Board Of Aviation Approves Contract With CHA For Services
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Two of the actions taken by the Warsaw Board of Aviation Commissioners Tuesday included approving the contract with CHA Consulting for aviation consulting services and a policy on after-hour fees and services.
Mary Kerstein, project manager with CHA Consulting, reminded the board that Airport Manager Nick King shared the contract with all of them. She asked if they had any comments or questions on it.
“One comment that I will address is that there are no prices in there. Normally, how we handle it is, is by project-by-project basis of what we’re going to be charging,” she said.
Board President Jay Rigdon said city attorney Scott Reust reviewed the contract and he had no concerns with the way the contract was written and structured.
John Yingling, board vice president, pointed out that his one concern in the contract was ownership of documents on projects. He said it read to him like CHA owned the documents. King said once the airport paid for the documents in full, the airport owns the documents. Rigdon said once the airport pays for the documents, the airport can use them in any way they want, but CHA also can use them.
Board member Dan Robinson had a question on a paragraph in the contract involving limitation of liability insurance. After several minutes of discussion on insurance liability, including Kerstein stating CHA had an umbrella policy of about $10 million, Robinson was satisfied and made a motion to adopt the contract with CHA. It was unanimously approved.
NGC Consulting was the airport’s contracted firm for the past several years.
Later in the meeting, King presented a policy on after-hour fees and services. He said the airport fees have not been adjusted for forever and were just $25. He called several other airports in Indiana to inquire about their after-hour fees. King said just based on the wage airport line technicians were being paid for working after hours, the airport was losing anywhere from $20 to $30 every time they go out and fuel an aircraft.
Airport hours are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The airport has three full line technicians who do the day-to-day work at the airport like mowing grass, snow plowing and other maintenance work.
“Now we do make money obviously selling the fuel to the client who has called us out, however, we just need to adjust the rate that someone pays,” King said.
More and more, aircraft are coming in and requiring a line technician to be there after hours just for the aircraft to land, King said. Many times, fuel isn’t purchased, and the airport loses a lot of money.
He proposed that if an aircraft doesn’t purchase fuel, if they require a line technician to be at the airport after hours, the fee would be $200 for the first hour and $100 for every consecutive hour after that. They would be billed on the whole hour and not broken up into quarter hours or anything like that.
If two personnel are required to be at the airport, the rate would be the flat hourly rate.
“If they are purchasing fuel, then we would cut those two rates in half: $100 for the first hour and $50 for every consecutive hour after that,” King said.
He said he would monitor the fees and the board could amend the policy at any time as it sees necessary.
Board Secretary Gene Zale made a motion to accept the policy on the premise that the board will check on it in a year, and his motion was approved.
The board also authorized Rigdon to sign the capital improvement plan for the airport.
To start Tuesday’s meeting, the board voted to keep Rigdon as president, Yingling as vice president and Zale as secretary. They welcomed to the board City Councilman Josh Finch, who serves as a nonvoting representative of the council to the board.
The next meeting is at 5:15 p.m. Feb. 11 in the council chambers at city hall.
