May 13, 2021 Airport Advisory Board on 2021-05-13 10:00 AM

Good morning. This is the meeting of the Denton Airport Advisory Board on Thursday morning, May the 13th, 2021. And so those in attendance right now are Chair Robert Tickner, Vice Chair Ed Eddin, April Frenz, and Lauren Upshaw, and Anne Patterson. Those that are absent is Dominic Beecham, Robert Eismer, and Micah Hope. So the first thing on our agenda is to have the Pledge of Allegiance of the Flag and the Pledge of Allegiance to the Texas Flag. So place your hand over your heart and repeat after me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And now the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible. Okay. Looking down the agenda items here, the first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes of our April 8th, 2021 meeting. And hopefully everyone has had an opportunity to review those minutes and note any additions, corrections, or changes that might be necessary. Do we have any of those? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion for approval of the agenda or the minutes from the April 8th meeting. Anybody wish to make a motion for that? I'll move to accept the minutes as presented. Okay, Ed Ehrens and second for a second. And we'll second that. Ann Patterson. Okay. So all those in favor say aye or raise your hand. Okay. All approved. So those will stand as written. The next item is item B, airport board 21-033. Receive a report, hold a discussion, and provide staff direction on the airport pavement management program. So Chase Patterson will introduce our consultants on this and begin this discussion. Chase? That's correct, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. So as a part of our FAA grant assurances, staff did request a pavement management program be put together by KSA engineers. They developed a full management program via full visual inspection of all of our pavement as well as core samples and non-destructive testing. Now we do have an executive summary in the agenda that does provide some more details as well as we have Trevor Self and Chad Pennell that are from KSA that will be giving a presentation right now to the board. So Trevor and Chad, whenever you're ready. Good morning. Good morning. Do you have any trouble hearing us while we're presenting? Please just let us know. So as Chase said, we were tasked with putting together a pavement management program for the airport. And we'll kind of talk a little bit about what it entailed here in a second. But the purpose of today, our goal is to basically just kind of provide a brief introduction to the pavement management program, its purpose, what it entailed. And then out of that pavement management program, we came up with a maintenance and rehabilitation program for the airport. So we'll review that briefly, including costs and time frame for those maintenance and rehabilitation activities. So just real briefly, a pavement management program, it's really just an objective way of determining the condition of your pavement system there at the airport. And then utilizing that information, setting priorities for allocating resources to those, your pavement, depending upon the condition it's in. And kind of a budget and a time frame. And it really allows you to try and establish a CIP program for your pavement maintenance and rehabilitation activities. Now, one of the, as Chase said, the major component of a pavement management program is a, it's called a pavement condition index. It's a visual survey of the pavement to determine its condition. But as part of this program, we also, utilizing non-destructive testing, determine the PCN for the different sections of pavement at the airport, for the runway. And Trevor will get into a little bit about what that is later, but it basically is just a way to determine which aircraft can safely utilize the pavement at the airport based upon their weights, making sure you're overloading your pavement. So at the end of this process, we've got a report, and as Chase said, we've got an executive summary where we basically have provided an analysis of all the pavements, the pavement on the airfield, and again, provided a program for rehabilitating and maintaining the pavement on the airport. So right now, I was the project manager on this project, but Trevor is right here is the one who did all the heavy lifting on it, did all the visual inspections, all the data analysis and prepared the reports. So I'm going to turn this presentation over to him and let him go into a little bit more detail as to what was done. Awesome, thanks, Chad. So I believe, as Chase said, the executive summary was provided to everybody today. I'm going to reference that a little bit going through here. As this slide shows, table A1, it's just a small snippet of the PCN, the pavement classification numbers that we were calculated during this. Every aspect of the airfield that was done through a non-instructive testing is provided in table A1 if you want to refer to that. But essentially, the PCN is a number that expresses the load carrying capacity of the pavement. It's utilized to determine maximum allowable weights on the airfield depending on what the pavement section is and was determined either through record drawings or through a geotechnical investigation during this evaluation. And that in and of itself is then reviewed against what's called an ACN or an aircraft classification number. Those are typically provided by the manufacturers and are coordinated with the airport as the aircraft come in and out. So it really gives you a structural analysis as to what the pavement's condition was through a PCN versus kind of what the airfield is currently experiencing with their ACNs. And the FAA, it's called an ACN PCN system. And as part of this PMV, it's utilized to not only look at the condition, which we'll get into in a second, but also look at the structural adequacy of the pavement to help determine what needs to be done and what areas need to be rehabilitated at this time. Just real quickly, I mean, if you look at that table, I mean, the areas that are in green indicate that they're always divided into four sections, four branches. And the green areas, the areas where the PCN is higher than the ACN, it means that that pavement is structurally adequate. The red areas are the areas where the PCN is lower than the ACN. And those areas are areas