Some 50 people showed up at Flathead High School on Wednesday night to air concerns and seek answers about renovation plans at Kalispell City Airport.

Most speakers backed the current airport, but opposed plans to expand it.

"I've been a pilot for 32 years," R.T. Adkins told the crowd as attendees took turns at the microphone in a public meeting hosted by the south Kalispell neighborhood group calling itself the Quiet Skies Committee.

"I'm not in favor of expanding the airport," he said, "but I'm definitely in favor of keeping it."

Adkins lives west of Kalispell halfway between the airport and Hartt Hill and runs a half-century-old high-power search plane that creates a good amount of noise. He's part of a community of small-plane pilots with access to eight or 10 private airstrips dotting the Flathead countryside but, for now, chooses to use the city airport.

"If the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] is as heavy-handed as we think," he cautioned, "most of us are going to leave the airport. And then you'll have nothing to say" about how they operate their planes.

Airport Director Fred Leistiko has been working with the Kalispell City Council for years on plans to win 95-percent FAA funding for what has grown, largely because of rising property values, into a $15 million project at the airport.

It would reorient, lengthen and widen the runway, upgrade safety features and buy land to accommodate the changes.

Plans are to rotate the runway 5 degrees, a move designed to avoid the now-defunct KGEZ Radio towers, one speaker pointed out. Leistiko, who did not attend Wednesday's meeting, has said that it also will redirect flight patterns slightly. Along with a planned runway relocation 1,000 feet to the south, he noted it would take planes farther away from populated areas.

But the City Council must make the final decision on any changes made at the airport, and that step has not been taken.

Steve Eckels, one of the founders of the Quiet Skies group that opposes the increased noise and safety hazards a potential expansion generates, presented a list of six "citizen assurances" for the City Council to adopt as a non-binding resolution.

The assurances ask for a limit or reduction of noise if airport work proceeds, greater safety to people on the ground, protection of Kalispell's "charm factor" and property values, city and federal financial responsibility if a crash injures people on the ground or damages property, revenues from airport operations that get plowed into the airport-affected zone for neighborhood upgrades, and touch-and-go flight regulation before any airport expansion.

These play as a counterpoint to a list of 39 assurances the FAA requires when granting money for airport projects.

Scott Davis, another airport group organizer, said he quizzed the council and mayor and was told jets would not be coming into an expanded airport. He then posed the same question to Leistiko and was told that jets definitely would be coming, Davis said.

"We're not being told what's going on out there," Davis said. "People don't know the facts."

Speakers throughout the two-hour session brought up many concerns.

One man warned that a designation of an airport affected area, extending two miles from either end of the runway and a mile on either side, protects the city and airport operators from any legal action.

A crash into a home at Fourth Avenue West and 10th Street several years ago that killed a dog on the front porch (and two people on the plane) but managed to avoid a church full of people across the street could be replaced with devastation if a jet with a load of fuel crashed at 200 mph, another said.

With schools, homes and Legends Stadium in the flight path, a woman said, "Lord knows what's going to happen. It doesn't matter who's going to pay the bill."

Carl Feig, long an opponent of the city airport, suggested an auditorium, a community center, a convention center or even - one of his past suggestions - a Ferris wheel would be preferable to the airport.

"There are higher and better uses for that land," Feig told the crowd.

He said city leaders paid $179,000 for a study by Morrison-Maierle that advised against an expanded airport there, then hired Robert Peccia and Associates for another study that concluded that the airport would not generate enough revenue to turn a profit even 30 years out.

"But neither of those was ever put to use," he claimed.

In the same vein, several people questioned whether the airport should be relocated entirely.

"I would just as soon they move the whole shmear, but I know they won't," Seventh Avenue resident Joanne Blake said. "So we've got to stop it."

Kalispell native and police sergeant Alan Bardwell said a cherry warehouse and midtown granaries were torn down when the city outgrew them.

"Is it time? Have we outgrown this airport?" Bardwell asked.

"To me this is a real waste of money," said Winifred Storli, whose husband was a pilot. She likes the current airport as a base of operations for small planes, but drew applause with her suggestion that larger craft should use Glacier Park International Airport.

She also took exception to the idea that taking FAA grant money was a good move.

"It's not federal money, it's not stimulus money. It's our money," she said. "It's either an ego trip or a money trip. We don't need it."

Davis urged those attending to talk with their council members and mayor, to show up at city council meetings, to ask for proof to back up claims that the airport could generate $24 million in economic activity here.

"Our airport manager is very wise and smart," Davis said. "He could do an excellent job at this. He could make it boom and go. But I don't think he's got the common sense to know this isn't the place."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com