Council to Decide if St. Marys Airport too Big a Liability

Aug. 23, 2013
St. Marys Airport Authority plans to schedule a special meeting to discuss liability concerns

Aug. 23--ST. MARYS -- Camden County could lose its only airport if the city council decides it's too big of a liability to continue to operate.

While no one has said that will happen, officials say they are concerned about recent vandalism at the St. Marys Airport that has caused thousands of dollars in damage. It could be the tipping point that determines the future of the airport.

The St. Marys Airport Authority plans to schedule a special meeting to discuss liability concerns over incidents in which vandals smashed glass runway lights onto the paved landing strip. The lights make the runway visible from the air to pilots at night and broken glass could pose a serious safety issue to landing planes.

The concerns are serious enough that the meeting will include discussion about the viability of the airport continuing to operate.

Jim Stein, lawyer for the authority, said authority members will discuss whether continuing operation is in the best interest of taxpayers, when it is not viable.

He wants to make sure an inability to generate more business is not a "misfeasance" by the authority.

Stein says authority members need to ask some questions about the airport: "How does it hurt you? How does it help you? How viable is it? And what do we get out of it?"

Vandalism the past 10 weeks is not the only problem plaguing the facility. The airport has had issues the past decade that have restricted its ability to grow.

"It doesn't make sense for the (Federal Aviation Administration) to keep pumping money into an airport that's failing," Stein said. "It's not like the Amelia Island Airport or the St. Simons Airport, where you have jets flying in all the time. We have some serious issues to deal with at the airport."

City officials have discussed moving the airport since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center at New York City and the Pentagon. It was among the last in the nation to reopen after the attacks because the Navy was concerned about its proximity to Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, less than 2 miles away. After lengthy negotiations between the Department of Defense and local and state officials, the airport reopened nearly three months later.

About a year later, city officials began discussing relocating the facility out of concern for maintaining their relations with the Navy base. Kings Bay officials, while not asking for the airport to close, felt the airport was a safety threat that could disrupt operations and become a national security threat if a plane crashed at base that is home port to nuclear submarines.

City officials wanted to show the Navy they were willing to relocate the airport, though only if it would be at no cost to local taxpayers. Sea Island Co. donated more than 500 acres near Woodbine to the city.

City council later abandoned that idea and now plans to see if it can relocate to a proposed spaceport site in the county.

"Right now, the question's up in the air," Mayor Bill Deloughy said about the airport's future. "I thought this question would be resolved a long time ago."

Dick Russell, who served on the airport authority for nearly 12 years, including during the turbulent times after 9/11, says the council's decision not to apply for state or federal funding for anything other than basic necessities crippled the authority's ability to attract new tenants. Council members didn't want to waste taxpayer dollars for improvements at an airport they were preparing to close.

"It's not their fault," Russell said of authority members. "There were people who wanted to move their businesses there, their planes there."

Russell says he thinks city officials did not consider the airport to be a priority.

"It has reached the point where it is really, really not easy," he said of airport operations. "The authority has to get the city behind them, and that may not be possible."

He also questions whether the city could close the airport without being penalized by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA has a policy that requires an airport to remain open for the life of a project. For example, if a runway is renovated and the work is expected to last 20 years, the airport must remain open for 20 years.

The most recent work was completed three years ago.

Lawyer Stein says it is possible the FAA would be willing to work out a deal if the city ever decides to close the airport.

"We have found there are people in the past who have negotiated with us," he said.

-- Reporter Gordon Jackson writes about Camden County and other local topics. Contact him at [email protected], on Facebook or at 464-7655.

Copyright 2013 - The Brunswick News, Ga.