Panel: Improvements, issues at aiport
Improvement has been the watchword at Cornelius Field also known as the Polk County Airport, but there are still a number of issues to be solved in the years ahead as officials came together for the first time in nearly a year to look at solutions to current problems and plans for what’s ahead.
The Polk County Airport Committee discussed a number of items that Airport Manager Sam Branch hoped to get some direction on during a meeting on Tuesday evening at the county administration building, the first since November 2016.
Branch had good news to report, with 11 new leases signed for use of hangar space at the airport since many of the issues involving pigeons have been solved, and the removal of an old jet that has since found a home in Rome as an attraction.
Public Works officials are still working to keep pigeons completely out of the hangars and continue to try different solutions to that problem, Branch said. But it’s one that’s moved down some on the list of pressing issues at the airport for the coming months and years ahead.
He said among those that he already had a general estimates for costs are renovations and repairs to two hangar buildings that could be rented out if fixed up, and a maintenance repair hangar that one mechanic has already expressed interest in offering services from if work is completed to make needed updates.
Branch said that based on cost estimates made by Building Inspector Brian McCray, the total costs of renovations for the three buildings at the airport could come in at just over $98,000.
“I’ve already asked a number of the people who rent from us if they would be interested in having a mechanic working at the airport, and everyone came back with a positive response,” Branch said. “I don’t think I had one person say that they wouldn’t be interested, or that they specifically used one mechanic and only took their work to that person.”
Details of any project at the airport would have to be further fleshed out before moving ahead further, and figuring out definitive costs and a full scope of work is a first step toward those improvements. The Polk County Commission would still have to approve any work and subsequent bids to complete the project, along with finding money to make the repairs.
Also on the repair list once again are gas pumps at the airport, both for aviation Jet-A grade fuel at the airport, both suffering from yet undiagnosed problems. Branch said he believes the problems in both cases to be potentially tied to the systems themselves, and both he and Public Works director Michael Gravett said the same company doing pump installation for the fuel farm at the new Public Works facility are looking into the problem.
It will potentially be a moot point, since the requirement to upgrade the credit card readers on the pumps themselves are also due for an update in order to make them work with new security chips that are set to be required for all debit and credit cards by 2020.
Branch said the company who provided the credit card reader at the airport’s fueling station quoted a cost of $15,000 for the new hardware with a $4,500 trade-in value on the old hardware.
Along with mid-range prices in the region compared to other airports and not much overall additional fuel consumption at the airport according to anecdotal reports from Branch during the committee meeting, Polk County Commissioner Scotty Tillery provided another potential option.
“Maybe it’s time that we look at going with a branded station at the airport,” he said.
He added that if it could save the cost of the county having to make the upgrades in the future, a look at the financial figures would be worth investigating to at least satisfy that the county is getting the most for their spending.
“Lately it just seems like a money pit with the pumps,” he added.
In past years, fueling at the airport has been an ongoing issue, with pumps and the credit card machines having been repaired and replaced in attempts to get the fueling station working right for patrons when they are ready to fill their gas tanks on their planes.
The hopes of the airport committee are that those problems will finally get fixed, and then once the word-of-mouth in the piloting community gets around about repairs made at the Polk County Airport are well received, traffic and thus the amount of potential financial gain from visitors landing at the field will grow in the long term.
Tillery, Commissioner Jennifer Hulsey and County Manager Matt Denton all said at one point in the meeting that when fall weather returns, the committee should make a follow-up tour of the airport in order to see what issues have been solved, and those that remain.
Skydive the Farm also brought some issues they’re having at the airport before the committee as well. Among them were the need for additional work to be done on property they use as overflow parking on the weekends for those coming to the airport to take part in skydiving adventures. Hans Paulsen, both a skydiving instructor and owner of the business now located at the airport, asked for some brief work to be completed by the Public Works department, and for mowing in additional areas of the airport to be done. His main argument for the mowing is that sometimes on more than average windy days, his clients sometimes miss the landing zone established at the airport and “end up sometimes in some really tall grass.”
“We had one lady land a couple of weeks back and break her ankle when she came down in some really thick grass,” Paulsen reported.
The parking area was resolved with the committee agreeing that they would see about getting the work done, and that if Paulsen wanted to use the area exclusively that if he kept up with the mowing, they would have no problem with it’s use.
Other areas of general maintenance that still need to be worked out are milling and replacing of asphalt around hangars allowing for water to pool in places and be potential hazards for planes, and in seals for hangar doors.
The seals a problem likely to be handled first with the help of manufacturers in the near future, but asphalt repairs will still require estimates of materials costs to the county and figuring out a time when the labor can be completed and not hinder any immediate access of planes to the runway.
Gravett said it would be a subject he would be more ready to address when the committee meets again to go over steps taken to address issues brought up during the Tuesday evening session.
Airport upgrades still forthcoming by GDOT
Repairs and renovations remain mainly the responsibility of the county, but Georgia Department of Transportation’s Aviation division and the Federal Aviation Administration have their own general plans ahead for the airport too.
Denton brought up the Capital Improvement Plan list that GDOT Avia- tion provides annually to the county, which this year once again pushes back payments to be made ot the county for upgrading their fuel dump at their airport in previous years.
Also however is new spending the fourth phase of safety improvements via land acquisition and clearing around the facility itself to allow for additional landing clearances all around Cornelius Field.
The announcement in the five-year timetable for what’s ahead is part of plans to get the airport into compliance with updated FAA rules requiring additional space to land at small local airports, if not already completed. GDOT also handles bids and overseeing the clearing projects to provide additional glidepath for planes to land locally.
Once parcels are purchased and trees cut down out of the way, the airport will need something else new to help provide some security: a new outer fence.
Denton said the state transportation department set aside $40,000 just to design the fencing, and will likely spend nearly $500,000 before the project is finished in the coming years on the fencing and the labor required to install it.
Along with those plans, long term goals included in the document are the everpromised extension of the runway and taxiway to 5,000 feet in total length, projects that have been pushed back since well before Denton joined the county’s administration in the late 2000s.
Runway extensions are important for attracting additional traffic to the local airport, since with the lengthened strip would allow for larger aircraft to land and be serviced at Cornelius Field, and providing additional incentives for economic growth and investment locally.
However, Denton pointed out t hat since t he projects are continually pushed back, and without financial resources for the projects locally, it will remain up to GDOT on when any work will be completed.
Tillery did ask before the Tuesday evening session concluded if the county had any plans forthcoming to remove old houses owned by the county in front of the turn into the facility off of Highway 278.
“They’re such an eyesore, and we ought to do something about them,” he said.
Denton said he has keys to three of those houses, but that for the time being there has been no official plan to remove them.