Kings County Municipal Airport to Close in 70-days

Is it too late to make a course correction and avoid a potential crash landing of millions of dollars of taxpayers' cash when our municipal airport closes? Council's work to relocate the Waterville airport is headed for a solution that places only municipal dollars in the kitty, and only municipal dollars at risk. We need to immediately challenge our provincial and federal infrastructure partners about that, perhaps making the investment of our dollars conditional on their financial involvement.

Time is short. I was reminded of that last week when a "sore-of-heart" Kings County resident forwarded CAO Tom MacEwan's January 8, 2016 letter to Transport Canada. It read: “This will confirm that operations at the Waterville Municipal Airport shall cease on March 31, 2016 and following the closure date, the airport will no longer be available for air operations of any kind.”

The impact of decisions evolve. Realities change. Time marches forward. Since the decision to sell airport lands to Michelin and relocate the airport I've continued to look for a win-win-win situation for taxpayers, aviators, and Michelin, despite frustrating and sometimes surprising circumstances.

We began with a primary focus on new jobs and secondary focus of relocating the airport. An expansion will raise Michelin's commercial property evaluation and additional tax revenues beyond the one million dollars currently collected each year from the tire giant will be welcome. Council has been encouraged by Deputy Warden Hirtle to not think in terms of “if” the expansion happens, but “when”, and to think of that when as “soon”.

Why then, aren't we actively pursuing a financial role for provincial and federal governments. There will be greater growth in their income tax revenues than the county's property tax revenues once hundreds of new Michelin jobs are realized.

The remaining condition for the county's involvement in establishing the conditions for civil aviation activities at 14-Wing is a solid business case to justify the expenditure of millions of taxpayers' dollars. The job of exploring the business case was contracted to the MMM Group who estimate “a small but tangible impact on the economy of the Annapolis Valley” for a general aviation airport. Somewhere between year three and ten they report employment equivalent to ten full time jobs. With this fairly weak business case, the MMM Group first related the spending of 1.5 million dollars in terms of compensation to hangar owners. It's now referenced as a “relocation allowance”.

The business case as tabled, does not make a case for a sound investment of taxpayers dollars in the regional economy. But the Freedom Aviation Society, and its hard-working chairman Paul Easson, of Easson's Transport, pressed on. Continued hard work to attract businesses to the future 14-Wing location is bearing fruit. Perhaps because the case has been made that the facilities there, spectacular runways and 24-hour air traffic control, can't be rivalled by an independent civilian airport in a small county like ours.

Easson reports that a charter flight company, a flight school and an airfreight operation are likely. We are told that DND will be able to make room for these interests despite the current small footprint set currently aside for general aviation. It is also notable and laudable that Freedom Aviation seems to have secured confidence in the Greenwood location among nearly all those who currently use the municipal airport at Waterville

For me, two major concerns remain.

One. The county plans to spend every penny realized from the Michelin sale (almost $2 Million) to locate a general aviation airport at 14-Wing Greenwood. If heightened security concerns should arise, our investment would quickly come undone.

Two. Our provincial government initiated this sale to Michelin and the Department of National Defence is likely to be left with significant new infrastructure, including a large hangar, if, for security reasons, DND must boot all civilians off its base.

Why is only municipal taxpayer's money being used and placed at such risk? Given the great potential for tax revenues that the Michelin expansion will bring, at the very least the provincial and federal governments should be asked to guarantee this use of county taxpayers' funds.

Both the federal and provincial governments could be asked to place a third of these funds in trust with payment made to the county if our investment does become undone by heightened security concerns.

The bitter medicine of the closure of the much loved municipal airport at Waterville on March 31, 2016, will be sweetened if we hear in the weeks ahead that sod-turning on the Michelin expansion is as imminent as Deputy Warden Hirtle expects.

It appears closure can't be further delayed because the county must collect the money from the land sale to Michelin as soon as possible. The airport community has been virtually silent if dissatisfied with this date. Without Michelin's cash for the purchase, the infrastructure needed at Greenwood can't be built. That translates to a lack of a home-base for the 48 aviators the Freedom Aviation Society has lined up for its move to Greenwood. March 31, 2016 at time of writing is 70-days away.