News Herald Report on Airport Relocation Delays

There was a fair amount of news that came from Tuesday’s airport board meeting, including the receipt of a $67 million dollar commitment from Florida’s Department of Transportation (FDOT) for airport relocation.

In covering the meeting, the News Herald went with a different angle, but a legitimate angle, choosing to focus on the delay as we move toward groundbreaking.

But at the end of the day, it's not surprising that the date for groundbreaking at the airport has slipped somewhat.

Airport relocation is a big, complex project with many different and important elements moving in parallel: permitting, funding, hiring firms to design facilities and oversee construction and more. Add to that the complexity of sale of the existing property and the need to coordinate the actions of dozens of local, state and federal regulatory agencies.

Move any one piece, and it can affect the scheduling of all the others.

Randy Curtis has indicated that he feels good about the process. According to Randy, some parts of the project are a little behind schedule. Others are ahead. Time can and will be made up.

In the end, he still expects that the airport will be completed in late 2009.

The project is complex enough – but it is made significantly more difficult by many of the opponents frivolous delay tactics and legal maneuvering.

Some claim that our local retired “airline executive” and another local retired military officer have added millions to the cost of the project with their sometimes spurious attacks on it. I don’t know how accurate that may be.

While I do fully support anyone and everyone’s right to oppose airport relocation, I also believe that when a question has been answered, it’s time to move on. And when a question is irrelevant, it is best left unasked.

Personally, I appreciate (and encourage) public involvement in this process. But I sometimes wish that everyone who participates in the debate could be more constructive in the manner in which they participate.

At the end of the day, I prefer to focus on the positive. We have made tremendous progress on airport relocation. We have a strong airport board managing the process. Our executive director has truly done an amazing job keeping this process moving forward. We are going to get there.

The key fact is that the airport will be built. It will provide this region with an unmatched opportunity to grow the economy and protect the environment. The timeline for groundbreaking may slip a few months, but it’s going to happen.

And I firmly believe we will all benefit.