Airport Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

I got 901, so let the festivities begin. Let's see, what's the agenda? All right, we're going to call the meeting to order, and y'all, and start with an invocation. Our newest board member, Thad Boyd, will say the invocation.

Put that door. Yeah.

Through me in the deep end? Yes, in the deep end.

Heavenly Father, I love you so much and just thank you for this opportunity to serve. Father, I just pray that your Holy Spirit guide us and direct us in everything that we do. Our thoughts, our words, and our actions in Jesus' name. Amen. You're official. I'm official.

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. Roll call.

Terry Crawford. Here. Randy Klein. Kevin Reed. Thomas Smallin. Thad Boyd.

Here. All right. Next on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from last month, and Thad wasn't here, so Terry, do you move to approve? Any corrections or additions?

I'll move approval.

All right. All in favor? Aye. Well, I'll second it, and all in favor, aye. All right. What's next? Airport director's report. I'm trying to get out of this.

Yeah. Yeah, 5A, unfinished business. It's the 2026 airfield paint project in the amount of $74,328.62. So we had submitted a grant application to the state towards the end of their budget year looking for some state funding to do a painting project on the airport. They were unable to provide us with that funding. It's something that we still need to do. We've got to restripe the center line on 1836, the numbers and center line on 826, and cleaning and restriping various tax-away alpha markings. We're going to take advantage of a state bid. So the state went out and they got... STATEWIDE PRICING FOR MARKINGS AT AIRPORTS, SO WE'RE GOING TO PIGGYBACK ON THAT CONTRACT WITH FLORIDA AIRFIELD MAINTENANCE, JV, WHICH ALLOWS FOR EFFICIENT PROCUREMENT AND COMPETITIVE PRICING. SO WE'RE GOING TO BEAR THE TOTAL COST OF THIS BECAUSE THE STATE WASN'T ABLE TO PULL THROUGH. WE'RE STILL GOING TO PURSUE THE GRANT ON THE CHANCE THAT IN THE NEW BUDGET YEAR THAT THE STATE WOULD FUND IT, BUT WHEN IT COMES RIGHT DOWN TO IT, IT'S SOMETHING THAT WE HAVE TO DO, SO WE'RE REQUESTING the full amount be approved, funded through the airport fund. There's about $3 million in that fund right now.

So staff recommends approval. Can you, for the benefit of that, explain what this is, this paint project?

So every few years, five to six years, five, seven years, somewhere around there, we're repainting the paint on the airfield. So the runway, taxiways, the hold lines. Runways get white paint. That's a different project. That's a different project, but that is included. Yes. And then there's glass beads in the paint as well. So a lot of times on the thresholds, aircraft will obscure the paint because of the rubber left when they land. And sometimes the edges get moldy and mildewy and it's obscured. And then other times they just wear out. So this will fix it for another five to seven years. Do you need a motion? An approval, yeah.

I'll move approval. Second. All in favor? Aye. All right. Thank you.

So I included this next item, the GLJ ground lease.

This was presented to you last month.

Mike did a good job. I understand there was a question on the option language that was part of that, of this ground lease.

Yes. Yes. He didn't know how long it was and Five-year option. All right. I think for Thad's benefit, you need to show the area we're talking about.

Start from the beginning? Yes, please. Sure. I'm being a pain already.

No, not at all. It's a good review.

And you know what? I'm getting used to this aspect too, right? Or the new location. So I'm using the screen as my note, so I'm referencing that right there. You should have it in front of you as well.

Well, we have that.

You have that. Okay, good. I think. Okay. So this whole project started as an invitation to negotiate back in ITN back in March of 2024. We advertised through this ITN process an opportunity for private hangar development on the airport. It closed on May 7th, 2025. We had one response, and that was from GLJ Aviation, and they proposed to build a hangar at the Alpha 9 intersection or connector.

Can you explain who they are? Sorry to interrupt. Who is the principal behind GLJ Aviation?

