The Des Moines airport authority board voted Tuesday to give Iowa Air National Guard officials another 90 days to tell the airport how much land it needs for its scaled-back mission, and how much it is willing to pay for it.

Kevin Foley, the airport’s executive director and general manager, said that brings to 15 months the delay in getting a firm response from the federal government, which had asked only for a 60-day extension of its April 1 deadline to finish its analysis.

The Business Record reported on Oct. 15 (Read the story) that the Guard has been paying $1 a year for its 172-acre base, leased since 1941. The lease runs through 2060, but that was based on the Guard providing $1 million a year in rescue and firefighting services that it no longer provides, and on the military running an active air mission, which ended when the jets were pulled in March 2014. 

The airport wants some of that land for general aviation operations, which would be a significant money-maker for the facility.

The Guard has discussed a few options include reducing the size of the base to 108 acres, but Foley said he plans to object to that. He said the Guard shouldn’t need that much land for its new mission of operating remote-controlled aircraft housed outside Des Moines. The deadline for a report from the Guard now will be July 1.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires airports to charge full market value for leases, with the exception of bases with military air missions. The remote controlled aircraft don’t count for that. The federal government has looked at moving other air operations to Des Moines, but a decision on that possibility is years away.