Palmer looks for clearance from FAA fines

PALMER — The city reports it’s close to fixing problems with its airport that led to an $857,000 fine from the federal government a year ago.

Jon Owen, who is both the city of Palmer’s public safety director and its interim airport manager, said solutions are on the table for all three major problems identified at the Palmer Airport by the Federal Aviation Administration.

“At this point, I think it should be stressed that everything is verbal and (all) of these proposals will have to go through the vetting process and the approval process, the various channels in the FAA before we have any final word,” Owen said.

Probably the biggest problem taking a lot of the focus in the debate has to do with the Palmer Golf Course. The course was built in the 1980s on airport land with approval from the FAA. Since then, the FAA has changed rules for how close things can be to a runway. The fence at the golf course is now 125 feet too close.

Moving the fence back where the FAA says it should be would take out four holes and cause major changes to three more, which would likely close the course, Owen wrote in a January memo to Palmer City Council. The course is an economic asset for the city, which it won’t finish paying for until 2015.

Another way to fix the problem would have been to downgrade the runway the golf course sits at the end of. Downgrading that runway would change what kinds of planes can take off and land there. The state’s Division of Forestry lands large planes there, but not frequently enough, the FAA told the city, to require they move if the runway is downgraded. Still, downgrading the runway would put it in a category usually reserved for shorter runways. Thus, when the city goes to get grant money to re-pave it, funds would likely fall short.

“We could get funding to pave 4,000 feet, but not the whole 6,008 feet,” Owen said.

That extra 2,000 feet wouldn’t be cheap. Owen estimates the cost at $2.5 million. Pavement lasts about 15 years. The next re-pave, he said, would likely be needed in the next two or three years.

So what’s the compromise solution? Is there a solution that would let the city keep the golf course and the Division of Forestry, and pave the whole runway without taking a huge budgetary hit?

“Frangible couplers,” Owen said.

At least in this instance, the term refers to metal pieces at the base of each fence post that break away when 200 pounds of pressure is applied.

“A 200-pound man could run at the fence and hit it and shear a fence coupler,” Owen said.

The idea is that the fence would be less of a hazard if it were designed to fall away harmlessly if an airplane hit it. The military uses couplers at three bases in Alaska where runways are near fences. But the military isn’t under the FAA’s jurisdiction. This solution would require special permission from the federal agency.

Owen said he talked to a couple of high-ranking FAA officials at a conference in Anchorage, brought them out to look at the fence and the runway, and got positive feedback.

“In the next several weeks I will be submitting a proposal to the FAA that the city be allowed to install frangible fence couplers,” he said.

The other two problems have to do with airport real estate.

The first involves New Horizons Telecommunications, which leases airport space for its business. The FAA objects to the rate the city is charging the company since at least some of New Horizons’ leases weren’t being used for aeronautical purposes.

The solution on that issue is actually the most straightforward and farthest along.

“On May 4, the city sent proposed lease revisions to the FAA for their approval. The verbal feedback that I’ve received to date has been very positive and I anticipate a final answer from them any day,” Owen said.

The final issue has to do with the Mat-Su Borough School District Nutrition Center.

The center is on airport land, though it’s not exactly airport adjacent. Still, the FAA requires airport leases to be at fair market value if the use of the land is not aeronautical. The borough is paying $1 per year on a 99-year lease.

Owen’s solution? The airport should sell the land to the city.

“The city’s general fund (would) purchase the land from the airport enterprise fund solely using the costs that the general fund had incurred in legal defense of the airport since 2008,” Owen said.

In other words, the city would receive the land as payment for funding the airport’s legal defense. Owen said the most recent assessment valued the land at $316,400 and the cost to defend the airport has exceeded that.

Preliminary feedback from the FAA, Owen said, has again been positive.

Though everything is still undecided, Owen said he sees a way the city can reach a resolution with a minimal amount of pain for everyone involved. He hopes the city can get there.

“It would be nice to have this issue in the win column,” he said.