Airport has questions to answer

Remember when you were playing touch football out in the street, and then that really big kid came walking down the block?

He wasn’t just older and tougher than anyone in the neighborhood; it was his football.

Now consider the goofy game going on at Coeur d’Alene Airport, with all its disputes over lease rates, hangar use, skeet shooters and so forth.

The big guy in this picture is the Federal Aviation Administration, which now wants to hear exactly what’s going on — basically to find out if any (or many) of its regulations are being abused.

And that football?

Well, the FAA can take it and go home if broken guidelines turn up.

Almost all general aviation airports like Coeur d’Alene — those without scheduled passenger service — survive on funding from Airport Improvement Program grants provided by the federal government.

Coeur d’Alene gets about $1 million per year, when entitlement money and discretionary funds are totaled.

That’s a pretty hefty chunk when you consider that the airport budget ranges between $850,000 and $1 million yearly.

ONE WAY to get your AIP grant money shut off, however, would be ignoring certain rules.

“We don’t normally get too involved in the administration side of things,” said Gary Gates, project manager for the FAA district that includes Idaho and Montana.

Gates, who is based in Helena, mentioned that under normal circumstances, his agency would only visit a GA airport once every couple of years.

“And those visits are mostly about safety issues and correct operations,” Gates said. “We only begin looking at possible violations on hangars, leases, that sort of thing, if we get a request from an airport manager — or if we receive a direct complaint.”

Gates indicated that he didn’t know the particulars concerning protests from the pilot-driven Airport Association (which is separate from the county’s airport advisory board), but that he needed to get some information from Steven Kjergaard, the airport manager.

As of Thursday afternoon, Kjergaard indicated he had not heard from Gates, but that he thinks the airport has taken all possible steps to set up a lease structure that will meet FAA approval.

“We have some problems like all airports, but we’re working to solve them,” Kjergaard said. “The nature of leases means you can’t necessarily change them on the spot.”

Members of the association are objecting to a proposal by the Kootenai County Board of Commissioners to raise their top lease rate from 18.8 cents per square foot to 22 cents.

Kjergaard said that Murdo Cameron, president of the Airport Association, has signed off on a compromise lease jump to 20 cents — but some association members insisted they weren’t aware of that agreement.

IN THE midst of all the fuss, though, some issues turned up that could be considered violations of FAA regulations.

And the feds do take these things seriously.

An airport outside Bakersfield, Calif., has been warned that its AIP grant money will be cut off if some changes are not made immediately.

Some matters under the microscope here are similar to the violations in California — discrimination in lease rates (regular hangar lessees here pay 18.8 cents per square foot, but the Coeur d’Alene Skeet and Trap club occupies about 23 acres of airport property at less than a penny per foot), as well as the use of hangars for non-aeronautical purposes.

“Some of the situations at Coeur d’Alene need to be examined, and we’ll discuss them with Steven as quickly as possible,” Gates said.

“Having an entire group of longtime occupants upset over perceived unfair treatment is a problem.”

Given that the airport brings at least $120 million of economic activity into the region (and that’s an old, conservative estimate), the County Commission now must make sure the FAA is satisfied when the lease changes come up at next Tuesday’s meeting.

That FAA checkbook must, must, must stay open.

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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press.

Email: [email protected].

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