Fort Smith Regional Airport (KFSM) To Hire Four Firefighters, Raise Hangar Rates

The Fort Smith Regional Airport will hire at least four full-time firefighters by September and increase hangar lease rates 15 percent beginning Jan. 1, 2016.

Following a change in mission this month for the airport-based Arkansas Air National Guard from a fighter wing with A-10 Warthogs to the first space-based targeting squadron, the Fort Smith Airport Commission is adapting to the loss of its firefighting and rescue joint-use agreement with the guard by hiring four full-time firefighters, and one part-time, to man two Air National Guard fire trucks.

The estimated cost to the airport for the firefighters is between $250,000 and $300,000. A statewide advertisement will be made with an application deadline expected to be Sept. 15, Airport Director John Parker said at a Tuesday commission meeting. The airport’s joint-use agreement with the guard for firefighting protection ends Oct. 1.

“I believe this gives the commission the most flexibility and streamlines the function to provide the FAA required for a commercial service airport,” Parker said. “We certainly didn’t ask to get into this, but I believe this is the best way for us to proceed.”

In addition to fire and rescue duties for aircraft, the new firefighters will be responsible for protecting airport property such as the 8-year-old T-Hangars on the south side of the airport near the control tower.

The commission set hangar rates in 2007 at $190 a month for a 44-foot-wide unit and $220 a month for a 48-foot-wide unit. The rates have not been adjusted since 2007. The hangars have been occupied for five years.

The new rates, which won’t begin until the first of 2016 because the latest leases expire then, will be $220 a month for a smaller hangar and $250 for a larger hangar. There are 14 units in two buildings, with four 48-foot-wide hangars. About 60 percent of the hangars are occupied, Parker said.

“What’s important about that is that in all of our leasing we have to abide by grant assurances that require we be as self-sustaining as possible and rates under fee structures that are fair and equitable,” Parker said. “Part of that is that escalators have to be built in to leases that we enter into.”

Short-term leases are not escalated, but a 20-year lease would have escalators at five-year increments, the director added when advising the commission to entertain a motion to re-evaluate lease rates.

“In this particular regard, these are new hangars, electric bi-fold doors. There have been a number of hangars built in our region and those rates are actually starting to come back up,” Parker said.

The leases the airport currently are engaged in with tenants will be honored through the end of those lease periods. All of the latest tenants signed two-year lease rates that expire December 2015. The new rates would only apply to the new hangar rentals at T-Hangar locations.

In other business, the commission awarded a $48,933 contract to Chemtek Inc. of Morrisville, N.C. for the job of runway rubber removal and painting. The cost will be reimbursed by the National Guard Bureau as part of its dissolving joint-use agreement.

Source:  http://swtimes.com