where the pavement is not structurally adequate for the traffic of the airport. And just for example, the second one down, that's PCN of 13, ACN of 31.1. That actually happens to be the area of the runway that's going to be reconstructed here starting later this year. So once that project is complete, the PCN will be in the green. But for right now, that section and another section of the runway are in the red. So also included within this report is a pavement condition index. This is calculated while using a visual distress survey. So we went on the airfield and manually walked all the pavement. The small snippets are shown to the right as kind of the areas that were inspected. We will record the amount of distresses, whether that's cracking or rutting or just something along those lines in a systematic approach. We use a program called PAVER, just a pavement inspection software to determine a PCI for each area. And as you can see in table A3, there's a condition scale index ranging from 0 to 100 with different values. So good, 100 to 86, satisfactory 85 to 71, and so on. And for this inspection and for the maintenance and rehabilitation plan that was put together, a 65 was really used for a critical condition number for the airfield. In terms of if it was above a 65, it was treated as this pavement's doing pretty well. We might be able to hold off a little bit and maintain it a little bit later of a date, but if it was below a 65, it needs to be addressed currently and start planning for that. Same with previously the structural inadequate pavements needed to be addressed in the short-term timeframe. So with a visual inspection and with the PCI, we also have the ability to forecast out over the next 20 years as to what we believe the pavement may become if these areas are not addressed and rehabilitated or maintained at this time. And this is a small snippet of the north side of the airfield, but as you can see, there's a lot of red, a lot of poor or fair areas around the airfield. And as we move through the years, those areas that may have been fair or yellow start to become red. Or as you get to 20 years, if we don't maintain any of the pavement, it essentially hits gray and will fail. This is, you know, least ideal condition. This is if, you know, we didn't touch anything, we didn't do any projects, which is not the case with this airport, but forecasting and that a lot of helps us plan and set precedents for the projects that need to be done. And one thing we wanted to note is the PCN or the condition of the pavement is not related to the PCN and the PCI. There are two unrelated factors. One is based upon the actual structural makeup of the pavement and the loading upon it. And the PCI is based upon the distresses that are recorded visually. So it doesn't really take into account what may be going on on a subsurface level. Anything else? No, just that, yeah, as we get, as Trevor talks about and starts to get into the the maintenance re-evaluation plan later. Some of those projects are projects that need to be performed because the PCI is low, because the condition of the pavement, I mean, the pavement may, the section may be adequate for the traffic, but the condition just may be such that it just needs to be rehabilitated. The other reason is there are areas where, you know, like we showed earlier, where the PCN is too low, where the pavement is not structurally adequate. And regardless of the condition of the pavement, if it's not structurally adequate, then something needs to be done to strengthen that pavement so that it doesn't fail prematurely. So again, two different reasons for why we may need to, you know, perform a project, be it a rehabilitation reconstruction or just a strengthening of that pavement. So to tag off of that, the maintenance rehabilitation plan, this kind of just gives a breakdown of the approach that we took based upon the findings of this. So rehabilitation projects are typically a reconstruction, your mill and overlay, a structural overlay, something that's going to significantly impact and better that pavement over time, whereas a maintenance project is going to, you know, help us to mitigate FOD and to help extend the usable life of that pavement. But it's not going to address anything that may be happening in the underlying sections or conditions. So you have crack seal, seal coat for your concrete pavement. We've got panel patching and just crack repair. So both the rehabilitation plan that we put together and a maintenance plan we put together have a short term, a medium term, and a long term. Short term is zero to five years. It needs to be addressed, you know, right now or planning needs to start in the near future. Medium term, five to ten years. Pavement that needs to kind of have an eye kept on it, make sure that we don't see anything kind of accelerate in the short term, but we've got a little time to plan and prepare for those projects. And then long term, 10 to 20 years, that that pavement's in very good condition as we sit right now. We don't see any issues with it coming up within the next 10 years and kind of future forecasts with the CIP. So with the rehabilitation, like I said, we used a 65 PCI as that critical number. So anything that needed to be rehabilitated was either structurally inadequate based upon the PCN values or was below a 65 and the PCI values. And utilizing the forecasted conditions for the medium term from there, if it dropped below a 65, it needed to be rehabilitated in this time. And then continuing on the 10 to 20 years, if it was projected to drop below 65 in that period, we were going to do it at that time. So with that, and you'll see here in a second, there's a lot of pavement that needs to be touched early on, which is not always feasible due to funding. So we also built a maintenance plan, which we utilized a fair. So a fair rating was the yellow coloration from before, and was really an approach that we took where even if that pavement was structurally inadequate or we thought maybe it needed to have a rehabilitation project done on it, we might be able to extend its life, do a maintenance project in the short term at a little bit less of a cost, and really allow us to plan for a larger project in the future as needed. And then from there, medium and long term. Medium is if it was forecasted to hit fair within that time frame. And just based upon kind of