y'all good with that? I don't wanna cut anybody off.

I really like this document. This is Which

one?

Next. This one. John.

Yep. Right, my dear.

This gentleman. He lives in the deep room.

You helped him? I think it's nicely stapled.

Thank you. It's all Drew. Awesome. All Yeah. He cannot really let firm in that.

So, again, Drew formulated the draft of the questionnaire with the input from everybody. It went out.

Did anything? There's a lot

of people in the room here probably responded to it. I wish I could have. I'm not k. And you said I think you sent an email this this afternoon. How many respondents do we have? 63 so far. Okay. How many do we have on the list?

180, so 33%

or so.

That's huge, actually. For one month.

Yeah. Well, it's really, like, two weeks so far. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. So have you any of you all looked at what the respondents have said and what the

no? If if you want, I know this is kinda really hard to read, but that's the printout of all the responses so far. I emailed everybody. It's two pages and very stable. Beautiful. And then I asked our comms team to try to visualize the data a little bit in some way better than a spreadsheet. So she tried to put some some graphs or charts together to better visualize the responses so far, see if there's any patterns, see if there's any overall majorities in the responses so far. And, we left it over 30 for thirty days. We sent it out about May, so it's open until June. So we're only halfway there, but we got, basically, 35% response back already. So it might trickle in the next two weeks, but pretty much what you see now is probably what you'll see in two weeks.

Was I down.

I don't like.

Dave said everybody. Is really good. I'm glad they did. Will tell you.

I emailed everybody the real one. That that's the best you can get on a piece of paper, isn't it?

Well well, will say the one

thing that jumped out at me because I did take some time in the first list was I don't if I had 36 or so. Yeah. So there's been probably almost double that added to it. But I will tell you the one thing that jumped out for me, very surprising, the number of renters Yeah. Versus owners.

That's I think that's significant. And I was surprised in looking because I sorted the spreadsheet, which is easy to do on a computer, but I sorted it according to that. And then I looked at all of the folks who were interested in purchasing, what are the sizes that and I I think we all maybe thought that people would be out on a 50 by 50. That is not the case. The majority of the folks who are interested in acquiring by purchase a hangar at the point in time that I looked at it, they are significantly molded towards the what we said, the 45 by 40.

Yeah. Tee Hangar is the number one.

Tee Hangar being number one.

For us laypeople, what what's the difference between the

It's about a 50 by 50 wing. The largest side will hold two airplanes easy, potentially free. If you got two low wings and one high wing or two high wings and one low wing for obvious reasons, you know, you can

But the highest $2 amounts as far as like, right now over in Broomfield, similar hangers to that being built brand new are in the million dollar range. Okay. And when the the next phase of the NASA development goes and he starts they start offering a similar product to that, I would expect the price points would be fairly similar to that. Yeah. Billion. Maybe maybe a little bit less.

But Yeah.

But, you know, yes, you can put two airplanes in it, but it still takes someone to have that amount of cash to put it out to buy it in the first place.

That's right. That's right. And and I I presumed that folks would say, yeah. I'll opt for a 50 by 50 box hanger because I know I could put my airplane in there and someone else's, and I could rent it out and offset some of the cost. It surprised me that the majority of the people wanting a box hanger.

Looks like they want to put their plane in it, period. Good point.

Which is Because the 45 Which

is opposite the perception of the people that

are Correct. The 45 by 40 is gonna fit one plane or maybe a high wing with a smaller low wing or a low wing with a higher with a smaller high wing. You could probably do it. But it probably means pulling one out to get the other one out, you know, because we're juggling around, which a lot of us do anyways. A lot of people just want to rent the t hanger. They just want a place to put it.

Yeah.

They they want to participate and enjoy aviation by having a plane somewhere near their house, one of everything. They can go fly.

