oldguy

My Recent Comments

• The budget won’t be balanced when the Feds tell them that $300/mo for hangar rent will not happen. How is Washington doing it? The airport manager currently is evaluating rents charged at other airports in order to set competitive rental rates here. Why are they doing it like this? Because it’s the law.
  5 months ago
• I know one thing the airport is not going to pay $9000 to the city for insurance, because there will not be $9000 to do it with. The mayor can finally say with a straight face that the taxpayers will be subsidizing the airport. There will only be $13,600 in hangar rent to pay for everything. It won’t pay for the grass cutting, let alone the electricity to run the lights. Notconfused can praise the city for doing such a fine job of wasting the city taxes. By the way, who is the big box builder that’s coming?
  5 months ago
• Just remember you get what you pay for. This guy is working for a commission, basically nothing, and that is what you are going to get, a lot of bad advice. This guy actually tried to tell Bill Dunn that since the grant that paid for the runway lights had expired, the city was not obligated to fix the runway lights. WOW---someone had better call all the other airports in the whole country and tell them that they do not need to maintain their lights. That’ll get a huge laugh. If this consultant had aviation expertise, why does he not know about compliance? The closure is on hold due to compliance, he should know this. Better yet, maybe he should join AOPA, and learn how to run an airport. Maybe the city should too. I think the city council should join the AOPA; they could not help but learn something. The path that the city has chosen is a disaster, and at the rate they are going and the attitude they are taking, any real consideration for closure is at least ten years away or more, if at all.
  5 months ago
• The thing is Tot, we don’t have to prove it to you, we have to prove it to the Fed’s, which we have done. The FAA new about the city diverting the airport revenue into the general fund with the insurance cost, when Ron Blum was sitting in their office explaining how the city cannot afford to keep subsidizing the airport. The FAA has stated this before; the airport would be selfsustaining if the city was following the rules. The city can claim MIRMA said it is ok to do this all they want, but MIRMA is not auditing the books, the OIG is, and they will be the ones to determine what is reasonable. The evidence is clear. You blame the pilots; but we do not run the airport. We have offered to operate it at no cost to the city. The city refused to let us do so. It is the fault of the city that the airport is supposedly losing money, not the pilots. If all of the pilots move to Washington in 2013, the airport will still remain open, forever. The grass will still have to be mowed, the lights and rotating beacon will still have to operate, and the electric bill will still have to be paid. A lack of tenants on the field will not support the closure. It will be more proof of mismanagement. By raising the rent and driving off the tenants, the city is taking more tax money out of your pocket. If there is no rent money coming in from the fixed wing tenants, according to the city books the city general revenue account will lose about $7000 a year that you will have to make up. That is a small price to pay to get rid of an airport, but what if the Feds tell the city they have to pay back the grant and the airport has to stay open, where will that money comefrom?
  5 months ago
• That’s right notconfused, we just take off and land how stupid can that be!!! I am sure that what you saw was the tenants giving, and I want to make this perfectly clear, FREE rides to the boy scouts. They came all the way from Warrenton and Cuba. I personally spent $200 in fuel on this event to do this, and I was glad to do it. I have spent a lot of money doing this over the years, over a thousand dollars in just fuel to give rides to kids in the area. I will guarantee they will remember that ride far longer than anything you might or could have done. And again you keep on about how the pilots are taking advantage of the city residents. Just understand this; The OIG does not come to town unless they see a need.
  6 months ago
• notconfused Do you know something that everyone else does not know? Seven years? It will probably be more like twelve years. The city has been at it for six years already, and has nothing to show for it, except a lot of bills. The final Four Points demonstrate that the city still does not understand what the FAA has been telling them, after six years!! Do you really think the FCTC will influence the FAA? Do you think the FCTC will make a decision on hearing just one side of the issue? “Strubberg noted there is opposition to the closure.” Yes there is, the FAA just to name one. I think the FAA should attend this meeting also, and explain a few things. I fail to see the significance of the FCTC on this issue. They have no authority over the airports involved. They do not help fund the airports, but maybe they will help St. Clair come up with the millions it will need. If anyone had bothered to read the law, they would understand that the city will have to show financial responsibility, in other words prove they have the money to carry out a plan that would be a benefit to aviation. In the Final Four Points, no plan was presented, just arguments and opinions. The Final Four Points, including the appraisal, were incomplete, the appraisal showed signs of city influence. The appraisal states that the prime retail development property is only worth $6500 per acre. Let’s look at the 6 acres south of the airport listed for over a $1,000,000, now it is worth $40,000. If I owned property surrounding the airport I would be running to the assessor’s office and get my taxes lowered. The appraisal has just lowered the property values of all the land around the airport, and could lead to decreased property tax revenue for the city and the county.