some unknowns with where the condition of pavement goes in the long term, it's a little bit difficult to pinpoint exact areas that may need to be touched. So for this situation, anything that's going to be recommended to be rehabilitated in the short term, we're going to have continued maintenance is the recommendation for the long term of the maintenance plan. So with that, this is the, this is our rehabilitation plan. I know there's a lot of stuff on this. It definitely goes into more detail inside of the executive summary to not bore you guys with this. But I guess the biggest thing to hit here is, I mean, there's a lot of large projects, a lot of reconstruction that needs to happen. Like Chad talked about earlier, this runway reconstruct section here, and taxiway A2 East, those projects are slated to be started in the summer. So those values are already planned for, but other things like, you know, reconstructing of a middle two section of the runway needs to be planned for. And another thing is, we put these little, actually, next to areas of the pavement that are actually under lease agreements and the airport's not responsible for. But as a part of this report and evaluation, we're still included so that the airport could forecast and discuss what tenants is needed to help maintain their areas as well. As you can see, medium and long term really don't have a huge bulk of projects just based upon condition and structural analysis. Most of this is in the short term. And that was talked about with the airport, just really trying to, you know, lay it out, not sheer coat what's going on. And just this is the pavement, this is the condition. And I mean, we really need to start working towards getting some of this taken care of and start working with text on that aspect. So with that, I mean, a lot of large projects, reconstruction, like I said, mill and overlays. But I'd like to point out, so on taxiway alpha, there's two different projects. We've got a mill and overlay here and then a structural overlay or reconstruct. So this reconstruct section is actually inadequate based upon the PCN values. And the north and middle are in a condition in which we need to do something now. But with those two, we also, I mean, we can maintain them. And so we've shown them in the short term planning period. So let's say we don't have funding to do a reconstruct. We've got all of taxiway alpha for a crack seal and seal coat project for a lot less of a value that we can help maintain and plan for funding in the future if that's the route that needs to be taken with this. So like I said, like we said, I mean, mainly maintenance projects, crack sealing and seal coating, maintaining and patching throughout. And just always add here real quick, there are some projects in the short term maintenance, stable for short term maintenance. There are some projects that aren't listed in there that are in a condition that something needs to be done about them. And those are portions of pavement where the PCI is to the point where maintaining them is just throwing money away. Like Trevor said, on taxiway alpha, if the money isn't available to do what needs to be done now, we think we can extend that life by performing some maintenance. But there are other sections of pavement where it doesn't matter what you do to them at this point, you're not going to extend their life. So these next few slides are just kind of a visual representation of kind of the areas that we need to touch in each timeframe. So short term timeframe for rehabilitation plan, it's almost probably 90% of the airfield pavement. That's either structurally, I've been in a lot of the connectors and portions of the runway or they were constructed a long time ago. This section of runway is actually a concrete underlying surface layer with asphalt on top. And that's why there's some significant cracking that's going on as those joints have reflected through. Same thing goes with Bravo. They've got a very similar condition aspect there with just it's not structurally adequate at the same time. You're seeing a lot of the underlying distresses from that pavement section starting to reflect upward and really drive the condition of that pavement down. The medium term, not as many projects. A few of these, Taxway A1 was forecasted to kind of hit that 65 range by that time. It's in a good structural capacity, but we're thinking by five to 10 years, you need to start working on projecting that forward. And then some of these others around the Taxway Golf and that north asphalt section of the ramp need to be rehabilitated at that time. And then long term, a lot of these are mainly your concrete portions that are in really good condition. You got Quebec and the hangar apron that was built up here is in very good condition. The ramp as well for EastRamp, where I know I think the flight school utilizes that now. The new concrete sections, these are really newer pavements that haven't experienced a significant deterioration or distresses yet. And a lot of that's due to just the concrete aspect of what's going on. And I will point out this north apron east of Bravo is called out, I believe in the short term and the long term. I believe the short term plan is kind of calling out a mill and overlay to take care of the immediate issues that were on there. But by that long term time frame, we may need to do a full reconstruct. So that's why it's shown on this plan twice. And then moving into the maintenance aspect of it, these are the pavement areas, as Chad talked about, that we think, you know, we can extend the life of this pavement, whether it has some structural issues or not, by doing a maintenance plan in the short term. This little the fuel run up for the self serve, there's only there's a few panels within here that we might need to replace, but other than that, I mean, it's in good condition, kind of help extend it. Same thing goes with you know, the concrete up and pull back in the east ramp and then terminal apron, asphalt, definitely starting to see some age, but should be able to extend it until a full project if we get a crack seal seal code on at this point in time. We move into the medium term. That's kind of when we think the newly constructed runway is going to probably start seeing some oxidation, maybe see some distresses at that time. Probably not load related failures, but definitely going to