By Aleasha Sandley, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer
aleasha.sandley@heraldbulletin.com.
ANDERSON - The city is scrambling to come up with match money for four Federal Aviation Administration grants awarded to Anderson Municipal Airport in recent years.
The grants are 95 percent federally funded, 2.5 percent state funded and 2.5 percent locally funded, but statewide property tax caps have reduced the city's budget by about $4.5 million, leaving officials to try and find ways to cut expenses and find cash.
Three of the airport's four grants have paid for extending the taxiway, while the fourth one will construct a wildlife fence. Other projects in the grants include taxiway lighting, closing Mounds Road around the airport and running a trail from Mounds State Park to Chesterfield.
The grants total $7.7 million, with the city's bill totaling $192,633, airport manager Lori Brown said.
"The city hasn't done too good of a job on the 2.5 percent match on the (grants) they've got," Deputy Mayor Greg Graham said. "What we're doing now is getting caught up with what we have. We're finding ourselves in the position of having difficulty getting some of that money."
A recent Board of Aviation Commissioners meeting stressed the importance of receiving FAA grants, and former interim airport manager Ron Smith said every dollar of project money spent at an airport generates between $2 and $4 of economic impact to the area.
"It's actually like making money," Smith said.
But without being able to pay for existing grants, future FAA grants could be put on hold.
"We believe in that airport, and we believe it has economic development potential," Graham said. "Don't quit looking (for grants), but we've got to make sure we can match them. We need to know that we can fund what we have before we can seek others."
Brown said she would start focusing her efforts on federal grants that required no local match, an opportunity that could become more available with money set aside for the FAA from the recently passed federal economic stimulus package. The airport also could benefit from grants that allow the city to pay with in-house labor or those that the airport can fund with a match from its own budget.
"Do more with less, that's what we're trying to do," Brown said. "Keep the airport safe and serviceable and find our own money."
Graham said the city's money match for the grants was not set aside at the time the federal money was awarded.
"If you get a $100,000 grant, then you ought to be setting aside $2,500 in a separate account to cover the match," he said.
City spokeswoman Tammy Bowman said Controller Karen Carpenter urged city departments to continue to look for federal grants, but that their priority should be finding grants with no local cash match or else they would have to pay it out of their own budgets.
"If somebody does come up with one, they better have a plan," Bowman said.
Brown said the FAA grants were important for her vision for the airport, which includes making it an economic development site and gateway to the city.
"There's nowhere else you can go and get $1 million, just give me $25,000," she said.
The airport's next big project is the Aeropark, for which it hopes to attract aviation-related businesses. A local company is looking to buy property at the site, and two international companies are interested in locating there, Brown said.
The Board of Aviation Commissioners and Brown are working to make the Aeropark a shovel-ready project, one of the guidelines set forth to receive stimulus grants.
Traffic counts and economic impact studies have shown the airport growing and contributing more to the community, with an almost $8 million impact in 2005, the end of the last two-year period over which the impact was measured, Brown said.
She expects significantly higher traffic counts and greater economic impact in coming studies.