Friday — May 7, 2004

Demanding agenda forecast for airport site selection panel

Large committee has big job ahead

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By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

There may be more truth than exaggeration in Friedman Memorial Airport Authority member Martha Burke’s observation Tuesday night about the new citizens airport site selection advisory committee.

With 42 principal members and alternatives signed up as members, Burke said wryly that the committee "is going to be very cumbersome."

That reality effectively put an end to a suggestion from Dr. Ron Fairfax, an authority member as well as an aircraft owner, that two more members without connections to any organization be added to the group. The prospect of several dozen committee members expressing views and meetings extending for hours ended discussion of Fairfax’s proposal.

The committee will hold its first meeting at 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 25, in the meeting room of the Old Blaine County Courthouse.

Airport manager Rick Baird said Tuesday at the board’s monthly meeting that the first full committee meeting would be for organizational purposes. At its June meeting, the committee will be given documents outlining the scope of their studies, schedule of meetings and briefings on why a new airport may need to be built.

However, once routine discussion of the committee and its size was under way, Baird said costs "might be overwhelming" if the number of scheduled meetings over the next 18 months to two years isn’t scaled back and the number of appearances by the airport’s consultants isn’t reduced.

Tom Schnetzer, a consultant with Mead & Hunt, and Charles Sundby, of consultants Toothman-Orton, both agreed they need not attend each of the committee’s meetings.

Baird said initially the committee was scheduled for 44 meetings. But he now believes that might not be necessary nor feasible.

The airport authority has been emphatic in stressing public participation in decisions involving the possibility of a new airport, which could cost upward of $100 million, possibly be four times the size of the current Friedman Memorial and be located at a distant site outside of the Wood River Valley’s restrictive terrain.

Stiff requirements of the Federal Aviation Administration have created a demanding agenda for the committee as well as the airport staff and consultants.

Dozens of elements involved in finding a possible site for a new airport must be studied and weighed, including impact on environment and wildlife, transportation accessibility, climate that could affect airport operations, effect on nearby communities and site appeal to air carriers and other users.

The launching of the study prompted airport attorney Barry Luboviski to recommend that the board not make any new long-term contractual commitments at the present airport, such as hangar leases. He said the authority could be vulnerable to legal actions if the commitments had to be abandoned or altered because of a new airport being constructed.

In other authority business:

• Manager Baird said that upgrading of the FAA’s Federal Aviation Regulation Part 139 is imposing stiffer new standards for airport firefighting and rescue services. But he said he believes Friedman’s emergency facilities, equipment and personnel easily will comply.
  
   
• Contracts for architectural services for airport improvements have been negotiated for passenger terminal modifications, design of a new control tower and improvements to the maintenance building at a total cost of $155,623.
  
   
• Baird will present a proposed fiscal 2005 budget at the June meeting.
  
   
• Sun Valley Aviation will hold a groundbreaking for its new office and hangar on the west side of the airport at 4 p.m., May 26.
  
   
• Using a new aerial photo of the airport taken in the last week of April, consultant Sundby briefed authority members on the new enlarged parking area on the west side of the terminal and the new access road.

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