have some environmental aspects. And then long term, like we talked about, it's just a repeat of all of the short term rehabilitation projects there that are reshown the maintenance aspect. So I guess this is probably the slide that everybody's going to really care about and want to talk over. But this is kind of our projected estimates for what these projects are going to cost short term, medium term, long term. And we're looking right now something there is a buffer in there, maybe 37 million to take care of all those, you know, rehabilitation projects in the short term. Whereas we might be able to get away with something less than a million just to rehabilitate some of those those areas. Do you have anything else before we? No, I don't think so. I think you've covered everything. So with that, open this up to discussion and questions. And we can definitely cycle back through if anybody has any questions on a specific slide, or even if you got a question over the executive summary, I can we can try to hammer those out now when you'd like. Mr. Chairman. Yes, go ahead. Are you talking about is this going to be done like this one big contract for some of the stuff that's in the near term, or is it going to be more like a parsing it out little pieces as we go? What's the idea on that? So based on funding alternatives, with you know, text out uses the CIP capital improvement program, we would have to start getting these projects on the docket to be done. Whereas the the maintenance projects would be probably working with the air field and maybe some of the city funding that's available and work with the airport directly. And they would, you know, kind of plan out what what they want to hit now. And this would not be a single project, though, this would have to be phased out over time. And if and if I can, you know, the the likelihood of our airport getting $35 million in the next five years is is just not going to happen, right? Let's just be realistic. The facts are we need $35 million worth of repairs. So that's that was the goal is to present the facts. Now we will work closely with text dot aviation that also works with FAA to see what we can get done. And obviously addressing our most critical payments, which is runway taxiway primary, you know, our primary access points. So now that we'll have this study completed, we will work with text dot to see how we can phase in various approach various options to get the funding available. So likely getting, you know, two to $6 million every couple of years might, might be something that we might be able to get. And then we will obviously we're going to focus on the ones that are failing now, and then try to do injection of pavement maintenance to just extend the life so we can kind of time out over the next few years. Now text dot does only does a four year capital improvement plan. So our four years are already have a snapshot. So when we present this to them, our hope is to maybe readjust that based on what funding might be available to us. The runway project itself is is was identified by Chad and Trevor. A portion of that is already going to be completed this summer and fall. And then the runway will be another project next year to do the runway. So those two are our main runway will be addressed. That leaves that's a pretty good chunk of money to do those. So that then then if you take out those pavements that we're not responsible for doing that maintenance, which is anything that's under leasehold by our tenants, you know, our $35 million number might be closer to, say, 15. Right. So, so now it's a little bit more palatable. And maybe we can figure out a way to get that done, maybe not in five, but maybe in 10 years, eight years, something like that. Thank you. Maybe for my clarification, there was reference made that we've got something going to happen here yet this later this year, I guess, some improvements that are are funded and and I guess engineering is done and we're ready to go. So what were those again? I know that's that drainage issues, one of them, but what sections did that apply to? Let me bring up the map again, we can show you. But in fact, I'll let you know that that project has actually been advertised and bids from contractors will be open, I believe on June 8th. So it is it's well on its way. But it's the section of runway that he's highlighting right there. There's about a little less than 900 feet of runway that's going to be reconstructed. And then taxiway A2 is being relocated to line up with A2 on the west side that was built as part of the west runway. So A2 will be moved over to a line on the east side with the portion of the taxiway on the west side. And then taxiway at the section of A4 there between the between A and the apron. That section of taxiway is just being removed. That currently provides direct access from the apron to the runway, which has become a big issue with with the FAA. So that that little that small section taxiway will be removed to eliminate that direct access. Okay, so dollar wise that takes a chunk out of this money, right? So correct, correct. I think I think the budget for that project is roughly $3 million is about what it's estimated at right now. So okay. And if I just for clarification purposes, as far as what's going back in, where will we be with the PCN numbers and all of that when that gets done? Will we exceed what we're seeing out there on that that north extension? Or are we going to be shooting for something a little bit higher? I'm thinking we need to start thinking about getting our runway limits up for the future. You know, we're just seeing warehouse after warehouse after warehouse being built right around the airport. And I'm thinking if we're not looking down the road at bigger freight operations coming, that we might be missing something. And Mr. Chairman, if I can, and if you could take the slide down. I think while we're talking, we have to do that. Let me see if I can address that. In order to none of these projects that we're going to do will increase our pavement strength at the airport. If we want to do that, then we have to go back to tech start FAA, ask them to be able to do that, which would require us to do another environmental study to determine if there's any environmental impacts by increasing the pavement strength. So the the thought there is, are we going to introduce aircraft that currently