Video Description:
Airport Advisory Board – January 2024
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Unknown Speaker 4:13
We are so don’t worry about I’m just trying to write down
Unknown Speaker 4:25
whatever it used to do
Speaker 1 5:38
All right. Good evening, everybody. Happy New Year. Welcome to our January 11 2024. Airport Advisory Board meeting. We have for the first time in a while a full seven member board although we only five of us are here. But really nice to see the five of you here. Um, Kayla, would you mind calling the roll? Thank you. CHAIRPERSON Harrison here
Speaker 1 6:25
thanks, Kayla, with a couple of new members here, I’m going to give folks the opportunity to introduce themselves if Linda we mean, you’ve been here before, but I’m gonna give you the chance to and then as well, if you guys would would like to say a few words and introduce yourselves. Whoever wants to start, please click the like button and I’ll get you on.
Speaker 2 6:48
When to go ahead. And Melinda Jordan, beginning my eighth year, really proud of that. So took about a year off and back and glad to be here. I live in the flight. I live in the pattern, basically under the airport on Airport Road. And I’m looking forward to moving some stuff forward this year and pull it off in the air show. We’re glad to have you. I’m glad to be back.
Speaker 1 7:12
Thank you. Welcome back. Then Mr. Mr.
Speaker 3 7:15
Dan Meester longtime residents since 1982. I believe my brain doesn’t work that well. Been a pilot since 2001. Supposed to take my practical on 911. Obviously, that didn’t work out too. Well.
Unknown Speaker 7:33
That’s supposed to be my first day of flight training. There
Speaker 3 7:35
you go. Delighted to be a board member. And hopefully we can move a good agenda forward.
Speaker 1 7:43
Well, thank you are, we’re really glad to have you with us. So thank you for joining us. And thanks for applying and being part of it. Absolutely. Moving down origin you guys want to interview you? You’ve been on. So if you want the chance, I’ll let you but if I go we know you a little bit. All right. I’m not forcing anything. All right. All right. So first on our agenda is election of officers. So in our first meeting every year, as you all know, we elect officers we set our meeting date and time and the official posting location. This is our I think it’s called our administrative meeting in our bylaws. So for election of officers, we have two roles Chair and Vice Chair. I currently serve as the chair Malcolm Dean currently serves as the vice chair Malcolm is not here tonight, but I he has asked that we still re nominate him and put him on the floor at least. But I’ll start with chair. Are there any nominations? Would anyone like to Mr. Salatin,
Speaker 4 8:43
I would like to nominate Mr. Harrison Earl as president and Miss Melinda as vice.
Speaker 1 8:53
I’m going to do one at a time. So can you start with chair so you’re nominated? Is there a second for that nomination? So moved and seconded. Any other nominations? I’m okay with that. So all those in favor then, of electing me as chair again. say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you all for the vote of confidence. See, Palace Do you want to make a motion here as well?
Speaker 4 9:27
Yeah, I’d like to nominate Melinda as Vice I when I first started on this board, Melinda was vice and she did an amazing job and would advocate her doing it again.
Speaker 1 9:41
Steve. Alright, so we have move and seconded from Melinda as the Vice Chair. I would also move that Malcolm Dean is the vice chair. He’s served as the vice chair for the last year so I think he’s done a great job at that. Linda, you obviously know my feelings about You as well, but I’m gonna put that nomination out there. Is there a second for that as well? And Melinda second, okay. I would normally say like speech, but he’s not here. So
Speaker 1 10:20
how about if anyone, just take a vote? All those who would like to have Melinda as vice chair? If once you raise hands here so I can count easier to? Are you going to abstain? Melinda? Are you gonna vote? You don’t have to I voted for myself. All right, and then all those in favor of Malcolm. Linda, you’re the tiebreaker here, or you don’t have to vote and we’ll just keep discussing.
Speaker 1 10:55
Alright, well, Melinda, thank you. Congratulations. You’ve been a wonderful vice chair before and I know you’ll continue to do so. And I know Malcolm will still be involved as well. Wonderful. Oh, God, no, no. We have good people on this board, which I’m really excited about. Select our meeting date and time location for 2024. Our current meeting date and time is a second Tuesday. I’m sorry. I wrote down Thursday, but it looks like Tuesday in my handwriting. So it’s the second Thursday of the month at 6pm. Here in the city council chambers. Would anyone like to make a motion to have that same meeting time and date or propose something different? I would strongly encourage same. Mr. Schock.
Speaker 5 11:39
I’ll make a motion we keep the date and time the same.
Speaker 1 11:44
Is there a second? I’ll second. Moved and seconded. All right. Any other proposals for date and time? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion to keep our meeting date and time a second? Thursday of the month? 6pm. Here in the city council chambers? Everyone say aye. Aye. Not everyone say aye. Question about the motion.
Speaker 4 12:07
Yes. So can be added. So if inclement weather situations?
Speaker 6 12:17
I’m not sure. I think we looked into this before. And there was something interesting about doing things for GRE thing about this, Marcia about the rules on doing things. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1 12:37
Okay, well, then, can I make the suggestion, then maybe amend the motion that’s out there to just set meeting date and time and not the location tonight, because I don’t actually know that we have to set the location. It’s not on the agenda. I can go try to find our bylaws quick. But I’d be good with just doing that if you guys would
Speaker 6 12:59
think that’s a good idea. And then we could address that issue during this our session this year and see if we can potentially get that added. And
Speaker 4 13:05
that would also get a lot more people to show up if someone’s traveling or something that allowed them to participate. Or if there’s, you know, if it’s pouring rain, or, or snowing or something. Can
Speaker 1 13:18
I get a sorry, just to keep us on Robert’s Rules. Can I get a second for my amendment? And then we can keep the discussion going. Second, thank you. Vice Chair Jordan, the
Speaker 2 13:28
issue is we can’t do hybrid anymore was my understanding. So we’re either in person or online, but we can’t do a combination. We did do it a few times. Because I think we we brought you in hybrid, Marcia, but I that was my recollection is that they don’t want us to like some of us would be here in some wood pipe in and it’s either all or nothing is kind of the call. And then I think the notice, because the notice is for here, well notice out but if we can do if we can have that option.