So they fly in and out of the airport quite a bit right now. They've got a G4 Gulfstream. And right now it's based in Fort Lauderdale. And they come up here so often they want a hangar here.

Right.

Okay? Okay. No. So they proposed to build their hangar at Alpha 9, which is near the hexaport, close to the intersection of 60th Avenue and 20th.

You've got to interpret Alpha 9 for the uninitiated. Okay. I'm sorry.

He's not a – So this is what they proposed. That's Alpha 9. Is there a laser pointer on this? There is not. There is. On the top.

Text – Just even for Thad's benefit, what alpha is and what alpha 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9? Sure.

So you've got taxiway alpha which is the main taxiway that parallels the main runway. And its name is alpha. And then you have these connectors that feed off of alpha. that go into the developable areas. It starts at A1 at the top and goes all the way down to 13 on the south end of the airport. So A9 or Alpha 9 is right about midfield. It serves an existing tenant base but there's quite a bit of vacant land there. Robbers hangers off of Alpha 9. Oh, I'm holding the wrong one. Yes. There you go.

You're familiar now. It's a vacant land to the south of it.

Roberts has the one hanger here.

It used to be Thad's father. Then Leon.

And then that's Mr. Leon's hanger. Yeah, all right. There's a hanger here. This is Dr. Pallmeyer, which is just sold. And then there's one that's not on this map. It's an older map, an older aerial.

There's one right next to it that was also Pallmeyer's that sold as well.

So this is the area that we're looking at. There was an internal selection committee. There was only one application, so it was either yes, we're going to move forward with that one application, or no, we need more information. They moved forward with it. They were looking at two parcels. They were looking at a primary and then an option to expand. They weren't quite sure if they were going to need all of that property for one hanger, or if they were going to do two separate hangers, they're still undecided on that. Right now the site plan shows just one hanger, but I think through the due diligence period, they're going to make that final determination. In which case, the whole parcel will be adjusted accordingly. It's a standard ground lease, so our standard ground lease are 40-year terms.

That's actually a 30-year term with two five-year extensions.

That's our standard. There's a big difference. It's 35 cents a square foot for the entire parcel. It's a large increase compared to what we were previously charging, which used to be 25 cents a square foot for only the building footprint and then 5 cents a square foot for the flat, the dirt, the apron, and any vehicle parking that might be included. The appraisal that we just recently received said that the property is worth 35 cents a square foot in its entirety. That's what GLJ agreed to pay. And then they're going to pay $1,000 per acre for that option parcel. There's about three acres on that. It's a nominal fee. But it's consistent with what we've charged on other options. Well, there's only one other option, and that was with Shelter Aviation with some property just north of the parking lot.

All right. Is the city's interest in a fire department, that's over?

No, it is. No, in fact, let me... Then why would you give them an option if you're going to possibly... Because the station... Here's my cursor. Right now, station...

So it's not the hexaport.

It's not the hexaport anymore. The station's going to go just south of the hexaport. This actually works better for traffic flow street side. If we placed it at the hexaport, we started to look at that location, it was difficult to get the fire trucks out because of the proximity to the existing intersection. They had to be back far enough to get the appropriate turn lanes and decel lanes.

So this has no effect on the future ARF station on the airport. I mean, my opposition before, the reason it was tabled is because the option was undefined. Now you're talking five years? It's five years. I'm still opposed to that long an option.

But it's, so, it's an option, but it's also a right of first refusal. There's two different things. Right of first refusal is... They are, but when you read the way that the attorneys drafted it, there is a... It's labeled as an option, but the language allows for somebody else to come in and make an offer. And then GLJ can match that offer. I see. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's exactly what I was going to suggest. Yeah, okay. So there's kind of like you can cancel the five-year lease if you have another offer come in, or they have to match that offer. Exactly. Okay. Yep.

And they have five years.

So if someone does come along and offer more money and there's a better deal for the airport, then they either have to match that or leave.

Yeah. Yes, exactly.