don't operate at our facility by increasing that pavement strength? If the answer is yes, you're going to have to go through all the environmental process. Maybe to the extent we had to for the construction of the new runway, and get environmental approval to do that. Once we get that, then we would be able to talk to tech start an FAA about a pavement increase project. So I won't probably engineering wise won't state it right, but basically go in there and add several more inches of pavement to our runway to increase the pavement strength to accommodate whatever was approved in the environmental. That all said, if we started today, the likelihood of getting that approval of an environmental is typically 24 months. Now, could be less could be a little bit more than you start the planning process, the engineering and so forth. So, you know, best case scenario, everything lined up, we're probably five, six years out before we could get an overlay that increases the pavement strength on our primary runway. Okay, well, I think somewhere along the line, we have to make some kind of a decision or council direction or something that we need to either say nope, this is all we're ever going to be. Or we need to start a plan for how we can be there for future future business and future growth when whenever it comes. And, you know, I just keep hearing more and more, you know, we're just seeing another refrigerator warehouse, we're seeing more warehousing, more manufacturing coming this way. And, and supply chain management seems to be the thing these days. And just kind of thinking that we don't want to miss the boat. So, and absolutely correct. And in it, and basically, I think where we would have to start is, you know, we did a airport master plan, a number of years ago, we'd have to do sometimes it's called a mini master plan or a forecast update, something like that, that would show the need to do that. That said, we do work hand in hand with our economic development team. So if they have developments that are around the airport or in the Denton area, that have a demand for that, we're, we're brought into that conversation with them to see what they need. So far, with some of the ones that are taking place now are currently operating, they don't have the demand for the cargo, they're using truck or other means of transportation doesn't mean that it may not change in the future, or we end up with a different type of industrial tenant that might need that, as you know, Peterbilt periodically brings various parts on demand to meet their, to meet their, their chain to develop in that day, they may bring a few things in here and there, but we haven't had anybody indicate to us, at least at this point, through economic development or otherwise, that they have a demand for bringing in cargo aircraft specifically. However, that said, we, we continue that conversation with all of the partners that are in the, in the adjacent industrial area. And if that does come up, then that's more justification than to move forward with those types of projects. Right. Well, of course, and hopefully we're still keeping an eye and keeping looking forward to getting the airport certified part 139, where we can handle the university charters, the bigger planes, we're getting more of those all the time with the under 30 seat limitation, but this would be another reason, I guess, also to keep looking forward toward this and moving forward. And I assume this, this study, which is excellent information wouldn't help us move another step toward that 139. They're probably not directly connected. You know, we can get 139 certified with the conditions that we're in. However, you know, the 139 topic was put on hold during COVID. It will be a discussion that's brought back up again, certainly with the fire department and, and airport and our users of the need for that. And if we were to get 139 certification, there might be, and I'll just say might be a possibility that funding might come a little easier for, but there's no guarantee of that. Even if we were 139 airport, we are still under the state block grant program. There is limited funds. Everybody's got to draw from the same pool of money. And you know, the 35 million we identified is about how much money there's available for the whole state. So, you know, it's, it's not, it's not a simple solution. So I think the purpose of getting what we're being presented today is to present the facts to tax dot of where we're at, being one of the busiest GA airports in their system, that we have a need to, to do some repairs on our facility so we can continue to handle the traffic we have. Subsequent to that then would be, okay, now we've got the additional traffic. We've got 139 in play. All those other things will come subsequent to that. Very good. Very good. Any other comments, questions by board members? Okay. All right. Well, we thank you two gentlemen, excellent report and good information and looks like we got a plan. So glad to have you guys working for us. Thank you. Glad to be able to do it. Good. All right, we'll move on to the next item. Airport board 21 days 034 receive report, hold a discussion and provide recommendation to city council to authorize the city manager designated except on behalf of the city and offer from the Texas Department of Transportation for a cares act airport grant in the amount of 157,100. So chase, you want to explain this to us further? Yes, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. The cares act was actually put into law back in March of 2020. Includes about 10 million, $10 billion in funds awarded and economic relief for eligible US airports for the preparation and the response to COVID-19 pandemic. Based on those funds were given out based on for for our our funding were based on your airport designation were designated as a national reliever airport for the state of Texas. And those funds were given to us at the amount of $157,100. That's a set amount that was determined by that act. There are other airports in the metroplex that don't meet that necessarily that reliever designation that received somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to $70,000. So we are happy that we did receive that hundred and $157,100. So basically, what we're looking for today is as we have, we have designated the use of those funds, we're going to use those for reimbursement of our