Wednesday — February 11, 2004

Baird sits in two
catbird seats

Airport manager does
double duty as Carey’s mayor

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By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

Rick Baird for years enjoyed a relatively even keeled routine, even if it involved juggling a double public life. No longer. Now, he’s like a precariously balanced surfer trying to stay on top of the crest of a giant wave rolling along at breakneck speed.

Rick Baird, airport manager, keeps Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey, as well as his hometown of Carey as mayor. Express photo by David N. Seelig

As manager of Hailey’s Friedman Memorial Airport, Baird is the point man dealing with pressures to build a new, larger airport distant from the present location, plus fighting a costly lawsuit ($600,000 so far and counting) by megamillionaire California tycoon Ronald Tutor, who wants to repeal airport weight limits so he can land his Boeing 737-sized jet there.

And, in his "moonlighting" other job--as the unsalaried mayor of the city of Carey (population 450)--Baird faces a surge of growth and development bound to interrupt the traditional quiet, laid back pace and isolation of the small town where he was born 53 years ago.

"We’re on the verge of significant change," Baird said of Carey’s expected growth. His words might also serve as a fitting a slogan for the future of the airport as well.

Younger commuters seeking less costly housing, Baird said, plus more distance from the bustle elsewhere in the Wood River Valley, are gradually diluting Carey’s normally older population.

The nearby Craters of the Moon National Monument also is on the brink of drawing more tourists, which will increase the demand for employees’ housing as well as tourism services.

Baird said subdividers have their eye on land in and around Carey for construction of new housing. One indicator, he cited, was the sale of one tract’s 11 lots in one day in December.

Growth unquestionably will put more burdens on Carey’s small city government, now two part-time employees (a clerk and planning and zoning administrator) and the City Council’s once monthly meeting schedule.

Although 33 road miles separate Baird’s rural small town job as unsalaried mayor and the $76,714-a-year Hailey airport post, the demands and problems of growth separate them only in scale and by degrees.

The airport, listed as Idaho’s second busiest commercial airport (behind Boise’s Gowen Field), poses the most demanding challenges by far.

Baird is caught between three competing forces: On one side, the Federal Aviation Administration has informed Friedman Memorial Airport Authority the field is not in compliance with standards required for operating the new larger 78-passenger Horizon Airlines Bombardier DeHaviland Q400 turboprop airliner. Compliance would cost millions of dollars in land acquisition and construction to extend the single 6,950-foot runway.

Faced with those costs, plus ongoing changes in FAA standards, the airport’s governing body agreed with Baird’s recommendation to launch a study into the feasibility and need for a new airport costing perhaps $100 million and four times larger than Friedman’s 230-acre site.

Arrayed against this course of action are aircraft owners and business interests that want to retain the present airport, whose location literally within walking distance of downtown Hailey’s business district, makes it convenient.

And the third pressure comes from homeowners, especially in the nearby city of Bellevue, who want the airport closed because of noise, despite a voluntary noise abatement program that has reduced noise complaints dramatically.

Yet, Baird approaches this thicket of prickly issues with an unflappable calm, perhaps born of his tour in the Vietnam War as a waist gunner on a helicopter that was shot down and then in civilian life as an airport traffic controller.

He’s been known to take nasty telephone complaints at home from homeowners about jets violating the nighttime curfew.

"I’m just as happy at 2 a.m.," Baird says blithely. He also has interrupted vacations to deal with airport problems.

Once, while the representative of a group, "Save Friedman Airport," delivered an abrasive lecture to Baird on why the airport shouldn’t be closed, Baird remained calm and expressionless. Then, as a tribute to the authority’s high regard for Baird, board member Martha Burke testily dressed down the speaker, demanding to know why the group had not made an appearance in the months when Baird had discussed the possibility of a new airport repeatedly.

Not all of Baird’s work is the nitty gritty of making certain aircraft get in and out of Friedman, where attention to efficiency has provided one of the nation’s lowest per-passenger boarding costs ($2.24 vs. $16 at some other airports). He has a yen, too, for making the airport people-friendly.

During the December holiday crunch, Baird hired several college students to be on hand to help outbound and inbound passengers with directions, answer questions and solve problems. Public reaction was so strong he plans to repeat the program during the summer.

He also created an airport open house, wherein hundreds of families could see large and small commercial, private and military planes up close, and even take sightseeing rides in aircraft volunteered by Friedman pilots.

However, the lawsuit challenging Friedman’s weight limit has been aggravating. Although Federal District Judge Lynn Winmill in Boise rejected millionaire Ronald Tutor’s suit, it’s being appealed.

Costs have been draining to the airport--$600,000 by the end of December, with further costs expected. The airport’s total operating budget is only $5.5 million.

Of Tutor, Baird has been unsparing, calling the California businessman and part-time Ketchum resident a man with "too much money" who wants to take away the community’s right to run its airport.

"If Tutor had been successful in reversing the way we manage this facility," Baird said, "it would have told airports all over the country what communities want is secondary to what the aircraft owner wants."

Tutor sued to end Friedman’s 95,000-pound weight limit so he can land his Business Boeing Jet, whose landing and takeoff weights far exceed the limit. Tutor also has a smaller jet he currently uses to commute to Idaho from his California home.

Baird and the airport have defended the weight limit, claiming heavier jets would damage the runway and, without the limit, the field would be swamped with larger jets it couldn’t handle.

It hasn’t been lost on Baird that operators of smaller airports throughout the country airport are watching the outcome of this litigation for a sign of their futures.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.