New year takes off

It was a successful takeoff for the Saratoga Airport Board during their January meeting held at 1 p.m. on Jan. 9 at the Saratoga Town Hall as they welcomed new town council representative Jon Nelson and discussed a variety of topics including snow removal equipment, hangar leases and updates from fixed based operator (FBO) manager Bob Maddox.

One of the initial pieces of business that the airport board covered was that of a credit card rate between the Town of Saratoga and Saratoga Jet Center. Since implementing the landing fees, the FBO had been covering the processing cost of running credit cards for the payment of landing fees until a baseline could be established. According to Maddox, the average rate for running credit cards was around 3 percent. With that information, the board voted to remit 3 percent of every credit card transaction back to Saratoga Jet Center.

The perennial issues of the minimum standards and ground hangar leases was, again, on the agenda. As was reported previously (see “Sewer rates and hangar leases” on page 3 of the Dec. 26 Saratoga Sun), the decision was made by the outgoing council members and mayor to allow the incoming council members and mayor to send the updated minimum standards to the town attorney.

Following the swearing in of the new council and the new mayor (see “New council takes over” on page 1 of the Jan. 9 Saratoga Sun), Mayor John Zeiger appointed Tom Thompson, of MacPherson and Thompson, LLC, as the town attorney.

“Everything has been going to Tom (Thompson) and he’s reviewing all of it,” said Suzie Cox, Saratoga Town Clerk, “but he said, really, it was kind of a fast turnaround for him so he would be here in February.”

“At our meeting?” asked airport board member Arlen Hughes.

“Yeah,” replied Cox. “In the meantime, he will get stuff back to us on the minimum standard changes.”

“One of the things that keeps coming up is the minimum standards don’t match the lease,” said Chairman Lance Grubb. “Well, they don’t have to. They’re minimum standards. By definition, the lease can be more demanding, more stringent, than the minimum standards. The only problem is when the minimum standards are more stringent than the lease.”

Later in the meeting, Cox informed the board that approximately 50 percent of the hangar owners had signed the new leases with a handful, including Brush Creek Ranch, asking for a letter of explanation about the updated documents. The board made the decision to defer any decision on action surrounding unsigned leases until a later point.

During the last airport board meeting, held in December, the possibility of purchasing an agricultural (ag) tractor for snow removal, as it was more versatile and could be used for mowing during the summer, was discussed. The board agreed to pursue the ag tractor, but an email from Dave Schultz, of Sage Civil Engineering, pointed out that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would not pay for an ag tractor, but that there could be funding from the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) to acquire a tractor in place of a loader.

“If bucket, broom and loader attachments are available for an ag tractor in addition to the moving equipment, maybe it would be worthwhile to consider procuring only the tractor,” wrote Schultz in the email, “especially if the tractor and mowing equipment would be funded at 100 percent by WYDOT.”

The board seemed to be content with moving forward on the purchase of an ag tractor in place of a loader and there was some discussion as to finding out what FAA’s definition of an “ag tractor” was and if the board could work around that definition.

Under the report from Maddox, the airport manager stated that between Dec. 1 and Jan. 8, the FBO had taken in $1,050 in landing fees—$900 for jets and $150 for turboprops. With a $75 a night charge for jets, an estimated 12 jets landed at Shively Airfield during the month of December while three turboprops landed in the same timeframe.

The next meeting of the Saratoga Airport Board will be at 1 p.m. on Feb. 13 at Saratoga Town Hall.