Steve Temple and Mark Grimm of the Mineral County Airport Board where on hand at the regular meeting of the Mineral County Commissioners on Dec. 19 to give the commissioners an update on the airport.

According to Temple, the airport is “pretty close” to becoming self-sufficient and more rental hangars would “go a long way” towards making that a reality. With that in mind, upcoming federal and state grant deadlines have become a priority.

“We have a considerable amount of FAA and state grant money that we can access,” Temple said.

“It is about $413,000 in (FAA) grant money and it’s about $30-40,000 in state money.”

Temple added that because the federal grant proposal is “not something anyone here has the skill sets to do.” the board has interviewed two “capable” consultants to prepare the grant.

The consultant will be selected by the board and then approved by the county commissioners before beginning the proposal process.

“Our hope was we can get something to you that you can accept and move forward on so we can gain in the process,” Temple said.

“We are spending a considerable amount of time on that so we can get our recommendation to you as quickly as possible.”

According to Temple, the FAA grant is important because it is an annual grant and if the airport misses this period they will have to wait another year to apply.

“As we all know it takes a year to get anything built so that would set us back two years on the next generation of hangars,” Temple said.

Currently all of the hangars at the airport are rented and Temple added the board has received interest from other parties for hangar space.

In other airport board business, the county commissioners recently named Gordon Hendrick to the board and according to Temple the move was a positive one.

“He is a real resource because of his connections with Helena and his broad experience in the political area,” Temple said.

“He is a nice asset to our group and we are taking advantage of it already.”