So it kinda surprised me because it it wasn't what I was expecting, and I thought they choose nothing. Now maybe it changed a little bit since I looked, but I would expect that maybe, you know, the trends would still be those were sure it's the same. Again, thank them for that. That's very helpful. Mhmm. So, of course, that's huge. It's better than the big one. Yeah. Mean, if even I don't know how they got to that, But even on the spreadsheet, it's kinda hard to Apparently,

I tried to put the spreadsheet in ChatGPT and said make sense of this. It it didn't work.

Yeah.

I can only go so far.

So I would say at this point, we'll wait till June. Mhmm. We'll gather what we have. Mhmm. And then

But it'll help inform what the next step is and recommendations for hangers.

Correct. Yep. But by next meeting in July, we'll have all of this Sure. It'll be closed down by then. We'll have some time for the next

meeting too. This is not indicative of a response from an elite group of people who can afford anything.

And I would agree with want to have that. I would agree with you.

This is a lot

more of the smaller guy who just wants to be able to have his plane on the airport. And the rental rates, it's kind of an interesting graphic. Mhmm. The the blue and the orange are both below Market value. The value of the lowest, most affordable option, which is Tri County, which is north of 300. Okay. And they wanna get going as quickly as possible.

Yeah. I think everybody's like me. When do want your hanger? Yesterday. There's so much demand out there. You know,

I'm not surprised. There's such a shortage.

Y'all take those, look at it, look at the spreadsheet. Bobby, down down the Send to everybody. Download it. Look at it. Parse out the data the way you think you wanna sort it like I did, and then Maybe complete observations. Be prepared to come next month with comments Mhmm. Your own observations. And, again, once they give us the final count at the June, I would do it again. Mhmm. Yeah.

Anything else on that topic? Thank you.

I'd I'd just say for anybody who watches the recording that additional comments are really helpful, like, more than we could probably dive into right here in this meeting, but that direct feedback is greatly appreciated. Oh, you mean the Just that very far right column on some of the feedback. I think those are, like, messages we should sit with and Correct.

Anything else? I don't jump around, but I just wanna make sure we're being efficient in time. Seven twelve. Do I have a question? Just waiting if we're coming. You're in

a

few minutes or so. I said yes. We don't need to cover airport enterprise fund finance report, do we?

I emailed everybody the quarterly from first quarter. If you wanna see it, here's a printout of it. We talked about finance. We'll attend the August meeting to present the second quarter, but just so everybody has the first quarter report, you can have your own time to look at it and ask them questions.

Julian, you said something earlier about when Jason's contract went into effect. Uh-huh. That was It

was December 23 in effect, basically, 01/01/2024. So it was a full year contract of '24. So the top of that report says the account's basically in the red of 240 reflecting the negative balance in '24.

We grew down

the the airport fund, $40,000 in order. In addition to transferring $50,000

on the general fund

to pay for Jason's operation for the quarter.

For the quarter. Yeah.

Yep.

And did that essentially wipe out the revenue for that period from the fund?

Revenues from first quarter actuals is about 26,000.

Yeah. For the first quarter. Mhmm. I wish I wish he was here because I know he has told me, Jason, that he doesn't transfer the money from the fund until they actually they beat the town, bill him.

Okay.

Because Vector Air Management takes the revenue in or Vector Air Management takes the revenue in, and then when he gets the bill from the town, then he pays it

Okay.

As the manager. But he keeps all the revenues in the airport fund, if you will, that's gonna go to the fund. He keeps that in a separate bank account within Vector Air. Nothing else goes in there except for those revenues. So I think it's low because it's not up to date in terms of what he's been billed and what he pays. Right? Yeah. Because the tablet's always invoicing the media.

There's there's not a lot of consistency on when certain things are paid throughout the year. So I wouldn't say first quarter is representative perfectly representative of each quarter. It's just the timing of when certain things are paid and once certain monies come in.

Can you explain this graph? Because Probably.

That

graph looks like I wish they were here.

No. I mean, come come looks like actual expenses were way below budget,

but that that's not the case when you Well, it's not expenses and budget. It's full year budget versus current actuals. Oh, okay. So it's one quarter versus the full year budget. Yeah.

