Airport committee approved land rental agreement with increase

Taylor County will see more revenue come in from renting land for crops at the Taylor County airport.

At Monday’s airport committee meeting, members approved renewing a 5-year lease with local farmer Charlie Motte at a rate of $125 per acre, this is a 13.6% increase from the previous rate $110 per acre per year. Motte leases 225 acres of land at the airport and his annual payment will go from $24,750 to $28,125.

Committee member Mark Hoffmann asked about a shorter lease term, however committee chairman Chuck Zenner disagreed explaining the lease holder needs time to recoup expenses such as applying fertilizer and lime to the fields to improve crop yields. He said five-year leases are normal for farmland.

There was discussion on the price per acre. County clerk Andria Farrand noted that other county leases for building space include escalator clauses which increase slightly each year. However, with the jump in the rental rates that was agreed to by Motte, committee members said it was better to keep the rates flat through the term of the lease.

In addition to the land leased by Motte, the county also gets revenue from the sale of hay harvested from the fields at a rate of $2 per round bale. It was noted that last weekend 402 round bales were harvested from the airport property, up significantly from prior years. However, Hoffmann noted the overall quality of hay this year is down as a result of this summer’s weather.

“You have to be fair,” Hoffmann said of the amount the county collects per round bale. It was noted that the farmer does all the work and provides all the equipment to harvest the hay from the field and that if the farmer was not there, it would be county workers and county equipment being used to regularly mow the area.

“It saves us a lot of money on labor,” he said.

Hangar purchase

Committee members discussed moving forward with the purchase of the Weather Shield hangar at the airport. The hangar agreements give the county the first right to purchase hangars that become available. The intent will be to use the space for an aviation-related business or rent out space for airplane storage for visiting airplanes.

Airport engineer Carl Kemper said that if the county wishes to use federal funds for the hangar, they would need to go through a number of steps including an environmental assessment and hazardous materials assessment. The required steps could push out any purchase by a year. He explained that whenever the federal government is involved with a purchase like this, they want to make sure everything is on the up and up before it is done. “If you wanted to go through the process, it could easily be over a year, even if they say yes at all,” Kemper said.

Zenner said they would be looking at using money that was reimbursed to the county airport from the runway expansion project more than a decade ago. The money can only be used at the airport and has far fewer restrictions than seeking other federal airport funding sources.

Kemper also noted the county has an allocation of federal funds from the yearly federal entitlement program and federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds that they could access for future projects such as the construction of a new multi-user hangar space. These funds could pay for up to 90% of a project.

“The county could build a million dollar project for only $100,000 to the county,” Kemper said.

Zenner will meet with Kemper and the state Bureau of Aeronautics to see what options exist for how the federal funds could be spent. The first round of funds must be spent by September 2025 or it will go back to the federal government.

In other action, committee members went into closed session to conduct interviews for the airport manager position. It was noted that they had seven interviews scheduled for Monday for the part-time position.