Speaker 1 14:01
So notice there’s going to be a separate item here. So I’m gonna hold that for just a second. I looked up our bylaws here and this was our 2022 bylaw revision. What it says on the bylaws as regular airport advisory board meetings will be held on the second Thursday of each month at 6pm. In the Civic Center City Council Chambers, unless agreed upon by a majority of the board to hold the meeting at another public venue or three mode attendance. Remote attendance at meetings of the board shall be governed by the city’s electronic participation policy as amended from time. So without looking at that policy, I don’t know. Marsha, do we
Unknown Speaker 14:36
don’t have a change. That sounds like Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 14:47
I believe we separated that bylaw last year.
Speaker 1 14:51
Yes, we voted on it in my signature on here is March 14 2022.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
I’m confused. Do we have a hybrid ability?
Speaker 1 15:04
We have not done real hybrids I’m a little unclear as to whether we have the ability to in the city or not
Unknown Speaker 15:11
due to technical limitations
Unknown Speaker 15:21
counting numbers who around
Speaker 6 15:28
justified to do a hybrid it looks like as long as we stick to the city’s rules on it that we should be good.
Speaker 1 16:09
Levi, can we follow up on this for next month? I don’t think that can stop us from date and time and our posting locations.
Speaker 6 16:17
I don’t it doesn’t sound like nothing’s holding us up right now. It kind of sounds like we’re already technically allowed to. But as long as the board agrees to do it, I think the kind of last thing to do is just look through those city regulations and make sure there’s nothing that’s restricting us on that. And, and then we could pretty much show you why. And either way, as Marsha mentioned, there’s nothing we can really do much about it tonight. And we would have to address it at future meetings anyway.
Speaker 1 16:37
Yeah. Understood. And I mean, if we needed to adjust bylaws or something, we can certainly bring that up. Yeah, no, I, I appreciate the question. I’ve kind of forgotten about that issue that we’ve had, since Luckily, we’ve been able to be face to face for a while. Alright, so we have, I’m gonna bring us back. We have a motion on the floor to approve. Second, Thursday 6pm. With no location, comments, anything else? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Last is last on the admin side select official posting location for board agendas. What we looked back at last January, we determined that our primary posting location is the city’s online agenda management portal. That’s our legal posting location. We have a secondary not required, but encouraged location of the civic center bulletin board and a secondary rec requested location at the airport to be posted as well. But the only one that is official was the agenda management portal online. Thoughts on that anyone want to make a motion on that?
Speaker 6 18:00
What I’ve been doing to kind of help with that is every time I do the monthly update, and I’ve been putting it on the updates,
Speaker 1 18:07
we have this discussion with the city attorney’s, I don’t remember, it might have been a couple of years back in the car. We know the the official posting location, they strongly wanted it to be the website for consistency and ease of access for everybody. And what our compromise was is that we recommended that the city also posted a at the airport that the notice is out there but it is not a legally binding. They they don’t have to do that for a legal meeting to be for this meeting to be real.
Speaker 6 18:37
I think part of the past discussion was that we don’t technically that’s not technically our bill posted or area so we don’t control it was something that came up
Speaker 2 18:52
proposed that we stick with the city’s recommendation for posting on the website.
Speaker 1 18:58
I’ll second that. Any discussion? All those in favor? say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. We’re on to our first public invited to be heard. It’s a big audience tonight. All right, seeing no one to to speak. I’ll close the first public invited to be heard and asked for approval of the December 2023 minutes. Does anyone have any revisions? Anything they noted in the minutes that we need to address? No, I normally do but I don’t have any this time or I didn’t read it carefully enough. All right. Motion to approve that unless we have any changes. I’ll move to approve the December 2023 minutes. Do I have a Second? Moved and seconded any discussion? All those in favor of approving December 2023 minutes say aye. Aye. Any opposed? was the Les Brown update from the airport manager.
Speaker 6 20:03
All right, airport update. So I got kind of a pretty good list here. Hopefully I didn’t forget anything too major. I’ll kind of go through this list one at a time. And I’ll pause kind of at the end of each item just to see if there’s any questions at that moment and then continue through list. First thing I got on here is just an update on the new airport truck was required some months back this summer is finally on site, it took a little bit time sitting in the city shop, I think most of time was there sitting waiting on their guy that does the alignment on it. But it’s finally on site. Super happy for that finally got something that’s, that’s very usable for the airport with the truck with the plow. And with the toolbox. A 2013. And it cost the airport grand total, I think of $4,000 for everything. So that’s pretty killer. You’re not going to beat that pretty much anywhere. There’s, there’s some charity on the part of the state and dia, for that one. So I’m very happy. I’m very grateful to have that on site. Any questions about that? Next thing I got, we did a mid winter, big prairie dog mitigation push. Just kind of trying to hit things get a head start prior to the spring coming out here. I got a crew about six seven guys from Publix works we got out there on a day and we walked the whole airport back and forth, marked and flagged every prairie dog hole we could find. And then the city wildlife crew came out and treated. So here’s knock on wood, that we got a good winter push on things to help control things. Still kind of the word from the wildlife management crew on the field as they think that we’ve got it, we’re on top of things and we got good, good control on, you know, stopping thanks for getting out of hand in the future, which is super, that’s great for me, it becomes not a lot of work now a headache and not a big budget item if we keep on top of things. So that sounds good. Any question on prairie dogs? So, yes, knock on wood that’s going well believe
Unknown Speaker 22:00
it was that? Did you need a contractor for that? Or is that. So
Speaker 6 22:03
it turns out staff. So we were talking about potentially making a budget item for about doing and it would still probably be good to have some budget, money put aside from it. But at this point, I don’t know if we necessarily need to separate that from our normal maintenance, because it’s looking like we’re keeping a good handle on. And we were talking about getting a contractor potentially on staff, but the cities team continues to feel confident that it’s something that they can stay on top of. And it certainly appears that way from the you know, the observations I’ve been doing. So, so far, that’s what we’re running off. If things, we’ll see that the big test, of course, is this spring, when they start having the pups and things, you know, prairie dogs start migrating and we kind of see what happens from there. Let’s see a couple big infrastructure projects, if you will, or sort of infrastructure projects going on, on and around the airport. There’s major electric being run along the Roger road line kind of on am Jim’s property heading from east to west on the south side of the airport. I just had a meeting with the city’s electric coordinator yesterday, he assured us that there’s lots of tapping points on that new main line they’re running. So that’s good for us. Now, when we have people thinking about developing, there’s main tap in for three phase in kind of electricity they need also had a conversation and a meeting with our airport engineers just to ensure that getting that electric on the airfield itself wouldn’t cause any issues down to and including if we have to go under that runway. They have assured us that that would be a simple matter, that we wouldn’t have to worry too much with that as far as FAA regulation or anything like that goes. So touching base on that with them. Everybody kind of seems on the same page. And that’s great. That’s they’re digging on that now. They’re running all that conduit now. So hopefully, for future for the South side for any need the airport would would want. We’re we’re good one thing did come up. And of course, it’s kind of an unknown entity about the future of aviation, electric aviation in general. And certainly car charging stuff like that we had that conversation, it’s really hard to get an exact idea of what that’s going to look like in the future and what the demand will be. But we did have the conversation about preparing and make sure that hopefully we have the conduit space at least accommodate that in the future. On top, I’ll lump these two items together. Do
Unknown Speaker 24:27
you have a question on that one?