The HECS support is –

to hang up in the whole deal. And so we've worked with the HECS support tenants for years. They've known that their lease was going to expire. I urged them to pull the trigger and maybe redevelop the site, redevelop somewhere else on the airport, but they couldn't pull that together. They were expecting a brand new 40-year lease term, and that's just not possible right now, not without significant reinvestment in the airport. There's a lot of property that the HEXA port ties up. You look at that map, you can't build anything between the HEXA port and the connector, Alpha 9, and so it's a tough situation to be in. We've been negotiating with them on a short-term lease. We've talked to them about integrating them into our T-Hanger campus. On the short-term lease, it's still with the attorneys here locally with the city, but it's a two-year lease at the current rate structure. How much longer? And then they get a six, there's a six-month notice to vacate. So they get quite a bit of time if somebody takes it down and we can work with them on it.

How much longer is their lease?

Their lease expired in November. They're currently month-to-month right now.

Okay.

Greg Clark.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a diverse group. I was formerly a tenant, owner, and... Handled a couple sales, but they understand.

And most of the units in there right now are sublet. So they're leasing it to other people that aren't owners. And we've worked with them. Because for a long time, a lot of them were vacant or just holding lawn mowing equipment. So we've worked with them closely. We've shared our T-hanger wait list with them. And we've actually worked through the T-hanger wait list by finding homes for those people in the wait list in the hexaport. So that was a benefit, get people into hangers and homes. EVERYBODY'S HAPPY FROM THAT PERSPECTIVE. SO FIVE YEARS ON THE OPTION, THE RATE STRUCTURE, IT'S THE SAME FEE APPLIED TO THE OPTION PARCEL IN THE NEW LEASE IF THEY EXERCISE IT. SO 35 CENTS A SQUARE FOOT ON THE THREE ACRES IF THEY EXERCISE THE OPTION. There's a 120-day due diligence period and an additional 120 days to secure permitting. So there's a little bit of time and buffer in there that the tenant can work with in determining what the final disposition of the option is, if they want to hold on to the option or if they actually want to take it down and integrate it in with an overall development plan.

All right.

The chair would entertain a motion to approve it. Subject to having a kick-out clause is what we call those things, kick-out clause on the option. Do we have a motion?

I'll move. Yeah, I'll second. All right.

All right. You have that, Madam Secretary, kick-out clause. Make sure it's in there. Kick-out clause on the option.

Got the right of first refusal?

Yeah, in favor of a right of first refusal. Super. All right. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay. Good.

Thank you.