That was

much more sense.

And, again, that bar graph reflects only what has been moved from

Mhmm.

Jason's Aircraft Management Fund or account to the airport fund. Correct.

Okay. The operating so there's a lot. Expenditures

super low super low

Yeah.

In February. Well

and I think that's just the lag in timing. Right?

Mhmm. So lease rental, that's ground leases through the fence, all that kind of stuff. Are

they still negotiating? Which part? B of the spreading, splitting it out. I don't know. I don't either. I try and stay out of it.

So if if you have any questions, let me know. I can get answers sent back to you guys probably by email. But, otherwise, save them for August, and we'll have finance here to answer them in

person. Ask them just as a courtesy if they'd like them beforehand so that we're not bombarding them with questions that they haven't had a chance to think about.

Where's the fun in that, Paul?

Yeah. I know. I know with my clients, I get really annoyed. Hey. Let's do a Zoom meeting. I had one happen last week. Let's do a Zoom meeting tomorrow morning at 10:00. Then they drop this one pager to me literally twelve minutes before the meeting, and I'm like,

I'm not going to give

you an answer. I can't. I'm not

I think Emmett and I are still at the ninth inning of the Rockies game right now.

Say that again. We're still

at the Rockies game right now.

Alright. Anything else on that? You need all

the support that we got.

Thirteenth win. Gotta start somewhere.

There you go. We're gonna. Mister Airfare.

Let's see. Where'd he go? We're out of home. We're out of Yep. The town and EEDC have an agreement so so the the money will be in place. The agreement will be in place. The rotary has said that they're interested in running the beer garden. Let's see what else. Angela and I just talked today for a while about a bunch of stuff. We're pretty well on track.

Hoping to have the phase two of the permit finished by the end of the month. It's due July 10 July 7. Had some questions with Brandon. We've been kind of going bouncing back and forth on how to do that. It's kind of you have to fill it all at once or there's not really, like, save your work kind of thing.

But, anyway, we're working through that. We've got a lot of the budget items. Haven't got it yet from Recess Factory, but should just have it pretty soon. The actual cost is gonna be above what the town is providing, but we'll make it up with the sponsorships.

And you still have four k from last one. Right?

And that and we still have sponsorship money from the last one. There's a bunch of stuff that got kinda added in to the last one that, you know, we've added into this one too, but stuff we know that that are gonna entities will ask for. The access point is gonna be for everyone is gonna be off of County Line and mainly Arapahoe. Working on a way of bringing in the vendors through the where Odyssey flight hours is in that development, one of those pathways across the bridge to bring them in. And Civitas has said that they're amenable so far to providing the land for the parking, which is huge because it's 1,800 cars.

We talked about a backup plan, but it's gonna cost more money, and that would be putting it across the street, essentially.

Are you confident that they're they're gonna

come through? Based on our conversations, I haven't spoken to them yet. I'd love to message with them. But and you and I talked, and you had talked to the same person. So

yeah.

But everything else is is proceeding as it should. We're just under ninety days right now. I

think we had talked last time about reaching out to CDAP to try and get a sense as to what plans are for that. It's gonna be in what's going on.

Correct? I started diving in on the CDAP thing, and that's just there's it's the c There's 50 different projects going on. The challenge is gonna be, you know, some people are not gonna get the message. They're gonna try and turn left Right. On off of Right. Highway 7. And that's inevitable that some will not get the message. We're gonna do everything we can.

We'll put

the message out. Blocked, and they can't turn

left off.

We don't People still turn left there. I just was behind someone today turning left in there. But, you know, what

That's because there's a hole. I we we can fill the hole for the air show so that there's no way to turn in there. It it the road is closed. Right? Are you talking about Airport Lane?

Talking about Airport Road. The left turn lane is not there. It's not there anymore.