operational expenses, you are allowed to use them for for projects and other things. But, but finding a project for that amount we spoken with TechStot as well as spoken internally. And we feel that the best route for us to go is to reimburse our operational expenses for the year. So we are looking for we are seeking direction from the board and a recommendation to counsel to accept this grant from Texas or from, yet from TechStot aviation in the amount of $157,000. Okay, any board board members have questions to learn? I just said I'll move for approval. Oh, okay. And we'll take a second at this point. Now we can maybe have some discussion. Second, Aaron is going to second that. So I just had one question in terms of I think that's fine. Use it in terms of for our normal operation costs. But is there something out there that we are maybe then not getting to accomplish that this could have gone specifically for? I guess we probably had funds already budgeted for normal operations, correct? So is this going to subsidize that or replace that funds and what happens to those funds? Scott, do you have more information on that? Sure. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I think, yes, we have a project that we had identified to use the funds. Unfortunately, some of the bureaucratic process has delayed this because we've actually asked for this funds last May. So in working with TechStot, they recommended we request the funds for reimbursement of our operational expenses, knowing that we will reimburse ourselves for operational expenses and then transfer the exact same amount into our capital project fund to do the project that we originally requested, which was to fund the equipment for the tower. So that project has been on the street. It's been bid. It's got a contractor selected. I can't remember the cost. Somewhere around $200,000, if I'm not mistaken. So this will offset that project along with the $80,000 that we already had in the capital budget. And while it seems like kind of a shell game, that was recommended to us to move forward in that manner. Number one, to go ahead and get the funds requested just because of the challenge to go through a capital project requestment process. That had changed since last year. Without belaboring that conversation, this was recommended by TechStot to be the simplest solution to get the money in hand to go do our project. So that's what we're doing. Okay. So we've got a net gain. I guess that's my main concern. Correct. The $157,100 is going to be used to offset the cost for the tower equipment project. Okay. All right. Any other comments or questions before we vote? So all those in favor of recommending this to the City Council, raise your hand or say aye. Okay. All four zero. Okay. Moving on to item airport board 21030 staff reports and we have several different reports and we'll start out with Chase. You want to start this process over? Yes, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. I'll start with the operations report. As you can see, we were down in our overall operations by just over 12% from April of 2021 compared to April of 2020. We did have a very wet and windy month this year. If it wasn't rain, it was cross winds. So the tower did explain they did see a lot of days where there wasn't a lot of flight activity due to the weather, not just rain but wind as well. You will see that we did see over a 36% increase in our IFR itinerants. So usually that entails larger aircraft coming from a further distance to follow a flight plan. So that is good to see that we did see some increased activity there. We still are down right at 11% or so for the year with the 38,889 operations compared to 43,679. I will move down to fuel, which has a completely different outlook there. We did see an increase to 57% for March of '21 compared to March of '20 with the bulk of that or with all of that increase coming in our jet A. So you did see that correlation there where we did have some operations back in March. Again, we did have an increase in IFR. Did see some fuel increases there. So where we are down 11% in our overall operations, we're actually up around 11% for overall fuel for the entire year. So that's a good sign. Hopefully we will see those operations even out. Hopefully once some training traffic can get back into the air, the weather cooperates a little bit. A question referenced that, Chase. When you just said training traffic, I understand U.S. aviation's business model maybe has changed a little bit. They're not having the as many Chinese students any longer and they're working with more domestic. Is that going to change the numbers that we're seeing here? We haven't spoken to them directly about their training numbers overall. I will say I don't know that there's been a new class from China in quite a while. They are doing some training with some students out of Norway and then they are increasing their domestic training as well. They've also added an ANP portion to some of their training down at a taxi lane hotel as well. We can definitely meet with them and see their outlook on their training, but I haven't heard anything specifically on them saying their numbers are expected to decrease. Mr. Chairman, they did also enter into some new training with some airlines including American Airlines through their envoy connection. I believe they may even have some relationships with Southwest now. While there may be a decrease in the international student side, they're kind of backfilling that with some expanded domestic activity. The specifics of their business plan we are not aware of, but we are still seeing both types of students. Right. Okay. I kind of suspected that might have some effect on these numbers because with the Chinese, they seem to work and they transport them out by buses and they're very intense with the departures and practices and maybe with this new going more domestic students where people are just coming and going on their own more. I don't know if that will lower our numbers. Well, the domestic training that they're doing isn't like a typical flight school where people just show up and learn to fly. This is a structured program very similar to the international program. It just happens to be for domestic students. If I may. I think the reason they were bussed in is because the Chinese government had a lot of restrictions on where they were housed