Red Lodge Ordinance to Define "Airport" Passes First Vote After Grueling Discussion Period

"Them is us, right?"

At the last Red Lodge City Council meeting on October 24, and after well over an hour of discussion that focused mainly on out of date information introduced by Mayor Kristen Cogswell and Public Works Director Jim Bushnell, the map as produced by the City’s appointees passed its first vote before the meeting was adjourned without addressing the Joint Airport Board Agreement. The vote on the map and the postponed discussion on the Joint Airport Board Agreement are scheduled for this evening’s meeting at Red Lodge City Hall at 6:00.

Bushnell continues to assert that the County is withholding or obfuscating budget information regarding the Airport by hiding it in the over 200 pages that comprise the entirety of the County’s budget document. (For reference, information packets for Red Lodge Council meetings are often well over 100 pages and without a table of contents or other way to navigate the information, providing over 200 pages each month for citizens to comb through.) As previously reported, the Airport budget can be found on pages 38 and 39 of the 2022-2023 Expenditure Budget and page 12 of the 2022-2023 Revenue Budget. Joint Airport Board expenditures for just the Red Lodge Airport during that budget cycle are $289,980. County officials have stated the County will not continue to contribute to the Red Lodge Airport at its current level if the City cancels its membership in the Joint Airport Board. Bushnell insists the City can run the Airport without the County.

Bushnell agrees with Cogswell’s position that the airport is undefined because there is not a survey of “the Airport”. In fact, each of the parcels zoned P1-A has been surveyed individually and since at least 1976 all of those parcels so zoned have collectively been considered “the Airport”. This is detailed in the map dated October 1, 1976, that is part of the City of Red Lodge Ordinance 706 and referenced in Red Lodge Municipal Code 13 which states in part:

“In order to carry out the provisions of this chapter, there are hereby created and established certain zones which include all of the land lying beneath the approach surface, transitional surfaces, horizontal surface, and conical surfaces as they apply to the Red Lodge airport. Such zones are shown on the Red Lodge airport zoning map consisting of one sheet, prepared by HKM Associates, Billings, Montana, and dated October 1, 1976, which is attached to Ordinance 706 and made a part thereof.”

Unsurveyed maps from previous Airport Master Plan drafts and the City’s 2004 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) were pointed to as controlling documents by Cogswell and Bushnell. The master plan drafts were from two previous and abandoned attempts by the Red Lodge Airport to re-enter the FAA program. The FAA has indicated this is the last time they will consider accepting the Red Lodge Airport into the program. The 2004 CEDS map has not been used as a guiding document by the City in its planning and did not become part of the airport discussion until it was introduced by Cogswell at the October 10, 2023, City Council meeting. Cogswell again made it a topic of conversation at the October 24 meeting until Councilmember Jenn Battles was able to get Cogswell to confirm that the CEDS map is not a surveyed map and the issue at hand is agreeing on a map that can then be surveyed to establish what the City of Red Lodge means when it refers to “the Airport”.

Bushnell expressed adamant opposition to “giving” the Airport four acres of land included in the proposed map that would allow the Airport to create a safer entrance and provide parking so people don’t have to park on Airport Road. He doesn’t believe that current or projected increases in traffic warrant a change and wants a traffic study done first to prove it is necessary. He referred to the Airport as a “hobby airport” that is not being developed for commercial or business use. Battles stated, “We’re not giving anybody anything and them is us, right?”

Councilmember Jody Ronning objected to Busnell’s characterization of the Airport as a “hobby” airport or playground for the rich and instead compared the Airport to Cooney Dam. She stated, “The airport is infrastructure. It's not just for hobby pilots. That's kind of a secondary use. The airport was formed for public safety. It's kind of on the same order of Cooney Dam. [Cooney] gets used by jet skiers and swimmers and boaters, but that's not its primary use. Its primary use is water management and irrigation. The Airport is similar in that its primary function is public safety. And we're lucky that we have a lot of private pilots that like to utilize it and then they're willing to donate their time and their money in helping support the airport and maintaining it and improving it. Otherwise, this piece of public infrastructure, that's shared by the County and the City, would be a lot more expensive to maintain.” She believes the emergency services area at the Airport is a good use of land and “at the end of the day, we still own the land. We’re not giving land away.”

It is the hope of many that this evening’s meeting will settle the internal dispute the City has regarding its own definition of “the Airport.”

The entire video recording of the Council discussion period from October 24 regarding the Airport boundary is below.