State airport officials vow to save a much-needed grant program for local airfields even though they nearly gutted the fund because of their missteps.
“We will move forward with better forecasting of the ups and downs in the market,” Dave Gordon, director of the Colorado Division of Aeronautics, told members of the on Wednesday.
Those assurances were met with harsh skepticism by Colorado airport managers and others at the meeting. The fund is facing .
Managers told the board they now have to readjust their budgets to reflect the state’s drop in aid and explain the shortfall to city councils and county commissioners.
Worse yet, funding cutbacks will hamper airport and economic growth down the line, said Tim Barth, manager of the Vance Brand Airport in Longmont.
“This is a bad reflection on airport managers,” Barth said. “Now (city councils) will think we are all incompetent. It’s going to take a long time for this program to come back from this.”
The aeronautics board agreed to take steps to reassure local governments that the grants will come back. One move is to issue a one-page letter that lays out the problems facing the Colorado Discretionary Aviation Grant program, which annually helps fund runway maintenance work and other safety and expansion projects.
Kenny Maenpa, vice chairman of the board, said the letter should include a blunt assessment of the coming year that “2015 is going to suck.”
Over a month ago, the Division of Aeronautics was confident there was $15 million available for the grant program, Gordon said. But three weeks ago, the division learned that figure “was based on unrealistic revenue forecasts,” he said.
A little over $3 million now will be available to airports in 2015, Gordon said. He admits the division failed to consider the downward spiral in the cost of jet fuel and the associated dip in the state fuel tax, which funds the grant program.
“Had we foreseen this financial impact sooner, or at least considered worst-case scenarios, we would have reduced the amount of grants given in the last grant cycle,” Gordon said.
Instead of giving out $24 million in the last cycle, the division should have awarded only $12 million of funding.
The board is expected to review a comprehensive plan to maintain the grants next week.