because we're here as part of a program. So I think the number of actual flights should probably level off. I think there's a general move away from reliance on Chinese aviation too as the source of clientele because there's plenty of domestic needs. So I don't think it should really affect anything from what I understand. That's good. Okay. Sorry we derailed you there, Chase. Mr. Chairman, that's no problem at all. We always welcome questions for sure. And then I have the FPL fueling breakdown for everyone to see down below as well. Move on to incidents. We did have one incident on April 7th. We did have a US jet fuel truck coming out of taxiway Lima requesting to head back to the main ramp. That would be either north on Bravo to the main ramp or north on Alpha to Alpha 4 to the main ramp. They were directed to head north on Alpha to the ramp. They proceeded to cross Alpha and proceed on to the runway. This was this individual's last day with the US Jet Center predetermined. They'd already put in their two weeks. So we have not been able to make contact with that individual to see what the issue was or if it was just say, "Hey, this is my last shift and it's kind of the end of the day and I need to go." So we did not make any contact with that individual. So no further action was taken on that incident. Then we have wildlife management as well. We did have some mallards on the field. Due to a lot of that rain, we do have some ponding there in the grass. So we did have some mallards near the runway, large flock of gulls on the 17th of April, as well as some buzzard and coyote activity. The coyote activity was on the east side of the airport. Don't suspect that they came in under any fencing or anything like that just through the roadway from the fields to the east. But that coyote was gone when staff arrived to the area. And then they also have historical operations and historical fuel. If there's any questions, Mr. Chairman? I don't have any. I'm just curious and operationalized. It was made mentioned by the engineers that we're going to remove the access to the runway at Alpha 4. And so how's that going to work as far as, because it seems like that's a perfect place for a lot of planes to exit the runway. So are they going to, is nothing going to be replacing that or are they going to have to go to five or three all the time depending on which way they're landing? And Mr. Chairman, if you don't mind, I'll be getting to that in the construction report. Okay. That's on our list. If everyone's ready to move on to that report, I can start that portion. Okay. All right. So the first item on that list is an air traffic control tower upgrades. We do have a small update for that. The contract is approved. Contractor was selected. Now we're currently working on material ordering and as well as scheduling equipment installation. Now with some of this equipment, I'm sure as most everyone's aware, there are some shortages and some delayed shipping times. So some of this equipment we're looking at eight to 12 weeks order time for some of this equipment. So we are pushing them to get this stuff ordered and hopefully have this stuff in as soon as possible. I did speak with the contractor. It does look like once they are on site, we're only looking at a seven to 10 day timeframe for that project to be completed. And then now we'll move on to the big project, the runway one eight left, three six right rehabilitation project. Mr. Chairman, I believe you might be the only one that was on the board at the time, but back in 2018, this project was initially slated to begin. We did not have a secondary runway at that time. So that project was pushed back and unfortunately pushed back a little further than we had liked. But due to funding constraints, we had to get back in line with the text dot aviation program. So we were recently notified actually after our last meeting that this project was going to get up and running again. So that is why we had not brought this to the board at a previous meeting. So this has all kind of come together in the last few weeks with the project was advertised on the ninth like KSA had mentioned previously in this meeting. And we do have the details of the project. I'll go ahead and pull up. I'll go ahead and share my screen with a depiction of the project. Let me know when everybody can see that. It looks good. Okay. So it is a reconstruction of this approximately 880 to 900 feet of pavement. So this will be full depth reconstruction, completely ripped out along with taxiway alpha two, as KSA mentioned previously, will be moved to realign with direct access to the west runway. The other portion of this project, Mr. Chairman, like you asked previously is the removal of this alpha four. So this comes from the FAA. This gives currently we have direct access from a non-movement area ramp all the way to a runway. So this is something that is being taken out because of new FAA safety requirements. They do not want direct access from ramp to runway. Currently, we do not have any project going forward to replace this. It would be exited at alpha four and you can either go down to alpha three or to alpha five. A lot of folks may choose, if they're coming in from the north, would choose just to go down to alpha five to get a straight shot to Bravo. The reason this one's coming out and these aren't, this is just a direct access to a taxiway. There is no direct ramp access from any of our other taxiway stubs. So this project, like I said, was advertised in May. We do have a pre-bid meeting, I believe tentatively scheduled for the 19th of May with construction hopefully beginning August, September timeframe of this year. So this is really, like I said, a project that was designed back 2017-18 timeframe, but this whole, the project construction portion has just really come together for us over the last few weeks. So I really commend KSA for getting with us and getting all this stuff together and appreciate their quick response to getting this out on the street. So I guess you guys are, is the plan still being developed? How the, when the runway is shut down, we're going to use a portion of it? How's that going to work? We do, we do have a, they do have a phasing plan that is put together and once we get the contractor on board, a lot of contractors have different ideas. We'll work with that contractor to figure out the phasing. There