Mayor Proposes Dividing Airport Into Three Pieces

Red Lodge Council Meeting October 10, 2023

Video of entire City Council meeting below

At the Red Lodge City Council meeting on October 10, Mayor Kristen Cogswell stated she had three reasons to propose dividing the airport up into three pieces. Her first reason is based on a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) developed in 2004. City Councilperson Jody Ronning (who was on the Economic Development Committee when the CEDS was drafted) as well as former Planning Board member and future City Councilperson Sandy Conlee pointed out that the CEDS has never been used by the City as a planning document. Ronning said it was out of date and did not reflect the current state of the City or the community. Ronning further stated that, “We do have a growth policy and the growth policy has never actually looked at developing any of that area up by the airport. It's not mentioned in the 2020 growth policy at all. And it's not in any of the objectives that they have for us moving forward as priorities. So, you know, I thought that the growth policy was actually more of our guiding document moving forward for development in Red Lodge.” Conlee said that in all her years on the Planning Board, she had never seen the CEDS document and the Growth Plan is the City’s guiding planning document.

Regardless, Cogswell believes the CEDS document mandates that the airport be surveyed in three parts with the emergency services area carved out from the FAA boundary and, therefore, removed from Joint Airport Board control.

She went on to state, “The second reason why I'm making this proposal is for financial concerns. The City faces significant funding deficits. We've talked numerous times about not being able to pay employees to keep up with the cost of living, about the decay of public facilities to due to a lack of funds, about the conditions of our streets and increasing demands on all of our departments to keep up with growth. We have no mechanism except raising taxes to fund these things. And there are no proposals at this time on the table to do that. Without more funds, we will in the very near future be unable to maintain our current police force, public works and other city employees.” She did not elaborate on how she envisioned the airport land would fund City operations in the short term or long term.

FACT CHECK: If the airport enters the FAA program, the land within that program is only tied up for 20 years in a way that Red Lodge agrees to. No surveys, master plans or leases can be performed or executed without the approval of the City of Red Lodge. The City can reconsider developing that area after that time. In any event, the City has recently signed leases for hangar land on airport grounds that have a 20 year term, thereby committing the area to airport use for that amount of time anyway. Contrary to Cogswell’s assertions, no FOIA request is needed to access the airport budget nor any other County budget. On page 38 of the 2022-2023 Carbon County budget, available on the County website, is a complete breakdown of airport expenditures. From there the public can explore the rest of the County budget.

For her third reason, Cogswell states safety concerns. “Right at the end of the crosswind runway, is an apartment building. I've heard that this won't be included as a runway, because it isn't used much. But a runway to the best of my knowledge would have a runway protection zone.” As Steve Smith, city resident and Joint Airport Board member, pointed out, the crosswind runway is an unpaved emergency runway and does not require a runway protection zone. Ronning presented the fact that the crosswind runway was established long before the apartments were built.

Smith further pointed out during public comments that the airport is not expanding as letters from residents of Remington Ranch had mentioned and is, in fact, decreasing in size. The 24-hour sand facilities planned near the Remington Ranch entrance will be developed on County-owned land outside of City limits and are not associated with the airport.

Councilmember Jenn Battles provided clarification on the purpose of the survey, “In my mind, we need a boundary because we all need to know what we're talking about when we say the airport. And we're not doing a process like this to serve the Airport Board’s needs nor the FAA’s needs. We're serving our community by establishing an airport boundary that is non disputable and is not confusing.”

Meanwhile, having granted the City’s request to extend the dissolution proceedings until December 31, the County Commissioners continue to host and participate in the Joint Airport Board. Earlier on October 10, having determined that no progress had been made by the City on the boundary or interlocal agreement requiring action on the part of the Board, it moved forward with its work to secure funding to install the cameras needed to accommodate Mercy Flights. Mercy Flights is an airplane service providing a quick and efficient way to transfer patients to trauma and other specialty medical facilities outside the range of a helicopter. A few months ago, Mercy Flights made it known that they are unable to provide requested emergency services to the Red Lodge Airport about a dozen times per year because they can’t be sure of weather and ground conditions. That’s approximately one person per month in the Red Lodge area who is in desperate need of life-saving emergency flight services who is instead driven or helicoptered to another airport to catch a Mercy Flight.