Unknown Speaker 24:28
Oh, go ahead.
Unknown Speaker 24:29
Mr. Telemedia things.
Speaker 4 24:31
Just follow with exactly what you just said. I clicked the button before you said that last couple sentence. But yeah, that’s a concern I have is making sure that the airport has the ability to do energy storage. i That’s one of the big things for you know, being carbon neutral by 2030 is that we need, you know, storage capacity and airport might be a good place for that especially, like suffocation of airplanes or whatnot. So I would just ask that When you guys are looking at building electrical infrastructure that it’s, you know, as robust as potentially needed.
Speaker 6 25:08
And of course, we’re kind of on the dawn of the the major use electrical recharging vehicles, certainly now and then hopefully in the near future, and it certainly does seem that way electric charging aircraft, but that’ll definitely be a discussion that’s head with engineering, when that actually comes down to it. For this project, at least, now we’ve got the conduit going to the airport to get us that electricity. The other one I was going to loop in with that was our we’re also getting a drainage review of the airport master drainage plan on the south side of the airport, the intent of that being to determine whether or not there’s a major project that we need to do as the city to potentially help that drainage on the south end of the airport, we’ve had several people come and ask about developing on the south side of the airport. And kind of seems to be the sticking point scares them off is the the drainage that’s the city asks for them to do on this house side. After talking with city engineers, they’re not even 100% Sure what drainage now that that would actually need. So we’re doing a review of the airport drainage master plan to determine what the exact need would be, I asked them to give us really good deliverables on that and step it out. Like if you know, we build X, how many square feet of hangers means what upgrades we need, ask them to break it down on the recommendation on whether we do all that drainage work now or we do it in stages, or however they want to do. So we’re currently in the middle of kind of hashing out a scope of work, if you will, for that. For the south side of the airport, that should be very close to being done. Hopefully, we’ll have some stuff moving on that this spring. Any questions on that? That’s been coming for a while we’ve been talking about that for for a bit. Now. I do have just a really quick note on the airshow meeting will be on the 20th. At the airport, what was the time again 9am 20th at the airport. So that’ll be kind of a post holidays, relaunch of that. So hopefully, we can just hit the ground running and make sure we set a really good agenda for the future meetings and a timeline and stuff like that, to move forward on that. Of course, I’m sure Melinda will talk about this later. But any questions on air show stuff the moment. Good, all right. projects on the airfield a little bit of switch up on what’s going on. So this year, we’re still really hoping to get the wildlife fence completed. Finally, as many of you know, we’ve had a wildlife fence kind of going around the airport for a longtime now with some very large openings in it that don’t stop wildlife. So that is still on the plate to get completed this year. Originally, we had another pavement rehab for the ramp, or more appropriately for the apron. This year on the airfield, we’re now looking at potentially pushing that back a year for cost saving reasons. Because we also need to do excuse me, rehab on that asphalt taxi way connector that goes on the northeast side of the airport that loops round on the comes into runway two, nine. And it was determined that if we were going to do that in 2024, and 2025, and we’re going to do rehab in 2024. And we determined that if we did those projects together, we could potentially save quite a bit money. So we’ve decided to reassess, start working on doing those projects at the same time and seeing if we can get a bit out at the same time to save some money. So that’s where that’s sitting at the moment. Any question on engineering projects at the moment? They
Speaker 1 28:43
might for the pavement projects, delaying them or delaying the Abran. Yeah. Is that grant funded? Is that is that? Is there any grant impact to doing that? And
Speaker 6 28:55
that’s the question I had. And right now it’s looking like there shouldn’t be any grant impact at all. Let me just carry forward. Yeah. So and we’re you know, we’re using the oldest money first with a wildlife fence and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1 29:07
yeah, I’m all for saving money. That would just be my concern. Yes. Losing something in the process. That
Speaker 6 29:11
was actually something that we were going full onboard on just doing that. And the FAA actually came to us and said, hey, you know, you got this other project coming. Let’s talk about what you could potentially do. Anyway, there. So I said, so yeah, everyone, FAA, the engineers constantly on the same page, it’s like, it looks like we could save some money doing it that way. The other project question? Okay. What else? Oh, as we talked about the last meeting, there was some leasing billing corrections that went out. For the most part that’s going over pretty well. I’ve had probably five or six phone calls asking you asked me to explain out all of the math and stuff like that and I’ve done that Done, done a couple of meetings with people and stuff like that kind of explaining out the math and stuff like that. So that’s all gone pretty pretty well, it was a and to recap that from the last meeting we had there was a essentially a spreadsheet calculation error on the spreadsheet that we had been using that we caught during an in depth audit of the spreadsheet. So that was all corrected. Moving forward. Now we have knock on wood. Very, very correct Matt, master spreadsheet plan with all the correct formulas and algorithms moving forward. Alrighty, any question on that? Moment? Okay. That’s the big things I did have one other quick item just to kind of loop everybody in on information wise, we did do a violation on hanger on the to Victor to condo association. Those are the hangars on the south side of the airport. hangar door busted open in the wind. And it was that particular hangar was filled with what appeared to kind of look like a swap meet from floor to ceiling. Clothing, tools, stray wood, stuff like that. So we did send out a violation letter for that particular hanger to Victor, to working with Mr. Manley and to Victor to have that he’s very responsive to it. He is in communication with the sublease of that hangar. And they are actively working on getting that corrected. That is something that I’m trying to be a little more on top of. And I spoke about before in past meetings. And as as we get into it, being very attentive to the airport rules and regulations and making sure that we’re trying to hold people to those.
