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April 21--The Glynn County Airport Commission voted unanimously Wednesday against allowing a representative from the Glynn County Airport Tenants Association to serve on the board.
The 7-0 vote came during the commission's monthly meeting at the Brunswick Golden Isles Airport. Two commissioners on the nine-member board were absent.
The reasoning behind the decision was to avoid conflicts of interest that would arise when commissioners discuss lease agreements and other confidential legal matters, said Steve Brian, executive director of the commission. An airport ordinance prohibits membership on the board to any person with an interest in commercial activity at the airports, such as leasing property.
The commissioners agreed to meet frequently in the future with an advisory committee of the tenants association to discuss aviation-related issues, Brian said.
The commission also voted, 6-1, to immediately delete three ordinance provisions that present potential safety or liability issues, Brian said.
"Once an airplane gets off the ground, the airport does not have jurisdiction over it," he said. "We are going to modify things we don't have jurisdiction over."
The commission decided to defer discussion of hiring a consultant to make minor corrections to its ordinances, which are more than 30 years old, and to bring them up-to-date until the next budget cycle begins in July.
"They don't want to spend money they didn't plan to spend in this part of the year," Brian said. "It would be a fair amount of money to make a decision on without (already) budgeting for."
The commission gave permission to Live Oaks Garden Club to plant live oak trees along Airport Road on St. Simons Island, except in front of a few vacant properties that may be developed in the future. The club plans to plant 1,000 trees on the island in the next 10 years.
The commission also discussed how to attract to the Brunswick airport some of the thousands of Federal Law Enforcement Training Center students who use Jacksonville International Airport, instead.