Right. Will it be there by the time we get to September? That was

I for right now, we're proceeding like it won't like, nothing will change. It's gonna be exactly the way it is. And so all traffic needs to go to County Line. Yeah. Right. We're gonna try and bring the vendors in that little main street, that little feeder route in there. But the the public's gonna come in on Arapahoe and County Line, and we'll do it just the way we did it last time. And there were no traffic hiccups last time. You know? Yeah.

Boulevard was barely or wasn't open. We weren't gonna

It was just open. Right. County Line hadn't been shut down yet. You know, the the signage that the road signage is very expensive. Oh, really? Yeah. It's, like, $750 a sign, basically, for the they call it a VMS sign visual. I know the rest. That's visual message. The ones on the trailers would Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So we had three of them last time. We're gonna position one on Bonanza so that people don't drive in, and then we're gonna move it further south before the hump Uh-huh. So people see it before they get too far.

Yep. So they have a couple options on how to turn. They can turn it at the gas station or there's one more street after that. They can turn. Sunset. Sunset.

Yeah.

But, yeah, it's it's proceeding. Gonna have a little bit different like, some more flight schools are gonna be involved this year, a little more interactive, little less reliant on just quantities of airplanes out there. So that's that's about it. We're gonna have a sign up thing for volunteers fairly soon, and we'll provide spaces to all the other advisory boards that wanna put a tent there. We'll have, you know, some of the local nonprofit museums and such will be there as well.

And the announcement for other groups, so I'm happy, just went out today, so you probably need more. Right. My daughter told me that they just received

the

Oh, yeah. Angela just sent out an email just today Yeah. About that. And then the the adult beverages will be supplied by Flight Cone Brewing, which is a great company that invests in the community, and one of the owners is heavily involved with this airport. So we're just kinda simplifying it from the way it last was last time. Last time, we did we had a lot leftover and had to figure out how to return. It was kind of messy. So, anyway, that's funny. That would be great if Jason was here to

help answer this question, but the airport's gonna be closed.

There's gonna be the airport is not gonna be closed.

Can somebody run out and they let him in? He's at the door. Thanks,

The airport will not be closed.

The runway will be open.

Yes. Yeah.

Alright.

Oh, yeah. So there'll be there'll be a NOTAM alerting people that the event is happening.

But

to kinda get into some of some you know, we talked about pre unassurances, and one of the things is we can't, you know, we can't close the airport. Alder does. Well, they get waivers airspace, and they can close it for that. But And But one of the things one of the things we plan to do is to reach out to the local flight schools and say, this event is happening. Please don't. Please avoid this airport. Please avoid doing practice activities during this time period at this airport. Okay.

I have arranged for a drone show, but that's gonna kill it. There's no way they can meet up there with the earthquake.

Sorry. No. We

can start the meeting over again.

I also thought since we couldn't get any aerial show

I guess I can't complain about my commute here. It's like

It's a little global, isn't it?

Yeah. I guess you

would done that off on the air. Yeah.

You too many bring in some of their planes that can do an air show, but all of that is not possible with an active runway. Right. I'll let

you guys have that conversation offline. Okay.

Yeah. Keep going. We had we had a a meeting already last month with Vector Eric and discussed some of the measures to kinda make this as safe as possible. Sure. And so, you know, in a perfect world, we'd kinda just say, everybody stay away that's not involved, but can't really do that. So we're just gonna do an informational campaign with the flight schools, reach out to them to try and say, know, try to avoid this during these times. Does that sound reasonable, Jason?

You're just talking about trying to keep flight school traffic out there? Yeah. I mean, have we have we explored the hotels in the airport for a period of time for two hours or three hours or something like that? I we've done it

for balloon festivals and stuff. Yeah. Seems

reasonable for what we're doing.

Yeah.

We we can discuss more then.

Yeah. I mean, I I would have to check it. I just don't you know, obviously, we don't break

in I got kind of a different response when I sort of bridge the subject at the meeting last last month.

Yeah.

So we'll we'll talk about that some more.