Speaker 1 31:37
So Levi on that topic. I know, you and I have had this conversation before you’ve put this in a number of your updates to kind of give people you know, a gentle reminder, this is coming. Yeah, is this the first violation, this is the
Speaker 6 31:50
first violation that we’ve done. Something else that I would really like to do. And again, it seems to be one of those things, it’s dependent on multiple forces in the city world here is do hanger inspections. Probably when that comes to fruition, we’ll be along with fire inspections. And I want to be careful not to make it seem like I’m you know, bootstrapping off the fire department and sneaking in there same time. But in the same respect, the fire department very, very much wants to do air inspections also. And it just makes sense to do hangar inspections and fire inspections at the same time and not double repeat everybody, go do hanger inspections. And then five months later, they come out and do fire inspections on everything. Mr. Seller?
Speaker 4 32:36
What rules are you most concerned about? People violating
Speaker 6 32:39
mostly the safety issue kind of stuff. And actually this this violation from a legal standpoint on the city would probably be pursued a little bit more heavily by the fire department at first. There’s things you know, like open barrel drums of crude you know, oil in the hangar and stuff like that. So if anything this were to go to legal would probably go through that venue first. It certainly safety stuff like that. And you know, from a practical standpoint, we are we do have a very real shortage of hangar space on the Front Range. Our rules and regulations very clearly say that, hey, this needs to be for aeronautical use and for our responsibilities to the our airport into the flying community in general. We should probably be enforcing those rules
Unknown Speaker 33:28
anything else on that
Unknown Speaker 33:29
Vice Chair Jordan?
Speaker 2 33:30
I had a question about back with Prairie dogs that occurred to me I was over there the other night and rabbits I’ve never I’ve never had a prairie dog encounter with a rabbit I did hit a bat took that out with my Wink strap but I’ve never had wildlife on the you know if I did I just did it. But the rabbits are everywhere
Unknown Speaker 33:51
rabbits are bad.
Unknown Speaker 33:52
So what do we do
Speaker 6 33:53
about that? Rabbits are harder they don’t you know it’s harder to attract rabbits usually you know they live under cars they live in bushes they make littleness and stuff like that. And that’s one of the the trade offs of having you know, different kinds of mitigation you may get eight all the prairie dogs out and then it makes room for all the rabbits and stuff like that to move in. The Rabbits are a lot worse this year and so are the mice the mice are a whole lot worse this year. So that has caused issues with the gates now they’ve made nest in the gate wiring harnesses, they’ve had to replace hard wiring harnesses on the gates and stuff like that. So we had to went out and got some professional mouse control bait stations and we had to install those and all the gates and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 34:36
Okay, interesting. Yeah, cuz the rabbits there I guess the prairie dogs because they’re digging up the dirt. They’re, you know, they’re causing
Unknown Speaker 34:42
collision hazards in the runway safety area.
Speaker 2 34:44
Yeah. Okay. Is the bunnies they don’t. They live under bushes and things.
Speaker 6 34:49
And in Britain, they’re usually not that they’re small, but they’re also a little less hefty than some of those prey dogs so I’m not as worried about clusion hazards.
Speaker 2 34:59
With them, just stick couldn’t make it easy. I saw a ton of them the other night, but they were over. I pulled in over the FBO. And they were over in the first hangars over there where you always see him under those cars.
Speaker 6 35:08
It’s a quick little interesting story back when I was flying professionally, I remember flying into the hunter and doing a low pass at night over in the runway moving up and what’s going on and it was just it was a cold night and on a in that black asphalt had sucked up all in all the rabbits in the whole area had decided to go sit out on the asphalt for as long as they could. But anyway, so there there are airports to draw rabbits for sure. Open Spaces, warm spots to sit and stuff like that they love it.
Speaker 3 35:39
Mr. Meester while we’re on subject wildlife, has there been any complaints or concerns expressed about the number of geese that are surrounding the airport now?
Speaker 6 35:50
So I’ve only had one complaint this year on geese? And essentially it was they’d land in a field over there, and we want to run scared off. But apart from that I haven’t I haven’t had any reports or complaints about
Speaker 3 36:01
geese if it needs to be remediated. What’s the mechanism for that?
Speaker 6 36:08
From what the city will probably allow us to do and the conversations I’ve had is noise and get some bang goes out there and stuff like that. Do it. Yeah. Which you know, and honestly, since they drain the swamp pond, from my observation hasn’t been awful yet. We’ll get some land. But I haven’t seen any living on the airport, certainly, or nursing for long periods of time. So that’s really good.
Speaker 3 36:31
The hit been investing the the final path on
Speaker 6 36:36
to nine on to nine. Okay. Yeah, that’s just, I think I think we’re looking at it stuff that’s really not on airport is kind of the issues that we’re looking at right now. So it’s something to keep keep an eye on. And we do have assessments from the wild. In fact, I’m meeting with the new wildlife representative at the COA conference on the 23rd. And we’ll have that conversation again, when they’re going to come out and do their inspections against.
Speaker 2 37:07
US sorry about that. How is that managed with the noise, then? My office, I backup to a golf course. And I get startled during the day when they’re out there making shooting something that sounds like fireworks, to get them to leave? And so would you do that? Or would that be something
Speaker 6 37:22
in the past? I have, honestly, since I’ve been here, I think I’ve used that noisemaker twice. So it’s nothing that we’ve had to terribly to use too terribly much. If we were to get to a point where we’re using it, you know, weekly or daily there would certainly I’m sure be a conversation that point but at this point in time, you know, the rounds draw more dust than anything else. Okay.
Speaker 2 37:43
So in you’ve got the ability, you’ve got the tools to do it. Okay.
Speaker 6 37:47
From from state and federal standpoint, we’re allowed to mitigate. However we want from a city standpoint, we’d probably be restricted to using noisemakers.
