Airport Commission - Regular Meeting

I think we'll go ahead and get this meeting started. If you would stand, and I'm going to lead us in a prayer and a pledge. Would you bow with me, please? Dear Lord, we just want to thank You once again for all the many blessings that You continue to give us. We thank You for this great state. We thank You for this weather. We ask You, if You would, to bless us with some rain. But we continue to always leave the weather up to You, and we just always thank You for what we get. Lord, we now ask You to be with us in this meeting. continue to watch over this great airport and the staff that leads it, and we just thank you for them. And Lord, we now ask you to bless this food that we've had and nourish it to our bodies and forgive us our sins. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Do we have anybody that's asked to make comments tonight? None. And I will direct your attention to approval of the June meeting minutes. Did anybody see any changes that need to be made? If not, I'll take a motion to approve those. Motion to approve. Second. I have a motion and a second. Would you call the roll, please? Kelly Hutton. Yay.

Paul Myers. Yay. Bill Shackley. Aye. Valeska Starnes.

Aye.

Steve Walker. Yes. Motion carries. All right, Chad, let's move into item number four, please. All right.

Just for clarification purposes, if you will allow, Joe and I are going to talk a little bit first about the hangar pad development and utility project, because that then leads into the actual discussion about the hangar construction and the alternative bids. Joe, if you want to join me here. Absolutely. This is the site, and so Google Earth just happened to be taking a picture going overhead while we were doing construction out there.

So you can really see the totality of the site.

In this area here is the pond, retention pond, which then leads into the drainage to the north.

In this area to the west of the... What?

of the TDK hanger is the area for the two hangers and the pad, and then the extension of taxiway hackling goes into this area. And I can show you underneath, Joe, if you want to describe the drainage, I can pull that up.

Okay, so what we ran into here is what you're going to see running up just north there is a utility line. We did everything we could to try and shoot the gap on it, but there are stacked conduits, and in order to get the pipe... So right here, this crossing... It would have been a really high-risk effort to put – we would have had to put the collar between electrical and comm lines, and we didn't feel that this was the project to do that on. So working with Scott Elliott, James Gill, and Chad, we pivoted, and at this catch basin right there, which is a drop inlet – We have it open where normally we'd come into the culvert, and we brought a drainage ditch down to an existing ditch right here. And what it does is it allows us to leave this in place without having to interrupt TDK's service, without having to take the risk of bigger damage. And then longer... It actually helps us even more because we're going to be bringing utilities, and not tall enough to point, but from the Panda Express area. Oh, yeah. Here we go. From the Panda Express area, so this in yellow, that was planned with the Hangar 1 operation. And then to prepare for the future and the ultimate build-out, working with MTB. We're going to have a stub out that sets in that location and then we're going to run all the way over to the TDK hangar and they can connect to this new service which then makes the one that is running north-south that becomes it gives us an opportunity to we're going to leave the conduit reuse the conduit for con lines or whatever else we need but Probably premature to be talking tower, but that's where the tower is going to go. And that tower can be the last service on that utility run. So that way they can have their power, have their comm lines, and we can get that there and then everything else ties here. That'd be a nicer job than C2 on the system having a gun. And then...

Let's go back to the drawing or the overhead shot here. What you see is the gravel where they have brought the elevation up to a certain point, the elevation for the building of the pads for future hangers. And then also in this area as well, there's stone. But what you're seeing out there now today is a lot of this area is now covered up with six inches of topsoil. Between four to six inches of topsoil. There was a lot of discussion about Pinsley not meeting the elevation high here, low there. But it's close enough that once we start to build in here and they scrape off the topsoil, the next level of subgrade can fill in those gaps and get us a uniform coverage over those areas for what we need.

it was enough to be maximum, I guess you could say. Correct. Yeah, we got them within a couple inches, and then knowing we're going to peel the topsoil off, we'll address it in the future layer.

