12-14-1983 Special Meeting Industrial Development Corporation Board of Directors

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I ~":',:,t;"'7'rr.:~~;~:7}ji!~'::':;\~rr~;,t~~_'l-r..~,~>i!{~~;;:~~~;;_';~~:':':C;"_-:::C::::::' Minutes, Public tlbring and Special Called ~ting, La Porte City Council December 14, 1983, Page 7 . Mayor Cline: You said this is a recommendation from the committee. Which has to have final action by the Board, right? Councilperson Skelton: Right. It goes through the airport committee, then through the transportation committee, and then the Board of Directors. City Manager Owen: The ultimate decision will be by the F.A.A. I don't at this time. I think they'll stick pretty close to the recommendations of the HGAC. I much prefer to get it rectified within the cog. We have visited in great length with the staff of HGAC--we spent about two (2) hours with them Monday and I think that the staff is somewhat sympathetic with our arguments. However, the meeting was not a public hearing-it was strictly a committee meeting. But we did get to speak about 3 minutes. Councilperson Longley: How long has the airport had reliever status? City Manager Owen: I don't know. It was before I came here. Councilperson Skelton: I attended a meeting at HGAC 2 or 3 years ago and I heard some consultants give a report, and . at that time they called La Porte a reliever airport. City Manager Owen: Let me explain what it means is the F.A.A. funds are broken up into 3 different "pockets". One is for your air carriers--they have money set especially aside for them. The next pocket is for the reliever airports, and those designated as relievers can qualify for it. And then you have just your general systems airports pocket. When you're out of your reliever, (which we would no way qualify for an air carrier) then our next step down would be a reliever airport. There you would be competing with approximately 500 airports for an estimated $1 million. If you're dropped out of that then you're competing with some 5,000 airports for some $100 million. That's quite as bad as it sounds, because in the reliever cate- gory you will be competing with airports that will b~ wanting huge sums of money, whereas the ones in other, not all of them qualify for grants to begin with and also they would be going for lesser sums of money. None of this will affect our present grants; we have been assured of that. Mayor Cline: Jack, when did you say you were first made aware that HGAC had dropped La Porte from the list? I . City Manager Owen: We started trying to find and gather information to find out what it meant; the first meeting with HGAC was Monday, the mini~hearing was Tuesday; the public hearing was Friday. We had practically no time to work on it.