Airport’s proposed $1.2M budget up for discussion today

The Texarkana Regional Airport Board’s finance committee will meet this morning to iron out details on the airport’s proposed $1.2 million budget for 2018.

The meeting will be at 9 a.m. in the airport’s administration building conference room.

Airport Director Mark Mellinger presented copies of the budget to board members last week during the board’s regular monthly meeting

Airport officials are looking at tentatively asking the airport’s joint owners—Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Ark., to contribute a proposed combined total of $166,280 to the overall projected budget.

The amount each city would contribute is based on population. Since the Texas side has about 36,000 residents (about 54.7 percent of the combined population) and Arkansas side has about 29,900 (roughly 45.2 percent), Texas side’s contribution is tentatively calculated to be about $91,054, while the Arkansas side’s comes in at about $75,225. However, both calculations are still tentative because the Texas side won’t be approving its fiscal year budget until close to Sept. 30, and the Arkansas side won’t be approving its calendar year budget until year’s end.

Apart from the cities’ contribution, the rest of the airport’s self-generated traditional income revenue for the budget comes from parking fees, contracts with on-site car rental services, passenger facility charges and percentages of profit from on-site commercial aviation and jet fuel sales (fuel flowage sales).

Last week, Mellinger told board members that the airport has experienced some increases in parking fee revenue. However, following some discussion, board members agreed to table the proposed budget until today’s finance committee meeting, in order to compare the proposed budget with this year’s and last year’s airport budgets.