Speaker 1 38:03
Leave other update question that you didn’t cover that? I’m not sure how much you can say. But I’d love an FBO update. Can quick
Speaker 6 38:11
FBO update from from certainly it seems that if Google aide is no longer pursuing purchasing the FBO on the field. There is some tension currently in discussion between us and the current owner. He is kind of blaming the city for blocking stuff. We have come back to him and reiterated in recent our communications to him saying look, here’s what the communication we sent to you saying come engage with this talk with us have the conversation and with no response. Additional update on there’s a gentleman I think I covered this at the last meeting too. Who was wanting to sublease the F one a hangar which is the hangar which my office is in and put a helicopter school and I talked with him right before the holidays. I sent him a couple emails since I haven’t heard anything back. I don’t know if he’s still out of the loop still coming back in or if perhaps the urgency or his interest in that has waned some. I did get essentially the approval the approval for that sublease is all queued up. All I need from him is essentially a letter from him showing explaining what insurance they’ll have to cover it and we’re good to go. It’s all queued up in city attorneys to shoot it off for Harold for approval. If he is indeed still pursuing that.
Speaker 1 39:42
Great. Any questions leave on updates before we move on to the information items.
Speaker 2 39:53
Vice Chair, I’m not sure if it’s update. The Lopo was handling the hangar tax. situation. And I had, they had sent out some updates. And I’d asked, you know, was there anything that the board could do? And you reminded me that the city has referred it to the county?
Speaker 6 40:12
Yes. Oh, yes, that’s right, we have that email conversation back and forth, I can give a quick update on that, I certainly will, will will loot that into airport update. Quick recap on the tax situation. As we all know, this last year with the next expiration of some tax laws that the county jumped up taxes on the airport quite a bit. From what I can tell, and we and I think we kind of covered this, and Steve and I have talked about this, too, there was kind of a mixed response to what occurred out of that. This board wrote a letter to the city to ask us to address this, we did that we had a meeting with Harold, during that meeting, the county, you know, very politely essentially told us, hey, that’s our business, you know, let us deal with it in our own method. So most of the tenant hanger, hanger tenants, I’m sure filed, you know, have that reviewed, depending on the ones that I’ve talked, it almost kind of feels like 5050. Some say, Hey, I had it reviewed, and it’s great. It’s way better. Some people say I had a review, and they did almost nothing for me. So I guess that’s kind of a good news, bad news kind of result that came out of that. I think there’s still some some again, being looped out of it. I’m not 100% on this, there’s the last I checked into his talking some of the hair tenants, there were still a few steps, or they could go through potentially appealing it. But honestly, it’s a county issue. So to to get anything really moving on it, it would have to be appeal not to the city here, but to the county of Boulder in general.
Speaker 2 41:53
Question is, can the airport board? We don’t have any strength past,
Speaker 6 42:00
I guess, you know, city, do we? That’s an excellent question. And I would throw that Harrison and the rest of you as you know, certainly I’m not going to tell you to not make a recommendation to the bolinda. It never hurts to I guess, speak up. But it would be it is definitely an in the county’s purview. And not the city’s and to to the city’s credit, you know, not that we give them credit for anything. But they’ve they made the effort. They went out there and they insisted on having a meeting and we sat down in a meeting and at least the city did make an effort to, to get in front of them about this.
Speaker 1 42:41
Yeah, I’m not. We’re an advisory board to the city, we have certainly the ability to advise the city. I don’t think there’s anything that stops us from writing a letter, but we have no power and grant. We don’t have a direct interest in that since they’re privately leased. So I have I don’t know, I struggle with what our role is in that. Mr. Shuck?
Speaker 5 43:06
I think it’s at another level now. Nothing really happened on the second go around of Appeals. And so now it is up to each individual to file a claim, or they should have already filed a claim with the B. A, A whatever that stands for.
Unknown Speaker 43:30
I can’t remember that. The Better Business Bureau No,
Speaker 5 43:32
no, it’s I really can’t remember I don’t know, the holidays and stuff. I’m in Excuse me. Oh
Unknown Speaker 43:48
yeah. Assessment Appeals.
Speaker 5 43:50
Yeah, there you go. Thank you. And each individual hanger tenant had the opportunity to go to that next level. Some did, some didn’t. I did and basically what that means is that I will go before the BAA and the assessor’s office attorney. So each the, the assessor’s office has to have an attorney at each meeting. So if there’s 50, individual meetings, or more, the assessor’s office is paying an attorney for all of that. So, the bottom line is the assessor’s office does not know what they’re doing. One hanger could be $500. The one right next to it could be $5,000. It’s out absolutely crazy. And so they need to be, you know, held to the fire, because in two more years can be the same thing. So if the hanger tenants don’t do something now, then who knows what’s going to happen in two years? So, anyway, that’s, you know, and the hanger Association has done a lot of work. Dave cop, especially, you know, some people think he’s harsh and stuff, but he knows what what he’s talking about with the tax deal. And so, hopefully, you know, it gets resolved, or the county backs down or whoever the assessor’s office backs down and says, Okay, well leave it alone. Well, you never know. If there’s 100 people, they don’t have a lot of money to waste on, you know, that kind of attorney fees.
Unknown Speaker 46:10
Right, but you go, Well,
Speaker 5 46:12
yeah, I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m gonna go.
Unknown Speaker 46:18
Mr. Minister, did you want to weigh in on this as well? Yeah, briefly.
Speaker 3 46:22
We’ve appealed it. And so I’m the secretary for general handles Corporation, we lease building 16. The appeal went, I believe, to the state. And I, I agree with Harrison that, you know, the advisory board doesn’t have a place in any of the appeals because it’s between the individual owners and the county in this particular case, but so I understand the escalation that went to the state didn’t go to the county, the more people, more individual owners that complain about the assessment, the more clout I think we’ll have. So I’m happy, or I’m satisfied with the approach to the appeals that we’re currently taking.
Speaker 5 47:07
And the other thing to the people who did not file, they have an opportunity to file an abatement. Now as of January one, so we’re hoping that a lot more people who said, Yeah, you know, whatever, it’s not that much more. I hope they jump on board.
Unknown Speaker 47:31
We’ll see. Yeah.
Speaker 1 47:34
Why would ask you to are obviously very plugged in on this. Leave, you hear this as well. If there is a point where there is something that’s appropriate for us to do at the city level, or encourage the city to engage on this, to please bring it up. And I don’t know what influence we have on this or even getting ahead of the next cycle. But I just would encourage you guys, as you hear more to kind of keep bringing this up so we can keep having the discussion. Okay.