Yeah. I I mean, I would have to we'd have to run run it up a couple of telephone poles to see if it's okay, but or tell I guess cell towers now. But Oh, yeah. See if it

So if we could close the airspace, I did secure a cool daytime That'd be great. Drum show drum show of a 100 firefly drones by the innovation center. They could do things like send the word eerie all the way across the runway. They could have a plane of drones go, maybe like a spiraling tornado drones. That makes some really

cool So given that idea, you can add you and Emily can kinda hash that out and hopefully, like, say a temporary

whatever. I mean, especially if it's just for a drone show for, like, an an hour. Like, we did a one year We had some guys with some remote control airplanes.

I'm just

gonna say guess that is the second thing.

Yeah. We shut we shut it down for, like, an hour or Alright.

So it's been done before.

We shut it down for the eerie fireworks just so we don't have planes doing touch and goes running the fireworks show. I mean Right. So the fire is getting more and more interesting. Oh, yeah. Because it makes the news for sure.

Alright. So if there's a way to do it and we can fit it in, then probably would be It would That will be something where we

greatly enhance the community's enjoyment.

I was gonna say if we can make it happen, we know it's gonna happen, we can publicize it, and more people will get juiced about coming Yes. Which is what we want. Yeah. So alright. Cool. Anything else on that subject?

Not at the time.

Covered it. Tell Angelo you said hello,

and then we're very thankful that she's Absolutely. Doing what Michelle's doing.

One last thing about that is you sent out a message to the Air Park residents on heavy saying that it was September 10.

I did. Yes. That's my fault. I I,

for some reason, might have been I put the tenth down. It's Sunday. Sunday, September 7. Yeah.

There were two places where it says September 10, this email and something else that have to Alright. We may want to correct that. Yeah. I don't know. But That's

It's on the calendar town's calendar.

Yes. On town's calendar, it's correct.

It'll yeah.

It checks. It doesn't fully go on

the calendar calendar until it's fully permitted, which is in process. Okay.

But it's on the event be known. It's the seventh. Thank

you. Thank you for

letting everyone know.

And then I forgot about so fairly soon, there'll be Angela has gone through an extensive process of reading the Facebook page with the current year. So the social media will stuff will start going out. That's cool. With more information and and and and such. So

Great. Thanks. Airport manager. Yeah. I haven't had an airport manager's report in quite a while.

Happens tomorrow.

Well Didn't mean to spring it on. No. That's okay. Probably the biggest update is that this year's project is relocation of the runway light vault, which is the main power source and control system for the runway lights. It's currently entangled in the FBO Building. So it runs the power runs in from one side. The control box is somewhere in the middle, and on the back, north side of the building is the main power transformers.

What are

they relocating it to? There there's three locations they've talked about.

EPD?

Yeah. One is up by the Windstock, which I recommended was is not a good idea for a future road, potentially. The other location was on the south end of the ramp right before the ramp enters the taxiway, but there's there's one or two other locations that are possible, but those are probably the two best. The other if they could get power over where the AWOS the new AWOS is now, then relocating it over there would also be a good option. But that involves getting quite a bit of power underneath the runway. So that might involve locating a new an actual power transformer on that side of the so that that might just be

a cost as airport manager.

I think I put it next to the. Yep.

What's Yeah. Time frame

on that? Pretty standard for projects. It's in design now. It'll go out to bid probably in the next two months and probably September, October get built.

Potential closing of the runway if they put it over there.

Maybe. Possibly. But That's how they go. I think they would've I would think they'd have to bore. The the option of digging up the runway to put it, would not I think if there was gonna be a disturb disturb disturb the concrete, long way, I don't think that we would pick that location. So unless we can bore it from one side of the taxiway, which is what we did with the AWOS wiring.

Right.

So It's pretty well. Yeah. They've only started running, and then it just should wind over. So yeah. I think that's where I mean, that would be the ideal location because then that kinda segregates all of the big the major systems in the same place. And updates it because it's really old. Yes. Yep. Yeah. The wrong lights are probably fifteen, eighteen years old. The regulator the the taxiway lighting is newer, LED, but there are times where it quits working, and all you have to do is flip the breaker off and back on, and it starts working.

