Airport board ignores plea, OKs agreement

Paulding’s Airport Authority ignored a request from city of Atlanta officials and unanimously approved an intergovernmental agreement last week to convert Silver Comet Field to a self-sustaining facility beginning Oct. 20.

Candace Byrd, chief of staff to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, wrote a Sept. 16 letter to authority members asking them to delay approval of the agreement until the city and Federal Aviation Administration could review it.

The Paulding County Commission approved the agreement Sept. 9. It includes transfer of 163 acres from the county to the airport authority which Atlanta officials maintain cannot be used for commercial aviation purposes – an assertion authority attorney Tom Cable said was not part of contract restrictions included in a 2007 purchase of the land from Atlanta.

Paulding Airport Authority member Doris Devey said she had no problem voting for the agreement despite Byrd’s letter.

“I don’t think [Paulding attorneys] would have let the intergovernmental agreement go out if there was something that stipulated [a limitation on the land] in the contract,” she said.

She said county commission attorney Jayson Phillips also reviewed it and was not concerned about limitations before commissioners approved it 3-2 Sept. 9.

However, Devey moved for the authority to approve the agreement on the condition Cable review the document a final time.

“I just wanted to cover everybody,” she said. “To me, one more set of eyes looking at it one more time will never hurt.”

Atlanta officials reportedly have threatened a lawsuit. They did not return phone calls and an email asking for comment last week.

Last week’s action is the latest step in the authority’s two-year effort to add commercial service that has been opposed by some Paulding residents both publicly and in the courts.

The authority is awaiting an environmental assessment, expected in 2015, that was part of a court-ordered agreement between the aviation administration and Paulding residents opposed to commercial service.

Before the votes, County Commissioner Todd Pownall gave copies of the Atlanta letter to authority members.

“If you want the lawsuits to go away, if you want this community to start healing and be united … all you’ve got to do is stop it,” he said of the agreement.

Among the agreement’s provisions was a requirement for county payment of almost $3 million over 10 years to the airport. Those funds will be given in decreasing annual amounts to prompt the authority to make the facility self-sustaining, authority director Blake Swafford said.

Revenue will come from ground leases, the proposed commercial service and other activities, Swafford told authority member Ellis Astin.

“That has been the goal since day one when we constructed the airport, was for it to get to a point where it’s self-sustainable,” said Swafford, who was approved as the authority’s interim executive director beginning Oct. 20.

Authority chair Calvin Thompson said the goal of the airport authority since 2006 also has been to “grow this airport corporately” by working to attract companies to lease space.

“The economy is what set us back,” he said.

Swafford will be given the direction to call on potential customers for space on the airport grounds and away from dealing solely with “governmental affairs,” Thompson said.

“Our goal is for, someday, to get Blake in the position where he can go out there and see these people and have some face time with them and sell this airport,” he said.

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