Speaker 3 48:02
Well, the argument at this point has been that we’re assessed is basically warehouses. Unfortunately, we don’t own the ground that the buildings stand on. So the assessment is, is defective, in my personal opinion, based on that original assumption that we’re a warehouse. When we don’t own the infrastructure, we don’t own the ground.
Unknown Speaker 48:31
Worship, can you hit that button?
Speaker 7 48:33
Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot that we’re being recorded. I wanted to suggest, I don’t know and YouTube probably do that have have looked into it. But with and it’s with housing doesn’t appeal. You get to choose what comparables you bring forward. And it may be different than what the assessor chose. And you can base a claim on that. And so it sounds like if some appellants were successful in getting a reduction and others were not, then I don’t know who would do it, whether it’s the board or or Lopa or the hanger association or whatever. But But disseminating the information about the successful appellant so that when people make their next appeal, they can choose low assessment comparables, then that might help. And so it’s some it’s an action that whoever the leaders are can take to get that coordinated, and it might be it might help,
Speaker 3 49:46
the issue becomes one of actually getting a hold of those comparables. I can’t get a share value out of my own corporation. So GHC has not submitted all of this deals for hangars over the last few years, I had to do that on an airport, full airport basis, I think would be virtually impossible. So we can’t get our hands on that information. That’s, that’s something that’s impeding these appeals.
Speaker 7 50:14
So how many of the hangars are owned by individuals?
Unknown Speaker 50:18
I couldn’t tell you.
Speaker 6 50:20
I’d say leave, I’d have no right here, individuals or entities, let’s call them homeowners associations, stuff like that. It’s essentially 100%. There’s one city owned building. And then there’s multiple, you know, too big to condo associations, stuff like that. Yeah.
Speaker 7 50:36
Well, I mean, at least some of those people are just be willing to share if they got a letter. I don’t know. Potentially. Well, that was all I had to say. Fair enough.
Unknown Speaker 50:54
Vice Chair Jordan, we
Speaker 2 50:56
have discussed in the past, having people take responsibility for areas of interest that were on our hotlist, as we were going through all that, this would be something that would be really an appropriate item for you to report back or update, provide updates and take responsibility for that topic. As long as the board is remains interested in it. I just feel like the people in the airport, expect us to represent them, and advocate for them. And this one, I know it’s, you know, there’s a limit to what we can do. But to at least stay engaged. And since we have owners on the board, who can keep us updated on what’s going on. Just if nothing else, just to know what the what the ongoing situation is, because there’s a lot of effort going into it that on the on the behalf of everybody on the field when they’re challenging this. So it’s a noble effort that, and Lopez put in countless hours and energy and a lot of frustration. So just whatever we can do to at least keep it out in the forefront and on the public record, I think, as our board, and then if you guys could take that task to report back to us and let us know,
Speaker 1 52:12
I kind of want you to take that broader I agree with everything you said. But we had had, I liked the hotlist kind of that topics that we are each interested in. We had raised that year and a half ago, maybe and I’m not sure it went a whole lot of anywhere. So I would maybe encourage all the board members, before next month, just put some thought into things that you would be particularly interested in following and kind of reporting back on, you know, with the idea of being the ones you’d like to have the most advocacy role in and pushing us to, or in our role is advising the city on what they should be doing. So I just will bring that up next month as an advisor as an info item in the discussion. But I think it’d be good just to have everyone think about that. I’m going to move us along unless there’s anything else on updates. And we’ve got two information items, annual report and Southside development update. I don’t know if you want to say anything about the annual report. But just kind of the general basis of that we’re required to report put an annual report together for the City Council in the first half of the year per our bylaws. We’ve in the past had a board member or to put that together, spend time doing that and then bring it to the board and we’ve gone through an iteration or two. I really just want to bring this up since it is January. And we often tend to let this lag until the last minute and then have issues getting it done within the first half of the year. So really just want to raise that issue and see if anyone’s particularly interested in starting that effort. And we’ll keep it on the agenda.
Speaker 6 53:49
And I would echo the same thing. Yes, that’s why we had it on this agenda just to get it in front of people and start thinking about it now. I
Speaker 1 53:57
was one of the ones last time around that was involved in that I’m happy to to do that as well. But we’ll open it up if anyone else has an interest in that Mr. Solomon,
Speaker 4 54:08
I would be more than willing to help you with that.
Speaker 6 54:12
Right. And just to get a quick reminder about that whole process is essentially we’re doing essentially two reports, there’s kind of a standard format, one for the city that we’re required to do. And pretty much all the boards are the same. And then there’s the annual report that we kind of want to do as as the airport that kind of shows what’s actually going on out there and kind of puts an informational better face than just a boring document to the city council.