  7 months ago
• Several years ago, I carried a little girl forty feet up a very steep road bank off of Highway 100 between Gray Summit and OO. The van she was riding in left the highway and rolled multiple times over its side and landed against a tree. It rolled as far as it did, due to the fact that it was not the first to execute this maneuver, and the previous vehicles that did this had each taken out a tree further down the hill. I received the tally on the number of responses on this portion of 100 from the Boles fire department chief. In 6 months they had responded to 60 accidents on 100 between Gray Summit and OO. Taking in the cost to respond to an accident for the Fire department, the ambulance district, the highway patrol or Franklin county Sherriff’s office, and add in the personal injuries, and loss of private property, a conservative number came up to $1.2 MILLION per month, $14,000,000 per year. I got on the phone with this information, and got all the way to Ed Hassinger. He agreed, and 100 was repaved, with some grading corrections. The plan was originally going to included Guard Rail. Later on after it was finished, and no Guard Rail, I inquired to Judy Wagner, and the reply was that Guard Rail would make Highway 100 more dangerous. Now we are getting Guard Rails put up on other two lane highways. And according to MODOT that could make them more dangerous. The highway 100 project between Gray Summit and OO would take 25 years to complete, when it gets put on the MoDOT plan schedule. It is not on the next 25 year plan, so we are looking at 50 years before highway 100 could be finished.
  7 months ago
• NOT CONFUSED Look at the history here, while Fred ran the place it did very well. After Fred left, the city ran it. Politicians cannot manage an airport; it’s a fact of life that they cannot keep from stealing the airport money. What is sad is how Ron Blum can control the mind of the weak. The FAA did a study. They took 35 airports, 30 ran by city government, 5 ran by airport authorities conclusion: all 30 municipal sponsors were guilty of revenue diversion, the airport authorities were straight. Fred ran this airport successfully for 25 years. The city profited from it for twenty five years. Over a thousand people learned to fly in St. Clair in that time period. After Fred, everything that “you people” are complaining about is the fault of the city, and “you people” and its mis-management, it is your fault, notconfused. Are you willing to help come up with the cash it will take to close it? We should all start a fund drive so every citizen in St. Clair can pitch in his share. The tenants did not do this, and you speak about the airport as if was a real person, so you can have someone to blame. You “notconfused” are to blame for this, your desire to go around the law, to achieve your goal. And what is your goal, a retail super center that will bring in buckets of cash for St. Clair, so you can vote to lower your taxes. Sounds like welfare to me, people living off other peoples taxes. The taxes are not going to come from St. Clair. The FAA has said, it will not be a shopping center. What then, left it rot into the ground as a monument to St. Clair stupidity? IT IS GOING TO BEE AN AIRPORT FOREVER!!!!!!!
  8 months ago
• From bgbadvududaddy And exactly how can the City divert these rent payments, and keep it quiet. They cannot. The city is not keeping it quiet. This is not that complicated, so try to keep up. MIRMA insurance is how they are doing it. If you call MIRMA and ask them how they are charging for airport insurance, they will tell you that we do not charge extra for airport insurance. That is what they told me the last time I talked to them. The city is allowed to charge the airport for part of their insurance cost. The city must provide proof of that cost, and this they cannot do. The city would have to show proof of 5% of the city payroll is being spent on the airport, for maintenance and upkeep, and management, which would include signed time sheets by the employee. This would be equal to two fulltime employees at the airport. The city was told how to remedy this, and was offered help by MODOT in understanding this point. The city did not respond to the MoDOT offer for help. The lack of action by the city to correct this shows that it is being done intentionally. The city has diverted over $25,000 in 4 years by over charging the airport for insurance. Just the correction of the insurance issue alone would make the airport profitable, as stated by MoDOT in the letter dated Sept 23 2010. As follows: Based on information provided by the City for their 2009 revenue and expenses for the airport, it is possible for the airport to sustain itself it’ management and operational practices were executed in accordance with Federal Aviation Administration guidelines and circulars and in compliance with federal grant obligations. Our office is available to assist the City with any questions related to the airport and can provide FAA documents related to compliance with federal grant assurances. By storing non-aviation junk in the maintenance hangar and not paying rent to the airport is revenue diversion. By building a sewer lift station on the airport and not paying rent to the airport is revenue diversion. If you do not want to believe all this call the feds and ask them. They are there to help. The flaw in the city plan to show the airport as a burden to the city is that it does not have a long range plan to make the airport self sustainable as required by the grant assurances. This also shows intent.
  8 months ago
• Notconfused Pull up these facts, would love to see them, you can post them on the airport blog and make all the pilots look like fools.
  9 months ago