Pilot concerns about hangar costs, part of the reason Cookeville City Council met to review the Upper Cumberland Regional Airport budget during its Monday work session.
Airport Manager Dean Selby said the airport has experienced significant expansion over the last several years. Selby said the AIrport Board specifically requested a break-even analysis on airport hangars amid rate increases.
“I mean, that’s important because we were never collecting as much as their percentage of expenses were that were associated with the hangars. So the percentage of expenses would be $285 a month to break even. At that time, we were at $225 a month, so we were never generating enough. We were actually subsidizing them through other means to keep from having to pay more.”
But Council Member Eric Walker said it appeared the Airport did not budget correctly so that it could set aside the money needed for the hangars and the upkeep.
“We’ve had a huge jump in expenses,” Walker said. “I think you were illustrating that in the budget. My specific questions towards that, you know, I think one of them is, as I was reading, it looks like in past years we’ve budgeted more on certain items than we’ve used, and I didn’t quite understand why that we do that practice.”
Walker asked Selby if the increase in rent at the hangars was due to deferred capital upkeep.
“That’s part of it, but it’s also part of it in that it was, they have been underpriced for many years based on a market analysis,” Selby said. “We know what a hangar costs. We just built two hangar rows and they’re well over $1 million to build a row of hangars because you’ve got all the federal requirements, all the environmental rules, all of the other stuff that we have to follow. And we try to follow those rules to a T, but you can’t continue to grow if you’re just breaking even. We have— they have to be generating enough to grow.”
The Airport Board’s June meeting was cancelled due to a lack of a quorum.