Speaker 1 54:36
I think that’s a really good reminder. So the way we’ve done this in the past is there’s been kind of a letter from from the board just saying it’s a chance for us to advocate and, you know, Mark at the airport and what we’re doing, there’s the required report and then we talk about what’s been going on with the airport and what the what people are doing on the airport, those kinds of things. So we’ll get that started. So also development update,
Speaker 6 55:00
I can give, I guess a little quicker, we really hit a lot of this already kind of information items. And we talked about the electricity and the master drainage report. Those are kind of the the steps that we’re moving forward to get sellside development going down there. Those are the two big steps are really we’re kind of in the way electricity, we can say it’s not really in the way now they’re putting it in now. But that hydrology report on potentially putting a parcel for land up request for proposals, it’s good time to give everybody a little bit of a reminder on how we would actually get new hangars built on the airfield. So this week, since it’s city land, it has to go out for a request for proposal. So we have to decide what land is going to be released, that it has to go out there advertised to the public, as here’s the chunk of land that the city wants to release, please send us your proposals. And then the city I, the Transportation Department Public Works reviews those and kind of determines who’s who’s the best one in the past, it’s worked more in a practical sense, there’s been some on this one in the bill, the hangar they put it out for a request for proposal, and one person turns in a proposal. And pretty much, I would proceed probably in the future, it will be a little more competitive, just because of the nature of things have kind of changed on the Front Range, how much interest has been shown and developing on their field. So I would imagine that anything, we would in the near future put out a request for proposal, we’ll probably have multiple people send in proposals on and there will actually be some real decision making to be made. At that point. Most of the land on the airfield is not ready right now for a proposal because we’ve been having issues that we previously talked about lack of infrastructure, stuff like that things that this airport has been dealing with before I got here. And you know, as the sewer project came on getting that sewer on the south area that we’re getting electricity over there, stuff like that. Now our current task is tackling the drainage so that it’s developable on the south side of the airport to there’s potentially one parcel of land on the north side of the airport, that is could be developed, just as you come into the airport right there by the statue, there is a chunk of land, which hanger could be put on, there are some struggles with that one, because the main water and sewer lines go through there. And anything has to have a 30 foot easement from those two lines. And those lines are separated by quite a bit already. So you couldn’t fully utilize that space. And it’s been a difficult in the past. And people have approached me asking to do that. And I say, yeah, here’s the main sewer lines, this is what you’re restricting, and people tend to back off from that point. Having said that, there are a couple individuals that would probably put in proposals on that. And that’s something that I have on my list to talk with about too with city management, my boss, Phil, and then Joanie city manager, if they potentially are interested, and just releasing that parcel of land as a kickoff request for proposal. To put that one out there first. We don’t have we know it drains mostly. So we don’t have to worry so much about getting the drainage report back on it, and then how something actually released out there for hangar and development. So that’s kind of on on the horizon for potentially being the next spot of land that’s opened up.
Speaker 4 58:22
Mr. Telemedia, in terms of development, I’ve had the opportunity to other airports in the area, namely the Greeley one they have a very nice business center where meetings could be taking place. And there’s also another Mandy’s there, such as a very nice restaurant, I would ask that those types of things are prioritized to help build the overall value of the airport rather than just hangers. Yeah.
Speaker 6 58:48
And that’s the conversation said and, and that’s kind of a separate conversation. And we that would be getting a little bit deeper into we talked before about an FBO update. So now we’re starting to talk about not necessarily the future of individuals developing on the airfield, but we’re thinking about the individuals what we as the city want to develop on the air field. So those are kind of two different subjects. I’ve long been an advocate of this is the face of Longmont you know things should be nice. The city’s seems to be thinking the same way we just went through a good project we know nice fire houses on in the city, stuff like that. I think we should be addressing kind of the airport in a similar mindset. You know, getting the facilities we need. Having a good face out there it is it is the point. A lot of people’s the first thing they see when they come to Longmont, a lot of people that come here for meetings that hop off their net jets and their planes and stuff like that. So it is important. That will certainly be a conversation for this board moving forward. Kind of what the board recommends to the city, you know, moving with those facilities and stuff like that. It’s coming. The question is in how quickly and in what do you know? How will it come to fruition and what will actually occur?
Speaker 1 1:00:13
Leave it when you and I were talking about this last week Southside development, you and reminded me and I forgotten about this, that there is a Southside development plan or study, that’s out on the airport’s website. It’s not terribly recent. Now,
Speaker 6 1:00:26
it’s not so recent. And it’s it really wasn’t just an, a kind of an exercise, if you will, it’s not an official document any kind of planning capacity. But it’s an excellent document just for kind of, for wrapping your head around to getting a good idea of some of the basic things that you would want to do or think about when you’re developing that area down there. It’s got a couple of maps with, you know, potential layouts for how the land could be developed and stuff like that, which are, which are logical, and certainly better than the the maps that were originally originally laid out in the master plan. It’s a good document, if you guys haven’t skimmed through that, I would highly recommend just checking it out. And kind of looking through it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 1:01:10
I took a look through it after the discussion. Recognize it’s old and the cost values are out of whack. Yes. But I mean, even just looking at the maps, and it, it gave ideas, and it kind of, it’s hard to otherwise look at a map and understand how you would use the space and just how much space there is. And I really liked, you know, just you look at that layout, and you see how many hangars where you could put different things. And it’s it’s just a it’s a good thought exercise gives you
Speaker 6 1:01:35
an excellent idea of the scale and kind of the the capabilities of that piece of
Speaker 1 1:01:41
land. Yeah, whether you do anything related to what’s in the study or not. It’s just it’s really interesting. And I think as I’m hoping that Southside developments going to be a big topic this year, I really am excited to see the drainage said yes, because I’d like to push the city to make those infrastructure improvements so we can get these RFPs out. So I just encourage folks to be, you know, be be aware of what’s out there so that we can try to move that forward. Any other thoughts, comments on Southside development update for Levi?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:17
We have no action items, then for tonight. I will open up our final public invited to be heard.
