Award Winner

They felt there was a lot of inconsistency in the rent structure (varying rates, different reappraisal periods, etc.). So, we had to stop and go back and work with the tenants to see what their issues were. We're still in the process of doing that, trying to equalize everything out.

AB: What specifically have you done regarding rates?

Shiner: One of the things that we elected to do was to lower our tiedown fee. Our tiedown fee had a structure where every year the tiedown fees went up by the increase in the Consumer Price Index; same thing with our hangar rent.

Well, several years ago, we had probably 75 or 80 aircraft tied down on the field and when I got there we had 13. As the tiedown fees went up every year the airplanes went somewhere else. So, we took a survey of what the tiedown fees were from our FBOs and found out that we were outpricing ourselves, and every year just making it worse.

So, we established a tiedown fee of $55/month and just set it at that and are not going to increase it automatically every year. We established it at $55 because that's what the other FBOs were charging, and we didn't want to undercut them.

Then we said we were going to hold our T-hangar rents for two years and, after two years, we will look at a percentage of the CPI increase, rather than taking full CPI. As everybody knows, the elements that make up the Consumer Price Index — none of them involves aviation. What we've established right now is a 75 percent (of CPI) increase every two years, and every four years we stop and we take a look at the market rates. We want to take a look at similarly situated airports of the same size.

We've taken this approach to the city council where the city adopts a master fee schedule. It starts off with water bills and hookups, everything in the city, and right in there is the airport — here are the hangar rents, and this is the cost per square foot and fuel flowage fees for an FBO. It's all adopted by resolution, if somebody wants to know what we're charging. AB: What other things came out of the strategic plan? Shiner: Doing a master plan was another recommendation, and that's what we're involved with right now.

AB: How is Hayward doing financially?

Shiner: We're real fortunate in that we have a tremendous amount of revenue coming into the airport from non-aviation uses. We've got two hotels, a golf course, two restaurants, a theater complex. The planning and use of the airport has been well-defined and they've done a good job of that. As an Enterprise Fund we have to be self-sufficient and we are (operating budget - $1.6 million; annual revenues - $1.8 million).

AB: What about the noise problem with neighbors?

Shiner: With the noise ordinance it's been a tough road to walk the line between the pilots and the homeowners. I went out in the community and started working with several of the community groups. The ones closest to the airport, of course, get the highest priority because that's where most of the complaints come from. We track our complaints and how well we're doing in resolving them. We had over 400 complaints in 1998, and 300 of them were from two people.