Airport board: Guard lease delays will cost taxpayers, delay terminal project
PERRY BEEMAN Aug 11, 2015 | 6:43 pm
4 min read time
941 wordsAll Latest News, Business Record Insider, Real Estate and Development, TransportationThe National Guard Bureau’s refusal to sign a deal on a new lease for the Iowa Air National Guard base at the Des Moines airport is costing taxpayers and ratepayers money, blocking economic development and delaying work on a new terminal, airport officials said Tuesday.
“This isn’t the way to treat the airport,” airport board Chairman Ed Hansell told Col. Kevin Heer, commander of the 132nd Wing based at the airport, at Tuesday’s airport authority board meeting. “It isn’t the way to treat the city. And it isn’t the way to treat the taxpayers.”
“I don’t believe that this going to be a quick process,” Hansell said at another point in the discussion. “We are starting to hold development up at the airport.”
Kevin Foley, the airport’s executive director and general manager, said the Guard’s delays in negotiating a new lease now that it has withdrawn its fighter jets and stopped paying for fire and rescue at the airport have cast doubt on whether the airport will be able to develop 18 acres that the Iowa Air National Guard brass had promised to remove from the lease. That land was eyed for airport hangars, an important revenue source for the airport.
The airport is delaying work on specific plans for the new terminal and related projects indefinitely in hopes that a meeting of federal officials will end the standoff over the lease terms, Foley said.
Airport board member Mark Feldmann said months of added delays at the National Guard Bureau leave the airport’s overall plans in limbo. “The entire plan pivots on this,” he said.
“If you take the pivot point out, you are nearly back to square one.”
And that is bad news for businesses and residents, Feldmann added.
“I had had thought for a long time the burden of this was going to fall on the traveling public,” Feldmann told the board. “But I suspect there is another shoe to drop, and that’s the burden on the taxpayers on what is ultimately going to be a substantial outlay.”
Newly appointed board member Jake Christensen agreed. “All the assumptions are thrown out the window,” said Christensen, a developer. “We have a spike strip situation going on with the Guard.”
Foley had proposed a contract to update the master plan in a way that wouldn’t count on any of the land. That brought protests from board members who objected to both the $178,000 price tag and the continued delays in negotiating changes to the Guard lease.
Airport officials wanted to prepare to hire a firm to do the $1 million detailed plans for the terminal and other facilities on the ground, including hangars for small planes that were supposed to go on part of the land now leased by the Guard. But Foley didn’t want to go ahead with those plans while the airport is still waiting for a new lease deal with the federal government.
Heer said the Guard was not involved in master planning at the airport, but has tried to encourage Washington superiors to negotiate with the airport.
“No one on my staff was ever contacted as part of the master planning process,” Heer said. “No one asked about our plans. You never involved anyone who had any vision, and we would have deferred, of course, to our national folks who are responsible for our lease.”
“We could have avoided an expensive site plan that you now say is our fault,” Heer said. “We are doing everything in our power … to reconcile this issue.”
“You are poorly informed,” Foley responded. He added that Heer’s predecessors had participated in no fewer than four tours to discuss the airport’s use of a Guard building in the area in question. And they had promised they would in 2018 turn over the apron area that used to house jets.
Foley told Heer that it appears federal officials are purposely delaying the negotiation so the federal government can continue to pay $1 a year instead of the up to $5 million a year the entire base would be worth on the regular market.
Added Hansell: “It is very clear that no one here locally has any authority to do anything other than delay. … We are going to spend $178,000 to essentially redo what we’ve already done because they can’t make a decision.
At another point, Hansell said: “You brought nine people out to the airport, several from Washington, D.C., flying commercial, and what did you tell us? You still can’t decide. You could have sent us an email for that.”
The airport wanted to start the detailed work on the airport plans in January or February, but that now is uncertain.
Hansell recommended that the board wait an undetermined amount of time to act on the contract to update the master plan because the FAA had planned to meet with federal military officials again to discuss the lease. Foley said he talked to officials in Washington on Friday and was told that the meeting had not occurred. “They seemed uncertain if the meeting had even been scheduled,” he added.
The board tabled action on the $178,000 contract.
Guard officials have said they might bring a helicopter unit in from Boone, which might qualify for the reduced rent, but have made no firm proposal.
The Federal Aviation Administration has said the Guard’s remote operation of drones that aren’t stationed in Des Moines doesn’t qualify for the discount rent under federal rules, and the airport wants to be able to lease the land for hangars. The Guard also owes the city of Des Moines more than $200,000 for sewage fees.
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