Airport head refutes view of detractor
From our weekly issue dated July 23, 2008
Illinois Valley Airport
Allegations by the secretary of the Siskiyou Smokejumper Base Museum Project against Josephine County officials are countered in a response titled, “The county clears the air over the Illinois Valley Airport Smokejumper Museum Project.”
Alex Grossi, manager of county airports, referred to a page one story in Illinois Valley News on July 9 that featured excerpts from letters written by Roger Brandt to the county commissioners. Tuesday, July 15 concluded a two-and-a-half year effort to establish a smokejumper museum at the Illinois Valley Airport, Grossi said.
In a Friday, July 18 email, the airports manager added, “Negotiations with the smokejumper museum group began in 2006. The first year of negotiations with the museum group, the Illinois Valley Airport Board” and himself “ended with no results.
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“The smokejumper museum group,” he continued, “was asking for far more special considerations in a lease agreement than the county could accommodate. The airports have federal requirements that do not permit exceptional special treatment for an individual or group.
“The FAA also requires that the airports strive for financial self-sufficiency. The county’s two airports receive no general funds or tax dollars and have not for over 15 years. The airport relies on revenue from ground and building leases to help support operational infrastructures.”
Grossi said that the county commissioners in early 2007 “became more involved in the negotiations with a desire to put together a lease that would meet the needs of the smokejumper museum group.” He stated that, “Almost a year ago the lease which the commissioners developed was extremely generous: the group could offset the already reduced rent by doing repairs and maintenance to the smokejumper buildings and grounds.
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“Although the airport would lose important revenue, the buildings would get the maintenance they’ve needed since the county got the buildings from the forest service, and fulfill a desire that Josephine County has had for 20 years, to have a smokejumper museum at the airport,” Grossi said.
The manager contends that, “The museum group’s response was to carve up the lease they were offered and remove any oversight to assure that the agreement would be honored. The group would not even agree to the minimal hours requested in the lease to have the museum open to the public.
“One has to wonder,” Grossi contends, “if a smokejumper museum is really Roger Brandt’s agenda, considering that in the past two years he has attempted to have the airport downgraded so that it could not accommodate the future economic development in the valley.”
Gross claims that Brandt, “has continued to spread fear, misinformation, and propagate rumors, even after he has been shown the errors of this information.
“Brandt now claims that by giving attention to FAA safety issues, that this constitutes a contrivance to harass and undermine the museum efforts. Yes, a number of safety issues have been corrected; yes, there are still issues being corrected.
“If the county were not making steady progress correcting these issues,” Grossi noted, “the Illinois Valley Airport would not have received more than $400,000 in federal grants during the past five years.”
The airports manager said that the bottom line is that “the protracted negotiations with Brandt have cost the Illinois Valley Airport fund thousands of dollars in lost rent revenue. There has been no loss of aircraft parking, and auto parking is currently adequate. There is a large area earmarked for additional parking as the need arises.
“The FAA has not given direction to the county to close Smokejumper Way. If this were to occur, alternative access would be developed before any closures.
The board of commissioners and I are looking toward the future to keep the Illinois Valley Airport a viable asset to the Illinois Valley,” Grossi stressed. “It is unfortunate that the museum group has spent valuable time in building obstacles instead of working in partnership with the county to accomplish the desired goal of establishing a museum, which can co-exist in the airport environment.”