will be, currently there will be a displacement of some kind on the main runway. We hope to have, we hope to have this runway available as well as our secondary during that time, but we'll work, we'll work with KSA as well as a contractor to develop a phasing plan that's best for the airport and our users. That looks like that's going to be real important because that could really shut us down for good periods of time. Absolutely, absolutely. We're working to see if we can, can do some of this taxiway work before we get to the runway portion so we can, we can have that access available. Right. And Mr. Chairman, one of the things that we, we've had several conversations now with TxDOT about this particular project and the timing associated with it, we anticipated race traffic to consider coming to our airport in November when we found that the race is not in November now, it has been moved to mid-October. So we have stressed that our full-length primary runway needs to be available during that race week and then at that point we can displace and do what we need to do. Okay. So any more questions on that project? I guess a lot of the corporate jets that we have using airport now, are they comfortable with using the parallel runway or is that not in their operational purview? We do have, we do have 5,000 feet on, on the parallel runway and that should accommodate most of our traffic. We will, with a displacement, have roughly 5,100 feet. So a lot of the aircraft that we do have operating here can operate on that 5,000 foot piece of pavement, but may choose to operate on the main runway due to the weight capacity as well. Okay. So we're still thinking we're going to have 5,100 feet. That's good. Right at 5,100 feet is, is what I, what I show in the plans right now. Okay. That's true. And if we're ready, I'll move down to the last project on the construction reports, hangar development. Mr. Chairman, you did request something be added to this report for any new development. They have three cam construction, three cam hangar development that has received a temporary CEO on taxiway kilo. It's a 20,000 square foot facility with several offices and a larger amount of hangar space. They will, they have made it available for lease. And from what I understand, they're open to lease the entire space or break it up into a shared portion to that space. So we're excited to see that building be, that construction be complete. Okay. Then I have a picture, picture of that hangar attached as well. Right. Yeah. That's that now that stuff's good news for us. That looks great. Any other comments, questions from board members? Okay. And the next item on here is a reference to the city council airport committee matrix. And I think Leanne has some information for us on that. You're muted, I think. Chair, members of the board will be taking the tech stock cares act grant item to council airport committee on May 25th, 2021. And the city council date is currently pending as we have to have our agenda information sheets and stuff approved prior to being able to schedule a city council date. And so we're working with that right now. Next meeting we'll have all that up to date. It should, Mr. Chairman, be in the June meeting timeframe. As many of you know, the council does take a break. So there's a gap and we're trying to get it in before that break. So we can ensure that the tech stock gets the FAA discretionary funding approved. Absolutely. I hope we don't miss a cog there in the wheel. Because I've noticed that they've canceled some of those subcommittee meetings recently. So hopefully that'll work. Okay. The council airport committee is meeting on requests. So we don't schedule meetings because there's not a tremendous amount of items they go forward. So we just schedule those as they come. And as soon as we do that, then we certainly start the coordination to get a council date. But as Leanne said, the process is such that we need final documents in order to facilitate that date. But I'm sure we will make that work for June. Very good. Very good. Okay. All right. I think that covers all the scheduled items on the agenda. And now we're at the concluding items. And we had some discussion earlier a little bit about, you know, cities considering going back to some in-person meetings. But being that that's not finalized. Maybe we continue on with our Zoom meetings for at least another month or so until we get better direction. So our next meeting would normally be on June the 10th. And Leanne, do we have a slot requested yet or are we at 10 o'clock? It'll be June 10th at 10 a.m. Same time. 10 a.m. Okay. Well, that works for me. What about everybody else? Okay. All right. And if our two of our members that aren't with us right now, I don't know, I doubt they'll get new appointments before then. So we'll just have to proceed on. Yeah, the council just got seated on Tuesday. So city secretary will be starting that process with them over the next several meetings. So hopefully we'll have two new appointees before the break. Okay. You know, something that when we talked about a little bit earlier with all the supply chain management stuff and maybe the potential future demand on the airport for more air freight type operations, we were in the past had kind of a quarterly report or ever so often we would get reports from our economic development people and we haven't done that in a while. I wonder if we can maybe get that to restart it again and maybe not only for us but to update our airport to FBOs and other people working on the airport might feel a little more plugged in with that. Certainly we can reach out to Jessica Rogers who's the director of economic development. She's had quite a bit of staff change. She's in a different building now a number of things. So I'm sure we can certainly get her back on the schedule or a member her team to do a presentation. We'll see if we can't get that on the next meeting. Right. Super. Okay. Anybody else have any other items that they would like to see for future agendas consideration or reports or any information that you're aware of? Okay. All right. Well, hearing none and if there are no more items or comments we can consider this meeting adjourned. Looks like our adjournment time is going to be about 11.06. So thank you all again for attending and we will see you in a month or near a month. All right. Thank you. Thank you.