Grant will help improve airport
Published 7:04 pm Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Washington’s City Council, during its meeting Monday, adopted a resolution related to improvements at the city-owned Warren Field Airport. The city will use $89,109 in state grant funds to help pay for lighting rehabilitation for runway 5-23.
The city is providing $9,901 (or 10 percent) of the total $99,010 in state aid to airports earmarked for that project. This grant will be combined with another grant, approved by the council June 9, 2014, to help fund airport improvements. The overall project’s cost is $419,740.80, according to a memorandum from Allen Lewis, the city’s public-works director, to the mayor and council members.
The N.C. Department of Transportation’s Division of Aviation is providing $288,657.90 toward the overall project, with $89,109 coming from the Vision 100 funds program. The city is providing $41,974.10 toward the overall project cost.
The project deadline is July 1, 2018.
The project includes replacing the runway edge lights, replacing the runway lighting circuit and installing a new, lighted wind cone, among other work.
If the council acts on the resolution Monday, that action would be in addition to other airport-related actions taken by the council in recent months.
In December, the council amended the city’s budget ordinance to complete funding for engineering services for the engineering of the approach surveys and analysis project at Warren Field Airport.
The city has been using a combination of grant funding and city dollars to pay for airport improvements. The first allocation of the 2014 Vision 100 grant is needed to complete funding for the airport approach study, according to a memorandum from Matt Rauschenbach, the city’s administrative services director and chief financial officer, to the mayor and council members.
The council’s action increased the airport fund by $5,620 (from the Vision 100 grant) and by $626 (appropriated from the city’s fund balance as the city’s grant match) for a total increase in the airport fund of $6,246.
The approach study will focus on runway 5-23 and runway 17-35 at the city-owned airport.
City officials view the airport as one of the city’s economic-development tools. For that reason, they said, they are seeking funding sources, mostly grants, to help pay for improvements at the airport so it can complete with similar airports in the area.