Airport math doesn't add up

EDITOR:

One can never shed too much light on Douglas County mysteries of "where has all the money gone?" Like our national quandary of "who got the treasury's trillions?" but on a smaller county scale it's the stuff novels are made of.

Take the airport, for example. County officials tell fairy stories of how it costs $1.6 million a year to maintain the airport. But in their 5-year $8.4 million capital plan, just $1.5 million or 18 percent is planned spending on maintenance. An incredible $5 million will be spent to move glider operations from the terminal side to the east side. How much would that be per glider located at the airport, one might wonder?

That leaves another $1.9 million which, near as I can tell, will expand the airport, buy land, extend runways, new taxiway, etc.

The airport guys say convincingly that creating an east side glider port and changing runways and taxiways to minimize traffic where two runways intersect is now absolutely vital to flight safety. In the next breath they tell you glider operations are much lower than they used to be and all landings and takeoffs aren't really much greater than 10 years ago in spite of the advent of jet aircraft. Yet they spent $16 million over those 10 years, 80 percent or so of which went for other than airport maintenance.

Why should Joe Citizen care? Because we have to vote "yes" or "no" on a ballot question in 2010 to increase weight limits on normal aircraft operations from 50,000 pounds to 75,000 pounds. What does that mean? In practice it legalizes jets at the airport.

Here's another curiosity.

A chunk of that $16 million went to rebuild the main runway whose weight capacity somehow mysteriously increased to handle 75,000-pound aircraft, notwithstanding the existing voter-mandated ordinance restricted aircraft to 50,000 pounds. One theory is they did it to save money. Honest. Technically they broke the law doing that. By sheer coincidence they also made a few jet owners happy.

Now they tell us the FAA demands that on the 2010 ballot we voters increase the weight limit to the runway's new capacity. Demands.

What if we say no, some citizens who don't like being pushed around might ask? The FAA, playing the ogre, will confiscate county tax revenues to repay the grants that increased the runway capacity, so our county representatives tell us, leaving us destitute if we dare defy them. Really, that's what those who "serve" us effectively say. See, I said it was worthy of a novel, it has conspiracy, intrigue, even fraud and possible corruption, depending on definition.

Is there more to know? Tune in. It's just too much fun not to put into installments.

Jack Van Dien

Gardnerville