Some of the concern too then was making sure that because of how you saw that drainage work, there are low spots in there where we have inlets, and then there are some spots where we haven't brought the drainage totally in, so there are low areas that don't have an inlet. So what Joe and Barge has asked them to do was when they bring in that dirt, to mound it so that we do get positive drainage over the site and we're not creating any wet areas or ponding or anything like that. So that is good. What's left that Hensley is working on is the retention pond. And on this end they, and they're kind of again over excavating, they ran into some large boulders and they tried to cover them and then when the rain came we saw where that was We had to sink hole like things popping up. So now they are going in there with an approved material and a

It's just a separation and stabilization fabric just to prevent your fines from washing out at the bottom. They're going to put it along the bottom and along the sides and then they're bringing it up with an approved material that's a lean clay and then they're going to cap the top 30 inches of it. with a fat clay and so a fat clay won't let water down through it because we don't want your pond to become, I won't say sinkhole because we didn't find a throat, but we don't want it to settle out and give the appearance of that. That was the end design.

In the end, there will be some topsoil in the pond so that there's, or in the retention area so that there is grass growing and things like that. That's their last task until we get to just a checklist on, I guess.

Yep. So, well, the pond and they got to get that vegetation in your, or the, the erosion control in that drainage ditch.

So we did have quite a bit of area that you may have seen dug out here. Hensley was given a direction from barge and working with Terracon to go two feet down and then bridge it with stone. They didn't like the way the dirt looked so they went further down. That extra stone that they had to bring in is on them. So we have a very strong area in here. It's very... It compacts very well. So we have a good base in there.

So Chad and our Joe, do we have... Once this is 100% finished with this excavation project, will we have enough retention pond to cover the entire north development or just parts of it?

So there's another design that we have and Chad's been working with the city to come in and construct and that's, you can't see it on here, but north of the runway. that's where we're putting in another detention pond. And that'll get us to a majority of it, but then there is an additional area of pond needed, but it's not until we start growing more to the west, you'll need another portion of pond there. And then we've offset all of the impervious areas. the surfacing impacts.

Before this hangar is built, this will be in place and then the city's building the one that's up there. And so that one is covered under the city's stormwater project. So that is no expense to the airport. But Barge did do all the drawings and we did pay for that engineering to be done. And then that will meet the timeline for the opening of this hangar.

When you're saying north, are you talking about at the end of the runway?

In the drainage basin, it's along the fence, along the tarmac. Instead of it just being wide open, you'll see another kind of earthen wall there that will have a time release.

But still on our property?

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah.

I'm just trying to clarify so that when we come back six months, a year from now, we say, okay, let's start popping up some, you know, some hankers. Our drainage scenario by that time will be complete for kind of a phase or two of of any kind of hangers that we could possibly come up with.

Well, in some of the discussion that we had on completing the drainage into this pond was that there's, and Joe, you can explain this, is there's a very large and heavy outflow box or something like that that has to be placed and there was discussion of bringing in a crane and how long that would be here and how close it was to the to the runway, and if we'd have to shut down the runway because of the crane. And given what we were working with at that time, we said, let's put this off until a later time. So it could be done, I think, relatively quickly.

So that would still have to be put in is what you're saying?

Yes.

So in the gist of really kind of what you have, you have a flow through. This first attention pond is really a flow through. And once our capacity exceeds that, then it's going to go to the next pond. And then what you're telling me, though, is there would be one more pond of some type that will have to be put in?

Yes. Correct. They're out towards this area is where the last one's going to have to go.

And we really don't know when that development is going to occur. And that really kind of leads us really nicely then into the discussion. of the, where we needed to start out, was the alternative two items that we had in the bid. And I think we informed you pretty well of the 10 bids that we received. And Barron, after Joe's exhausting and thorough review, Barron Construction was the awarded contractor for this. And there were two ad alternate items here. And the first one was extending taxiway foxtrot out this way towards the fence. So to get to the hangar, we'll have that covered. But anything beyond that, we could pave and it's $100,000. Our concern is without everything that's being developed is going to be kind of east of that and south of that, nothing is really going this way. If we go to the west, now we're crossing that access road, we're going through the fence, having to move a security fence, and we're not there yet, and extra drainage and utilities and all that. So we've got plenty of area to develop. So the idea is not, the recommendation from Barge is not to do this now. The other one is really kind of an internal discussion in that the sewer line connection, what water resources is requiring is instead of a one year warranty, they're requesting a three year warranty. So in our discussions, Joe said, well, let's bid it out as an alternative to see what the difference is. And that came in at $16,500.