I didn't kick him.

Well, that's that's step two. That's step two in the manual. Flip the breaker, then kick the kick the regulator, but never had to get to step two. So

We missed the discussion, unfortunately, about the response to the questionnaire.

I think we talked about it the other day.

You had 30 to 35 response rate. You got it in the email, and we'll cover it again. But look at it. It's pretty interesting, some of the responses.

It's really that big one in front of you, but good luck reading.

Oh, wow.

It's in the email.

Yeah. So Do you look at it? Be interested to see what you think in terms of the response rate and what people seem to be wanting. It's actually I think it was a great idea that we did.

Yeah. How many people responded, oh, I'm not interested anymore? Anybody?

The that wasn't an option. We sent it out to all 180 that sent in the first form.

But I thought that was one of the questions.

No? I don't think so.

Because we were afraid of a lot of people that put their themselves on the interest list.

They just Two years ago, they just don't call responding.

I see. You

saw that email that I sent to you? Did we do anything about it? I didn't I didn't think it was really appropriate for me to. Oh, that no. He said, I wanna know where I'm on the list. No.

I think some people read the interest form as an actual application.

Wait. He yeah. He referred to it as a waiting list. Yes. Never been a waiting list. We never said it was a waiting list. He sent an email. I don't know.

They sent it to the that person sent it to the full advisory board, so everybody got it. The subject line was waiting list.

Yeah. Little

I did not respond. They got it really appropriate. Not a waiting list. Couldn't tell you where you are on the list because it's not a list like that. And we discussed that we really didn't think it was what should be done. Well, it terms of where you are on

the list. Put some serious constraints on the options of court of being able to build them if it was a priority list. Yeah. Okay.

We're jumping around, so I appreciate everybody's patience here. Div fund, hire committee. Almost everything I had to say as In terms of community engagement.

Yep.

K. I don't think I really have anything to say as chair report. Think of anything. Yeah. And that nothing wrong with this. You're good. Jason,

do you have any upcoming FAA grant applications?

Anything Well, that's that project I just mentioned is is federally funded. No. No. No. It's part of the AIP cycle. And right now, we don't have any other money in the pot, but we managed to maximize what's been available. So that's about a 300 I'm just off top of my head, about a $300,000, $350,000 grant. So it'll be a combination of our normal 150,000 AIP grant and another airport grant. So that's the way the system works. We were just at the town council meeting the other night.

We had to give Fremont County back money that we grant money that was originally theirs that they gave us for a project that we did in the past. And so one of our upcoming years, just paid them back this year, so we wouldn't be on the deadbeat airport list. So We talked

last month about there being potential, I think, state funds for building access to airports or maybe their federal funds. They Yeah. So into what what's the status?

Yeah. We had a meeting with a state representative's office manager, and she's not involved at all with that program. But the state of Colorado division of Aeronautics shot out a, sent out a mass email to all the airports saying, hey. There's this program. It's got a bunch of money. It's not getting much activity, and it literally is connecting roads airports to communities. It was almost like it's on a golden platter. I emailed the director of the program who was copied on the email, and her email's the one that would say, hey. Look. You know, we're interested in this.

We got back is that it's it's almost like the road for the for the Erie Airport is too small of a project. It's like building Pena Boulevard kind of stuff. You know, it's got couple $100,000,000 in it. And so that was the reason we reached out to, one of the state representative's offices to say, look. They got money, and they want nobody else wants it. We'll take it. We got a road. We've done the study.

Do for this part Of Colorado.

Yeah. So I don't know, you know, where that's at exactly right now, but that just happened months and a half ago maybe. Yeah. We should stay

on Did I report to you all last meeting about our meeting Yes. Senator. Yeah. So that's what he It's in the minutes. Yeah. That's what he's referring to.

