The airport houses 103 planes and averages 27,000 takeoffs and landings annually. Some committee members, including Mr. Medvitz, contend Tracey has done an inadequate job of maintaining the airport. Many of the county's older hangars leaks or have structural problems. Bad patch jobs mar the runway and taxiway, where weeds often poke through the pavement. The hangars and the airfield are county assets.
Proper oversight is essential.
Either way, the county hopes to have a new hangar at the airport in the coming year. The county can get a state grant to pay almost all of the costs to prepare a site for the hangar if it lets a private enterprise do the rest. But the state will not fund a retail enterprise with grant money. Given the market, it would be to our advantage to use the loan. And we need to be careful to make the terms of the contract more beneficial to the county.