And I believe from your review, they were almost double what the competitors were. So we got to city. But at that price, I'd say we'd have to negotiate it with them. It wasn't balanced.

So the recommendation from Barge is not to do the extension to just leave off that end of the taxiway foxtrot and then negotiate, work with the city and work with Barron to negotiate that, see if we can get that down. But it seems like, and Joe, you may, I think the three-year warranty is the direction the city is going on sewer line connections. I haven't heard any...

I haven't heard that one. It's been that way for 10 plus years. It was in lieu of having someone go out and do a technical compaction report and certify that the backfill was appropriately... So the compromise was, well, we're not going to require that geotechnical report and a three-year warranty is necessary. We may have been doing that for the past 15, 20 years. Okay.

So that is the recommendation. GO AHEAD.

THE FRONTAGE ROAD OR WHATEVER YOU WANT, I DON'T KNOW, THE LITTLE ROAD THAT GOES TO THE MTSU.

YES.

IT EVENTUALLY IS NOT GOING TO, YEAH, IT'S GOING TO END UP GOING STRAIGHT?

Where it comes around that corner, it will go... Somewhere in here it will connect and be more parallel with the backside of Walmart and connect to Airport Road without having to do the little turns to get in there, which will then allow us to take the ramp behind Murfreesboro Aviation and the MTSU area and bring it back and create hangar spaces and hangars and things like that.

And that'll still be public access. That road will still be public? Yes.

The question is how we connect that, take that access road and still have a flow around the airport. Where we connect that is still something that we're working with and trying to figure out. It'll probably be something that we figure out and determine in the airport layout plan in the coming years. But for now, since we're not, that security fence, that black fence is in here, we're not penetrating that fence and breaking into that excess road yet. We'll have all this of boxes and tees and other opportunities to build hangers.

Remind me, who was Barron's excavation contractor?

I'm drawing a blank. Sorry. I can look at it and get back to you, but I can't remember.

But just to clarify, they met all of the requirements that we talked about having multiple years of airport work. That's kind of what I'm getting at. That's partly why Barron won the contract on top of having a good price, but they were also one of the ones that met those requirements.

Yeah, they were very thorough on their past experience.

All right. Any questions on the two... Basically approvals that barge has recommended to not extend tax away F and to at this time under their price not to extend the sewer line. Any questions? If not, I'll take a motion on that, these particular items.

So motion to approve the recommendations. Second.

Have a motion and a second from Bill. Brian, would you call the roll please?

Kelly Hutton?

Yeah.

Paul Myers? Aye. Bill Shacklett? Aye. Melissa Starnes? Aye. Steve Walden?

Aye. Motion passes. All right, Chad, does that bring us up to project status report?

No, we still have the, did I put it, I've got one item in there. We did get the, at the last minute, we did receive the annual airport state maintenance contract, and it's actually up to $20,000 this year. Usually, typically, it's $15,000. So if you would approve that, I'll take that on to city council as well for approval. That is just for the annual maintenance of repairing lights and fixing tractors and stuff like that. We use $15,000 and $20,000 pretty quickly here in maintenance of the airport.

Any other questions before we take a motion?

Motion to approve.

Second. I have a motion and a second for that contract to which you call the roll.

Shelby Hunt? Yes. Paul Myers. Aye. Bill Shacklett. Aye. Valeska Starnes. Aye. Steve Wolfe.

Aye. Motion carries. Okay, Chad.