So that was one of the topics that we brought up was maybe a call from the from their office might just go you know, it's one of those deals where what I understand of great big budgets or great big pools of money that the federal government has is the stack of paperwork to go to get maybe $10,000,000 for the Erie Airport is the same stack of papers that it might take to get a $150,000,000 for another road. So they don't want a whole bunch of $8,000,000 packets sitting on their desk, which is just pure you know? I mean, it's it's just a matter of how much work they wanna do. And so they're looking to get rid of bigger chunks of money and not spend as much time on little ones. But the end of the day, if the money's there and it's not getting used and that's what it's for and we have that need, I don't see why we shouldn't go after it.

What's the population in the area right now?

40,000 a 100. 40,000 homes or 40,000 people?

People. People.

It's a lot of others.

Yep. So subsequent to that meeting, Todd Festen, who was there, I was there, you were there you were there. Council member O'Connor O'Connor was there. Since that Todd Fessenin has followed up with her with respect specifically to the question about the road, I don't know if he's heard back from her.

He sent her the contact information for because I forwarded that to Go ahead.

So he responded to her. Mhmm. Thanks for doing the meeting. Appreciate it. And just as a reminder, love to get some more information, see if you can help us out because she, like, knew people at CDOT. She was gonna follow-up, and he sent her the documents that you sent him. So that's we're following up on that, trying to keep that alive. I think it's

Let's tie that into the film festival future, what have you, and say that

this is Yeah. Very she drove that train. She was the one.

Yeah. If that's going to happen, we need that entrance. Kind of.

We'll need it, but it would help. Maybe it'd really nice. It'd be a nice melody. I'm just gonna throw this out.

Number one, we should invite her to the airfare. Absolutely. K? And we should probably, through her, put an invitation to see if senator Hickenlooper would like to come and say a few words Yes. At the airfare to show what's going on in Erie with airports and what we're doing. And it's gonna be really hard at this juncture to get on a schedule for him, and they'll probably kick it to the curb. At least you'll think they're kicking it to the curb until the very end because they just don't like to commit. But I would certainly

What was her name, You know, getting I'll send you the information. Yeah.

But we should try and Mhmm. Strike while the fire is hot. Can Definitely invite her. I might guess, given her response in the way she was at the meeting, she'll probably if she's not if she's available, she probably would come. But I would certainly extend the invitation to see if senator Hickamopur would like to come as well. It's a Saturday

want to do the invitation just from

the airport board, or would we like our mayor to do the invitation? Well, I think that's what we should flush out. So I don't know who I'm talking to here in terms of to do that, but we should probably invite both of them to that event Mhmm. Now that I think about but we gotta get it in. Like, it's already too late sort of thing because they plan their schedule and change it up to the last minute. But I would definitely try and ask sooner rather than later.

Yep.

She was very, very enthusiastic about

Yeah. Well honestly, we had to cancel the first meeting because of the weather, and I figured we'd never see her again. So the fact that she actually followed up, showed up to meetings, spent the time.

And she Yeah. I was really struck with how much knowledge she really had about airports, particularly smaller airports.

Yeah. I think she brought up things that probably we weren't even thinking that, yeah, that She wasn't

really doing what she was talking about. Yeah. She's not Strength on retaining stuff. Yeah. So whatever. Cool. Let's talk about it. Gotta figure out what we gotta do because I hope we should get that invitation in as soon as possible. You know, Mike is gone. He is up for reelection. You know?

I'm gonna say it's too bad. It's not '26. He'd definitely be there because, like

That's that?

It's too bad it wasn't '26 because he'd definitely be there. He'd

No. Actually, I tell you if it was '26, he probably wouldn't because that calendar would be so full. There's no way Oh, yeah. That's true. Probably be able to do it in an election year, it's probably Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is the weekend after Labor Day. Correct?

Yeah. Correct.

Yeah. So if it was Labor Day, we cannot say no. It's not gonna happen because it's just Maybe. Don't know if you We don't know if you don't ask them. I think it would be great if she was able to come.

Anybody else? Anything else?

Good.

Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Meetings adjourned. Mhmm. That's all I gotta say. Right? Meetings adjourned. That's that's Alright.