Thursday, April 11, 4:30 p.m., Airport Conference Room
— from Katie Wilkins, Orcas Issues reporter —
The Port of Orcas will be holding its regular meeting this Thursday, April 11th at 4:30 p.m. in the airport conference room.
You can read the published meeting agenda HERE.
The agenda includes several items of note, including an update on DOWL’s progress with the Airport Master Plan. DOWL is the contractor hired by the port to guide the Airport Master Plan from draft format through final submission to the FAA, including providing opportunities for public input along the way.
After this week’s update, there is a meeting tentatively scheduled for next Thursday, April 18 to make a final review of the Airport Layout Plan (essentially equivalent to the Airport Master Plan) and to give DOWL permission to submit it to the FAA.
This Thursday, port commissioners also plan to evaluate and then appoint a replacement commissioner to fill the last remaining vacant seat on the board. There are currently three candidates under consideration: Greg Ayers, Pierrette Guimond, and a third individual yet to be announced. This will be the third new commissioner since the beginning of the year. It means that there will be four seats up for election this November: three seats belonging to replacement commissioners, and Greg Sawyer’s seat; his current term expires in December 2019.
Another noteworthy item on Thursday’s agenda is a discussion of staffing structure and the hiring process for a permanent airport manager. At present, Dwight Guss is employed until August 31st, 2019 as interim manager at 25 hours per week, and Tony Simpson as “consultant/trainer/planner” for approximately 25-30 hours per week. As of the end of February 2019, Simpson had about 200 hours of vacation and compensatory time to use up, and the port intends to have him work through that remaining time as a port employee. After that, the port could create a new personal services contract with Simpson, allowing more flexibility to terminate the agreement when a permanent airport manager
is found. A recurring topic of port discussion has been whether to expand staffing to three employees: a maintenance person and two managers with different duties. This may come up in Thursday’s meeting as well.
If you are interested in learning about Airport Master Plan updates, or who the new port commissioner will be, all regular port meetings are open to the public, and this week’s meeting will include public access time.
Commissioner Bea von Trotel made a motion to select Poke Haffner to take over the last vacant Commissioner position. So now the Port has three new Commissioners until the November election.
The special meeting to discuss the proposed master plan was cancelled as there was no request from the three new commissioners for it
Two Commissioners can get together and discuss any issues and than meet with another commissioner and share information. This is all legal when you have Board with five members.
No special swearing in of new Commissioner was done except for a sign in form
The Airport Master Plan could be approved at the regular May 9th meeting
Will the three new appointed Commissioners be on the November ballot ? 4 Commissioners’s position will be on the ballot.
Closing Mt Baker Road or a tunnel was mentioned ?
Council Member Rick Hughes opposition to closing Mt Baker Road could be mute in the future
What is in the forecast for our small rural airport ?
Thank you for this summary of the meeting Pierrette. I am out of state right now, and was sorry to miss the meeting. As I understand it, the projects in the Master Plan have been fast-tracked even though each of the Commissioners stated publicly that they had no intention of pursuing any of the changes proposed in the Master Plan any time soon, if ever. It seems that this is not the case, and the lack of clarity/transparency with the Public on the part of the Port (even at the public meetings, where it seems none of the substantive discussions occur) is confounding, infuriating, and remarkably disappointing. Especially when the stakes are so high for the rural character of our community. Will the public have any input on what may be approved May 9th? And, even if we did offer input, would it make any difference in the outcome? Sadly, I suspect not.
One thing that sticks out for me as a major concern is that the new commissioners will not have the time to educate themselves on what implementation of this Master Plan really means, regarding the projects included within the Master Plan – since timelines on many of them have been fast tracked.
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are up on the Master Plan website. We are encouraged by Leah of DOWL to submit comments on what is already up there. The most significant chapter so far is chapter 3 – the growth and use projections; along with what aircraft will be accommodated.
Once Chapter 4 is approved by the FAA, that’s the “meat” of the Master Plan. Since the FAA doesn’t have to approve chapters 5 & 6, the MP will be unveiled as soon as the FAA approves those chapters – then the Public will have 30 days to be brought up to speed and comment.