Alright, the next item is really we're going to go down the list of different projects. The approach mitigation, we have a pretty critical meeting coming up with the state and we've asked that the ADO be included in that meeting. There's some pretty significant funding questions. In most cases, the state doesn't deal with projects as complex as ours when it comes to approach mitigation. It's usually a single number of landowners, and it's usually in a more rural setting. So there's some significant questions regarding who is funding what and why, and we need to have that before we move forward. Once we have that information, I'll be coming to you and then to City Council and sharing our approach, sorry for the use of the word approach, but how we're going to be moving forward with this project, which will then lead to meetings with our neighbors and moving forward. We have, right now, we're in a weird state of in-between grants. The one grant ran out of time and we're applying for a grant to continue that work to finish out phase one. There's a document, an environmental document that the state needs from us from barge to complete. There are some questions. Is that right, Joe, as to some of the information? I think there's some coordination that's going on with that environmental.

Correct. So we've sent out all the coordination letters and we're waiting for responses.

It's really strange in that recently approach mitigation does not require environmental study, but yet there are still environmental forms that we're filling out and there still is a level of coordination that does occur. Is that correct? So while it isn't required, you still end up doing some of it, and that's where we're at. So really critical meeting with the ADO, and it was something that we called to have because the ADO doesn't usually talk with us. It's always through the state, but the state wasn't going to give us the funding, the opportunity even, to consider that type of funding. So more to come on that. Pavement repair and rehab. That's the T-hanger area of A through F T-hangers. Really not a push from the state on this right now because the actual work is not scheduled until like 2028 or something like that. So I think that is an area that we will definitely have some big discussion on regarding the airport layout plan, what to do with especially T-hangers A, B, and C that are the oldest. How long do we keep those going? Is there any change to that area that we make? Especially if we can kind of see in the meantime the T-hanger development on the north end and how that would work. So not much push there. Airport sign, I think I shared with you, we got pushed off by Dolly, which is all right. And so they got her sign. I have a date from Tim Rice that on the 18th they'll be installing our airport sign, so that'll be up and going. Barge has started the runway protection zone study for the north end and has already gathered quite a bit of information for us about the North End and the RPZ to Jarnett Boulevard traffic counts and all kinds of important information that the FAA will probably be asking as we move forward with this study. This is critical, as you know, to have this in hand before we go to the airport layout plan to have this fully justified. Otherwise, we will waste a lot of time with the state discussing this. If we don't have that information ahead of time, we're going to waste a lot of time and money. I have not heard anything more from the report and study that was done by the ad hoc committee that was submitted to the FAA. I'm kind of surprised because some of the information that we received from them in the ad hoc committee from the FAA was that they were really going to push this Class B airspace forward even by having it in place by like January of 2027. But there are a lot of steps for them to go through and the ad hoc committee has not received anything back in response to any of the questions or any of the recommendations that they've had. So I don't think we're going to have it by January of 2027. Steam Fest is scheduled for October 17th, and I think the military is supposedly, Ryan, bringing in a Chinook and an Apache so far, and they always bring in some other surprise for us. So we should have a good turnout for that. And kind of the guest this time is we're coordinating with Channel 2 and Daniel Breezy from a meteorologist standpoint. And we've also, she can't be here the whole time, so we've asked MTSU with some of their weather folks there in the science department and in the aerospace department to to be here to have some hands-on things for the kids and really talk about the science of weather and how important it is for aviation. Other dates, Tuesday, September 15th, which is tomorrow, the Gerald Hill Visitation at Bond Memorial Chapel. And then here on the Saturday, September 19th, is the Celebration of Life for Jim Gardner starting at 6 p.m. And I think that's it for announcements and dates and things like that.

What's the acronym for STEAM? Science? Technology, engineering, art, and math.

Usually you hear STEM, but they included art a few years ago.

Any other thoughts or questions for Chad or Joe? If not, we'll thank Ms. Kim once again for setting up a good meal. Appreciate everybody coming out tonight. I'm betting she's still got some in there left if you're still hungry. But I'll take a motion to adjourn.

Make motion to adjourn.

Second. We're so moved.