There are no new business items. We'll just jump right into the director's report. On the north development access road, we've transitioned from that project. We're now looking at a relocation of an FDOT pond that's just north of this access road. The state, we have extra money in the grant. that funded the north development access road the state has agreed to a scope change on that grant so now we're looking at relocating that pond that'll allow continuation of this road to go forward uh... and ultimately connect with southwest sixtieth avenue On the Mouser, the Runway 36 grading project, we submitted the grant application on June 1st. This is for the construction side of things. The bid opening occurred in late May. We're just waiting on the FAA to issue that grant. That's moving forward. The terminal apron rehab, it is 99.9% complete. We're waiting on... two electric vault lids coming from France. If you've been out to the airport lately, there are two areas on the apron that are coned off right now. Those are those electric vaults. Shelter will be able to pull wire to those vaults and connect their ground power units directly to electric at those locations. But like I said, the contractor is having issues with their their sub on securing that lid. It's the home we're waiting on. But we keep pushing on them. The master plan's in final review right now. That'll be submitted to the FAA for their ultimate approval on the airport layout plan. We'll have a meeting in front of city council to present the final plan here shortly. The board will be invited to that. Alpha 9 driveway. This is the... Vehicle access side at the Alpha 9 development site, that's currently about 100% designed through city engineering. It's going through permitting right now, swift mud water management permitting, things like that. The T-Hanger campus rehab, that is also going through city permitting right now. That's just a mill and overlay of the T-Hanger asphalt out there, and then we are going to stripe it Alpha 12 infrastructure, that's been designed. There are, we're just trying to figure out how to fund that project. That's all the flat work at Alpha 12 north of the Alpha 12 intersection. It's about five acres. We got a state grant to design the utilities and the grading. in the paving that'll open up that area for private hanger development. It's about 1.8, 1.9 million I think if I recall correctly, that project. And ultimately that will be disseminated equally amongst the parcels that we create out there. So if a private entity wants to take down one of the parcels, they'll have to stroke a check for their proportionate share of whatever the infrastructure cost is. And that's their entry fee to get the ground lease. So ultimately, we'll recoup that funds, those funds for the infrastructure is just coming up with that money right away. Concrete pads. So we've got two pads going in. Actually, we've got three. There's a fuel farm extension. There's the aircraft wash rack. And then there's a small vehicle parking area adjacent to the terminal for ops vehicles. That's also being permitted through the city. So the concrete pad project and the T-Hanger campus rehab will all get bid at the same time. We're looking at one contractor to do all of that. tax which are the phase one uh... has been designed that's uh... currently at swift mud permitting uh... we're still trying to find uh... funding for tax away charlie we did submit a grant application to the state uh... as part of their florida uh... jobs grants initiative uh... we asked for about twenty million dollars through that that grant uh... project to fund the entirety of Taxway Charlie. The state called us. This is separate from DOT, too. This is more the economic side. But the state called us. We talked about the project. And it looks like we're going to revisit the application and break that project up into thirds. So phase one, phase two, phase three. Phase one, we already have designed. So we can go immediately into that. But the $20 million was a little too much for them to bite off at once. So they want to see it phased over the course of 10 years. So we're looking at that again, revisiting that application. air show planning uh is moving right along um jlc came out uh spent about a week down here speaking with uh city community leaders hotels uh he met with um mr bull up at jumble air talking about some of his aircraft to bring out on display he's just making relationships and um letting people know that this air show is coming april 30th may 1st may 2nd 2027 so we're excited about that let's move forward blue angels yeah um any questions on any of these before i move into fuel and operations So Mr. Boyd, we should probably meet and just sit down and go through some of these projects and get you caught up as far as schematics. We'll give you a nice airport tour and show you where all these, you could actually put eyes on some of these projects and get a better understanding. That'd be great. Yep. I appreciate that. So I have to walk closer. Total operations last month, 8,500. I think it was a little down compared to the previous year. which is really interesting because when you look at the fuel sales, Avgas, we're pretty much even. It was a little less on Avgas, but on jet fuel, we did 106,000 gallons of jet fuel last month, 11,000 more than the previous year in May of 2025.

Whatever WECC's doing.

So while the operations were down, our fuel sales are going up. So more people are buying fuel. We're getting bigger airplanes coming in. That's essentially what that means. We didn't set any records in May of 2026. We haven't set a record in May of 2026 on either jet fuel or avgas. We have in the previous almost every single month in 2026 we set records. But in May of 2020, sorry, May of 2007, we had the fires in the forest. And so forestry and the Department of Agriculture brought their fire bombers in. And they bought a lot of fuel back in 07. So we've never been able to eclipse that number from May of 2007. We almost did, but not quite there. Maybe next year. But fuel sales are still looking good. Operations, I wish were a little higher, but still very respectable numbers. Any questions on these?

Nope.

That concludes my presentation.

Thank you, Matt. Are there any persons out in the audience wishing to appear, address the board? Are there any comments of individual board members?

Welcome, Mr. Boyd. Welcome aboard.

Thank you. All right. If we have no further business, we have a motion to adjourn.

I also move.

Second. All in favor? Aye. We're adjourned.

Thanks, everyone.

All right.

Back to the salt mine.

Back to the salt mine. All right. How are you doing? I'm doing good. Working with Fred on some stuff. Talked to him this morning already.