Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
At its heart, the debate over expanding the Kalispell City Airport is about privilege, not need.
The need for the airport vanished several years after 1942, when what is now Glacier Park International Airport, a modern airport with a 9,000-foot runway, instrument landing system, control tower, and modern passenger terminal, was built. Today, the city airport is a convenience for owners and pilots of single-engine airplanes burning leaded gasoline, not a necessity for the community.
But the airport could become a burden on the city of Kalispell. In an oped in today’s InterLake, Kalispell Mayor Tammi Fisher and three council members explain the problem:
The city entered into 20-year lease agreements with hangar owners and Red Eagle Aviation in 2004 and 2005. Those lease agreements can be extended by the leaseholders for another 10 years. The terms of the lease agreements are very favorable to the leaseholders, and the leaseholders are not to be faulted for those terms. The promise made by the city is that we will maintain the airport in operational condition until the expiration of the lease agreements. There is no promise for expansion in the lease agreements.
I’ve read many of the leases. They are, in my opinion, sweetheart deals for the hanger owners, who are generally charged 16 cents per square foot for the hanger’s area and footprint (the footprint is assumed to be 150 percent of the hanger’s area). The rental rate increases by three percent a year, which keeps pace with inflation, but does not keep pace with any increase in the real value of the land being leased. A lease beginning in 2005 increases to 28.1 cents per square foot in 2025. Rates this sweet suggest to many that the city was all too cozy with the aviators using the airstrip.
That’s why the debate is so intense and bitter. Underneath the arguments over economics, noise, and operations levels, is a clash between an aviation class accustomed to privilege and deference, and legions of not as well to do regular folks who think they’re being asked to subsidize the upper ten percent and who are dead set against doing so.