Sutter County Airport flying in the red

Nov. 14--Sutter County's airport could get its wings clipped -- or more loft from the county -- as county officials ponder ways to get the facility's finances straightened out.

Within the next few weeks, county staff will bring to supervisors ways the airport between Second Street and Garden Highway, which has run a continual deficit for the last few years, can fly right again.

"They didn't take care of it until it reached critical mass," said Supervisor Stan Cleveland, who's served on an ad hoc committee focused on the same issue.

County Public Works Director Douglas Gault, whose department oversees the airport, said the problem is simple: Revenue doesn't meet expenses.

The revenue side includes leasing for both commercial hangars and businesses based at the airport, but Gault said there's a reason it doesn't pencil out.

While the hangars are 98 percent full at a market rate, three businesses, including two cropdusting operations, are paying less than the market rate, Gault said. When the county drew up its most recent eight-year plan to get the airport on sound financial footing, raising those lease rates was in the plan but never enacted, he said.

As a result, he said, the airport faces deficits of around $20,000 a year well into the future. Sutter County had a budget of about $812,000 for the airport in 2011-12, including a General Fund loan of $32,414.

Airports in both counties are meant to be self sustaining through fees and leases. Yuba County Airport's 2011-12 budget is $372,138.

Cleveland said the solution is going to involve a combination of cuts in services and bringing in more revenues. That means bringing up leases to a market rate, he said.

"Those three businesses are not carrying their weight," he said.

But Danny Hawk, co-owner of Onstott Dusters at the airport, said raising his rent has to be realistic.

"What they're proposing way out, after 10 years, it'll be unaffordable," said Hawk, whose business has been at the airport since the 1950s. "There's other options, other airports, other private airstrips."

Supervisor Jim Whiteaker said the county should go a different direction and push for a separate airport advisory committee to make financial decisions.

In such a scenario, the county would partially or wholly separate itself from responsibility for the airport, he said.

"The county could be more supportive," he said. "The people on the advisory board would be those who use the airport and know best how to manage it."

Raising lease rates would be a bad move while the economy's down, Whiteaker said, though Cleveland said he believed any business that left could be replaced.

Both supervisors said they believe there are ways to cuts costs at the airport further, though Gault said he's not sure where such cuts could come from.

The push to examine the airport's finances again came after supervisors balked last week at extending a General Fund loan by another $62,659.

Board chairman James Gallagher said he feared money being loaned would never be repaid.

"We just need to admit we don't have the revenues to cover expenditures," he said at last Tuesday's meeting.

But while the numbers might suggest it, closing the airport entirely isn't an immediately available option. Gault said because of past grants the airport's received from the federal government, it's presumed the airport will be in operation at least another 20 years.

Copyright 2011 - Appeal-Democrat, Marysville, Calif.