BRIAN BARNES
WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik is requesting the City Council to approve an appropriation of $105,816 from free cash to the Barnes Regional Airport, funding for the purchase of services, equipment and obstruction removal. The appropriation is one of several on the council’s agenda tonight.
The appropriation request, which will be sent to the Council’s Finance Committee for further review, includes $28,544 for purchase of services; $8,500 for supplies; $27,772 for vehicles; and $41,000 for the Federal Aviation Administration required obstruction removal along the approaches to the airport runways.
Airport Manager Brian Barnes said that the FAA requires airports to maintain a clear approach through a 3-D modeling program and that several trees have grown and are now breaking the plane of the model.
“If the trees are on our property, we just go out and remove them,” Barnes said. “But in this case it’s on private property and the FAA wants an easement with the property owner so we have access to go onto that property to remove the obstruction and to maintain it in the future.”
The Law Department is currently working on those easement documents as part of an FAA grant application which will be submitted to the federal agency this spring.
“The FAA wants us to submit one grant application. To get the grant, which has a 95 percent reimbursement, we have to front up to $41,000 to get the easement and obstruction removal program in place,” Barnes said. “I don’t think it will cost that much because we’re doing a lot of it in house, but whatever we spend, we’ll be getting 95 percent back through the grant.”
The Airport Commission is also investigating alternatives to purchasing a $600,000 snow blower that can throw up to 5,000 tons of snow an hour. The commission, which met last night, voted to seek other viable alternatives to a seven-year lease-to-own package developed by the city’s Purchasing Department.
The city would pay $94,000 a year under the terms of the lease-to-own package, with the lease payment included in the airport department’s annual budget over the seven-year term of the contract.
“People think that it’s like plowing a road, but the FAA has very strict regulations,” Barnes said. Those regulations limit the height of snow banks along runways and taxiways.
“We have to get things done fast,” Barnes said, “and this large piece of equipment is the primary way of removing snow at an airport. It runs all of the time during the winter.”
Barnes said that the issue will be considered in the coming months by the Airport Commission, but because of the lead time for ordering and receiving the blower, it may not be available during the current snow season.
“The commission is looking for a way to bridge the gap between our current needs and the future availability of state and FAA grant funding,” Barnes said. “The problem is that the FAA has funding priorities, which means that combined with fewer dollars available, we might not get to the top of the FAA funding list.”