Speaker 1 1:02:26
Seeing no one I will close our final public invited to be heard. And we’ll move on to board city council and our staff comments. So if anyone would like to ask any comments, Melinda, perhaps an airshow update. Anything else we haven’t discussed, I would like to bring up as well as ideas for future agenda items. I’ll open the floor. Vice Chair Jordan. Thank
Speaker 2 1:02:46
you. I have all the pieces of paper I brought in. I did not bring in my whole list of everything going on with your show, which you wouldn’t want to be bothered with anybody. But I can’t even I’m like drawing blanks. But the all the processes are underway. I had filed the U opp with the city but they’re changing the portal. I talked to Michelle today. I won’t be able to re apply until April, probably. But we’re in we’re on the books. You know, we’re fine on time on that it worries me but we still have to have a lot of meetings, we still have to have to finish that document. I talked to parks and rec about some rental items and all the bits and pieces I list of things that have been accomplished. But all that to say we’re moving along well. We have some good questions. We have our meeting the 20th to really rally the troops. And then now we’re down to task lists and people reporting in either it’s a go or it’s a no go and that we keep moving at this point. The interesting thing that interesting development today was that we could potentially apply for a special special permit a fee waiver for our city services that we need. Excuse me, I developed the cough that’s afternoon. That would be Sanitation, Water, the city services that we have to use. They don’t think we’ve done it before. But we do have a nonprofit where the airport friends advance brand and deal Van Zandt is the president of that I’m the secretary treasurer. And Dale is coming on to the show team. So he had said no to me for several years and then finally said yes. So I’m going to explore that to see if we can if we qualify and if we can get a fee waiver for some of the city services. And then everybody else we’re locking in the date. There have been no everything’s just getting better and better of people offering to check for flyovers and and the other thing we are competing with that De now is the Artwalk. So that is the same day, so I can’t get my bandshell that I wanted, because it’s going to be at Artwalk. But otherwise, there’s no other show competition. And if you haven’t bought your tickets for the Colorado Springs show, you should. My bigger question to Levi to was did we want to use our show as a fundraising opportunity, which we did in the past. And I think we kind of agree that we don’t, we don’t want to take that much on and that I can then kind of job out the pancake breakfast, the beer garden, the food trucks, and we’re not trying to make money on that, which is a relief. So we’ve got a great team, we continue to get people showing up and showing interest. And we’re really ready to to now we’re just dialing it in at this point. And then the meeting on the 20th will be Malcolm had requested to have the police there. But it’s too soon. We don’t need to take up their time, this meeting really needs to be the team. And we need to have separate meetings with the police for traffic and, and security. And I did reach out Dale recommended reaching out to recess factory, which I’ve been doing quite a bit of have not gotten a response from them. I called today and left a message for David to see if they want to bet on any portion of it. So they did our security or entrance at the diagonal taxiway. And then they do a fundraiser of their own as part of it. And then they did this security fencing, the snow fence, they ran, they did a lot of the heavy lifting. And I would love to get them to bid on it and see if we can pull off having them assessed. And so that’s still pending. So the airshow is fully underway. Everybody knows the city knows the, you know, our demonstration teams. I’ve got questions about the order of events, some things like that, but we’re gonna start really getting into brass tacks and deliverables with the January 20 meeting. And then I’ve been having one on ones with everybody in as we’ve been going along with that it was supposed to have had one with Silvercreek yesterday, and they had to cancel it. So that’s happening after that 20th meeting that’s on the 24th. But the Innovation Center is in we’re really wings over the Rockies as in with Discovery flight. So we’ve got a really robust program. So I have asked my intern to prepare a save the date social media graphic for us to get out and start just promoting the date. And then some of the highlights. So she’s working on that for me. That’s on the air show. The question that the items that I wanted to bring up for the board to keep on the top part of the agenda is the navigation easements. We talked about that a couple of meetings ago, and along with navigation easements, the signage, and I joined the board, January 2016. And we were talking about signage then and it has never gotten off the ground. And that is the airport influence zone signs on the streets and with the additional developments. I think it’s it’s a small, small thing to do that can at least say, we tried to tell you, you know, when people plead, and I think complaints are down, it’ll be interesting to see that in the annual report. The helicopters are loud. So I would we don’t see a complaints on helicopters much. Because I’ve always I feel that people find them to be purpose driven, that they’re not individuals going golfing or the things that people get accused of with flying their planes. But with the increase in helicopter traffic, they’re loud and noisy, and depending on where they’re flying, we could see an uptick in complaints again, and those signs with new developments people driving through there. I’ve always said you know, low ceiling day, if you’re looking at house, you have no idea what you’re in for. And I think that’s just a small expense. So whoever bears out, I don’t know. But a small thing to do is to surround the airport with the airport influence on SEC Centennial did. And in light of the lawsuit now against Metro, just whatever we can do to try to you know, create some sort of a bubble around us and protect ourselves because that didn’t you saw I’m sure that did go to they did file suit. So whatever we need to do as a board and whoever would advise us on that to try to at least really make it clear there’s an airport there and your planes fly around airports. So I would like to see us put that up and not have that actually get accomplished that would be really cool.
Speaker 1 1:09:54
I think that is a lot but thank you I know we talked about the game One easements last time or two months ago, and I think that’s we’re waiting for that to come back from city if we need to do anything with it. Is
Unknown Speaker 1:10:07
that correct? Yeah, that’s
Speaker 6 1:10:08
kind of I think last time we left it. We do want this one actually my first task so I got here we’ve got some really good navigation easements written up. Right now the way that the city is kind of applying them as neighborhood by neighborhood, to my kind of understanding of the process to actually get a standard set one set for a distance, we’d have to change some, some rules and code in the city. And Marcia might know more about this than I do. And we kind of reached out to the city to do that. And they essentially kind of came back said, well, we don’t have the capacity right now to do that. But that’s something that that is on everybody’s radar. Especially as you know, new developments, start putting in applications and stuff like that. So but that’s certainly something that’s a good thing to follow up on. Councilmember Martin,
Speaker 7 1:11:01
thanks. Regarding navigation easements, the only one that I know of that’s in effect, is mountain Brooks. But they’re cooperative. If we don’t, you know, if we don’t have it on file, we can probably
Speaker 6 1:11:15
there’s there’s several different navigation easements that have kind of been trickled in over the years around some of the neighborhoods that are kind of ad hoc. And this person wrote this one, that person wrote that one. And this all kind of came when that lawsuit first started at BJC. So I asked the city attorney’s office and we actually reached out to some out of state advisors, reviewed all that and wrote some really good one up and had a conversation with a Opa, why they didn’t directly give insight on it. I did have a conversation with him about that. And they were encouraging Yes, exactly what we were doing. So we do have something now this kind of written up that we’re hoping is a little more standard, you will something which has been taken in the lessons of the past when it comes to BJC and stuff like that, moving forward. And from what’s kind of going on at the airport. I’ve been assured I’ve particularly with the modern West, stuff that’s been going on that yes, they’re using that as the model. And they’re also requiring that anything that’s rented in the future also has additional steps that go out to them and stuff like that. And again, this a little bit of my ignorance with the process isn’t officially was required. But I remember when our last hangups was had to make it officially like city rules regulations, when and where these were applied directly. But they have to be applied would have to be a change within the city. And kind of kind of their procedures, if
Speaker 7 1:12:39
you will. Do you know whether it’s a charter requirement or just a statutory? I can’t remember off the top. That’ll be important with respect to timing it for elections if it’s a charter amendment,
Speaker 6 1:12:52
not 100%. Sure, but I’ll follow back up on that one, too, to make sure we see where I mean last time. Yeah. But yeah, that’s a good one to follow up on.
Speaker 1 1:13:04
Any other comments, board members? Kazmir Martin levy should be good. All right, seeing none, then. Thank you all very much. We’ll call our January 11th. Meeting adjourned. Have a good evening.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai