Pike airport recieves $1M grant
Friday, 11 02, 2012
Kerri Richardson
Terry Sebastian
502-564-2611
Multi-county coal severance tax grant to support new airline service at the Pikeville – Pike County Regional Airport
PIKEVILLE, Ky. – Governor Steve Beshear and the Kentucky Department for Local Government today announced a pledge of a $1 million multi-county coal severance tax grant to the city of Pikeville. The grant will be used to support the development of new airline service at the Pikeville – Pike County Regional Airport (PBX).
Pikeville’s elected officials, along with the Pikeville – Pike County Airport Board and the Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce have been spearheading efforts to develop scheduled passenger airline service at the Pikeville field for more than two years. The grant will be awarded once an airline is selected to provide the public service. The proceeds of the grant will be matched with a $750,000 federal grant that the city of Pikeville received last year, and will be used as part of the project’s revenue guarantee program to assist a carrier in reaching sustainability during the start-up phase of service.
“So far, two airlines have expressed interest in serving PBX,” said Gov. Beshear. “Local officials have demonstrated strong leadership on this project, and the Commonwealth is pleased to partner with the community and airport officials to support ongoing efforts to develop new airline service.”
The grant will play an important role in the final stage of recruiting an airline to PBX. The successful recruitment of an airline will significantly enhance economic development efforts and the creation of new jobs not only in Pikeville and Pike County but also in the surrounding 12 counties.
“This is great news for our community,” said Sen. Ray Jones of Pikeville. “This grant puts us further down the road toward our goal of establishing scheduled airline service at PBX.”
“I want to thank Governor Beshear for his support of this important community goal,” said Rep. Leslie Combs of Pikeville. “We’re getting closer to our goal of new airline service to a major connecting hub which will truly connect Pikeville and Pike County to the global economy.”
“Our city appreciates the support of Governor Beshear and the Commonwealth,” said Pikeville Mayor Pro-Tem Jimmy Carter. “New airline service at PBX will help us to create new jobs in the coalfield.”
“The Commonwealth has been a wonderful partner at PBX ever since the field first opened in 1983,” said Bill Hickman, Chairman of the Pikeville – Pike County Airport Board. “This is yet another confirmation of this partnership as the airport continues to grow and serve the community.”
“New airline service at PBX will make it much easier for our business and professional community to compete in the global economy,” said Jared Arnett, president and CEO of the Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. “This grant helps us get closer to our goal of securing service.”
“This project enjoys widespread support,” said Luke B. Schmidt, President, L.B. Schmidt & Associates, LLC and consultant to the project’s leadership group. “Airline service will be a real game-changer for this community. I want to also thank Pike County Judge/Executive Wayne T. Rutherford and Floyd County Judge-Executive R.D. “Doc” Marshall for their support of our grant application.”
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Reporter: Paige Quiggins
PIKEVILLE, Ky. (WYMT) – It is a project that has been in the works for quite a while and on Friday, officials in the city of Pikeville announced they have been able to secure funding to bring commercial air service to eastern Kentucky.
“If it’s ever going to happen, this is going to be the time,” said Jared Arnett, President/CEO of the Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
Officials said that time has come.
“It’s just not conducive to the global economy to not have ticketed service right here locally,” said Arnett.
Arnett and many others said it was the time for officials to announce $1 million in multi-county coal severance money has been set aside to help bring commercial air service to the region.
City officials said it is an economic boost that will help industrial parks within the region. He said when they are told the closest airports are in Lexington or Louisville, it changed the game for some.
“When these site developers say ‘we want to come look at it’ and when we tell them you have to fly in and drive three hours, we really don’t even get into negotiation stage,” said Arnett.
“If we could have the opportunity where they could fly right in, see our sites, it would make a tremendous difference.”
Mayor Pro-Tem Jimmy Carter of the City of Pikeville said it will affect more than a dozen surrounding counties.
“This definitely makes us the hub of eastern Kentucky and with commercial air service, it solidifies the whole deal,” said Carter.
The project’s consultant said carriers must agree before the project fully takes off.
“We are in a great position to go and make our final push on recruiting with the two airlines who have expressed interest in this market so our intent to be now to get in front of them as quickly as we can,” said Luke Schmidt.
Schmidt said they could know that answer by March of next year and if the two considering commercial carriers commit by then, it will likely take six months to a year from then for the services to begin.
Officials said this million is in addition to a $750,000 federal grant which has already been set aside for the project.
Article originally posted to the Lexington Herald-Leader Web site http://www.kentucky.com/2012/08/24/2309254/sensible-ruling-on-liquor-sales.html#storylink=cpy
By Friday, Aug. 31, information regarding installation of a commercial flight from the Somerset airport will be ready.
Information will be released from a survey that has been taken in the Corbin, London and Somerset areas to help with the decision whether or not to seek a commercial flight.
In February, the Somerset-Pulaski County Development Foundation began to survey 15 counties in the area.
The counties have a population of 384,000.
Martin Shearer, executive director of the foundation, said, “Business and industry leaders throughout the region have asked repeated when air service will be restored” at Somerset.
He added that “A bigger reason is that all of us in the community, from a business and economic standpoint, should be able to make our existing business and travel connections.”
The nearest commercial flight locations are at Lexington to the north and Knoxville, Tenn. to the south.
He also said that if local commercial flight will be out and in at the Lake Cumberland Regional Airport, it could boost the future of economic develop in the region.
There has been no charter service at either the Somerset or London fields for several years.
So, Shearer said, commercial flights will simplify travel efforts to get to and from the Somerset area.
Luke B. Schmidt, who worked up the first survey, said he is in the middle of a more detailed survey sent by e-mail in the past week.
That went to every member of the Somerset, London and Corbin chambers of commerce as well as members of industrial communities in each city.
He added, “This second survey builds on the first and is to provide a bit more information regarding demand for air service in southern Kentucky.”
In the first survey, the Lexington airport is the regular airport for travelers from this region followed by Louisville and Cincinnati.
Survey participants want air service to key business destinations.
The participants recognized that having reliable airline service in Somerset is good. It would eliminate early morning drives to Lexington.
And for air service to be successful, service to a major connecting hub is needed.
Schmidt encouraged business and professional people who have received the current survey to complete it and return it to him no later than Aug. 31.
By Jack Brammer Herald-Leader
Radcliff is wading back into the waters of unified government.
Savitch, a professor of urban and public affairs at the University of Louisville, published an analysis last year of the merger of Louisville and Jefferson County governments into a consolidated metro government in 2003. Savitch’s study, which was commissioned by state Rep. Darryl Owens of Louisville, found the merger failed to accelerate job growth and economic development as promised and was unsuccessful in streamlining government services.
Owens, an opponent of merged government, commissioned the study as a supplement for the task force appointed by Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer to study the effectiveness of consolidated government in Kentucky’s largest city.
Duvall said he wants to present an alternative view on unification from an expert who has studied consolidated governments for years and can present quantifiable data rather than opinion.
“He has told me his opinion won’t factor in,” he said of Savitch.
Anyone in a leadership position asked to vote on creating a unification commission should attend the meeting or recuse themselves from the process, Duvall said.
In addition to the Louisville report, Savitch is a former co-editor at the Journal of Urban Affairs and former president of the urban section of the American Political Science Association. He also has published nearly a dozen books or monographs on urban development, public policy and regional governance, according to Radcliff.
Radcliff City Council approved a resolution opting out of all formal discussions about unified local government after publicly challenging Hardin County United, the volunteer organization that drafted the report on the merits of unification.
In one exchange last August during a forum at Meadow View Elementary School, Duvall and Radcliff Councilman Edward Palmer asked for demographic information of the group surveyed by HCU about unified government to determine where the majority of respondents lived. Palmer said this information was pertinent to city leaders because they needed to know how Radcliff residents responded.
Luke Schmidt, a consultant for HCU, sent the survey to more than 100 community leaders across a cross section of fields, including elected officials, educators, plant managers and agricultural representatives. The study found roughly 90 percent of respondents believed unified government should be studied.
Schmidt said he promised respondents the information would remain confidential and refused to release the documents, which furthered the divide between HCU and Radcliff.
Following Radcliff’s decision to opt out of unification, Palmer and other council members expressed interest in hosting its own town hall meetings and public forums on unification as a means of due diligence but also to ensure HCU cannot use their lack of action as a weapon.
Duvall said Savitch’s study of Louisville government is relevant to the discussion in Hardin County because HCU has pointed to Louisville as an example of a successful merger.
Duvall said proponents of the Louisville merger and HCU also have argued the same points when promoting unification, including an expanded state and national profile, the ability to speak with one voice and an increase in economic development.
“I think we need to hear a different view that’s not opinion or (not) someone that’s a paid consultant but is based on facts and numbers,” he said.
The meeting has attracted attention farther south. Elizabethtown Mayor Tim Walker said he is reading Savitch’s study and has forwarded it to Elizabethtown City Council.
“I plan on being at the meeting on Aug. 27 and I hope the council will be too,” Walker said.
Elizabethtown has taken no action to opt out of unified government but the majority of the council has been critical of the plan.
Hardin Circuit Judge Ken Howard, chairman of the HCU governance subcommittee, has said either Elizabethtown or Radcliff must opt in for unification to be viable.
Hardin Fiscal Court is scheduled to hear first reading of an ordinance Tuesday to establish a unification review commission, whose members would be appointed by participating governments and be tasked with drafting a charter Hardin County residents would vote on.
Should the county approve the creation of the commission, HCU would move to the six cities requesting their participation.
Marty Finley can be reached at (270) 505-1762 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (270) 505-1762 end_of_the_skype_highlightingormfinley@thenewsenterprise.com.
Hardin Fiscal Court takes the fate of county unification into its hands starting Tuesday.
Hardin Judge-Executive Harry Berry said the first reading of an ordinance establishing a unification review commission tentatively is scheduled for Tuesday’s meeting of Hardin Fiscal Court at the H.B. Fife Courthouse in Elizabethtown. Approval of the commission would put in motion the mechanism to draft a charter for unified local government.
Hardin County United, the volunteer organization lobbying for the commission, appeared before Fiscal Court for a second time in June, but no formal action has been taken as magistrates gather information and hear from constituents.
HCU wants to present the charter to Hardin County voters by November 2014, and a plan only can be issued by the committee, a 20-to-40-member body appointed by participating governments. The appointment of the commission is not a vote in favor of unification, but creates a designated body to flesh out what unification would look like in Hardin County, HCU officials said.
Under state law, the county and at least one city must partner to form a unified government.
Ken Howard, chairman of the HCU governance subcommittee, said Wednesday he has been pleasantly surprised by responses he has heard. HCU officials installed an online mechanism allowing residents to send their opinions directly to local officials, and Howard estimated more than 200 individuals have sent responses in support of the commission to county officials.
The biggest hurdle, Howard said, is educating residents the commission’s purpose. Once learning the commission would give them a chance to vote on unification, support was generated for the endeavor, he said.
But input from county magistrates contacted by The News-Enterprise was mixed.
Magistrate Doug Goodman, whose district represents parts of northern Hardin County, said he has received negative feedback about unification from hundreds compared to small pockets of support.
“It’s just not a good feeling in the north end of the county right now regarding unification,” he said.
Goodman said he is unsure how he will cast his vote for the commission, but he said he fears Radcliff and northern Hardin County may get the “short end of the stick” if a unified government materializes. The county already has attempted a commissioner form of government, which he declared a “flop,” and he said unified government likely would leave parts of the county without proper representation.
Even now, he said, the northern part of the county has failed to secure its rightful share, including state funding for infrastructure improvements tied to the Base Realignment and Closure initiative and a county recycling trailer lobbied for by Goodman, Magistrate Roy Easter and Radcliff City Council.
“We got all this BRAC money and we got pennies in Radcliff,” he said. “We’re sitting right on top of Fort Knox.”
Radcliff Mayor J.J. Duvall has said he will release details today on a public unification forum hosted by the city later this month. Radcliff has been the most openly critical of unification since HCU introduced the plan, and the council approved a formal resolution last year opting out of any future unification plans or discussions.
Magistrate Fred Clem declined to comment on his decision or views about the commission in advance of the first reading, but he said the input he has received from constituents has been decidedly mixed with a larger percentage speaking negatively about unification during face-to-face conversations.
Magistrate Lisa Williams, on the other hand, said she has received an overwhelming share of supportive responses regarding unification, particularly from business owners, Hardin County Chamber of Commerce members and other economically minded people.
“I have been swamped with responses,” she said.
Williams expressed excitement for the possible benefits of unification, including an expanded profile as one of the largest cities in the state.
“Anything that creates jobs, I’m in favor of,” she said.
Williams also believes county officials should make the “progressive” choice of forming the commission and allowing voters to have the final say on unification.
“I think it’s our duty to at least move to the next phase and draft a document,” she said.
Magistrate Garry King said he was “noncommittal” about the creation of the commission but said most of the constituents who have contacted him by email or spoken to him in person have been critical of the idea. He said Tuesday should be interesting.
“I really don’t know right now how it’s going to go,” he said of the vote. “It’s going to surprise me. I think it could be close.”
The initial push for unification by HCU was delayed when officials found a flaw in state legislation that could entrap cities within a unified government even if they voted against it.
With the aid of state legislators representing Hardin County, HCU successfully lobbied to change state law governing unification to ensure cities would have a right to opt out of a unified government if the majority of their residents rejected the charter at the polls. The law also has improved in that it has created a voting bloc for rural Hardin County, Howard said, meaning unification must receive majority support in unincorporated Hardin County to pass.
Howard said he is not concerned about Fiscal Court’s vote.
“I trust our elected representatives to make an informed decision that works best for everybody,” he said.
Marty Finley can be reached at (270) 505-1762 or mfinley@thenewsenterprise.com
Article originally posted to the Williamson Daily News Web site: http://www.williamsondailynews.com/view/full_story/19712368/article-PCFC-to-use-coal-severance-to-attract-air-service?
JULIA ROBERTS GOAD
Staff Writer
PIKEVILLE, Ky. — In a heavily debated decision, the Pike County Fiscal Court agreed to support request a to use multi-county coal severance funds to fund efforts to bring commercial air service to the Pikeville/Pike County Airport.
In a courtroom filled to near capacity with people involved in the debate, the Court approved the resolution 5 – 2. Judge Executive Wayne T. Rutherford reversed his previous position and voted to throw his support behind the request currently pending before the Kentucky Department of Local Government of an appropriation of $1 million from the multi-county coal severance tax fund to the City of Pikeville, to be used to support the initial profitability and long-term sustainability of an airline.
The money is part of a proposed revenue guarantee package that would be used to recruit a major airline to service the airport (whose code letters are PBX). That package has been a point of contention at Fiscal Court. The Floyd County Fiscal Court has already passed a resolution supporting the use of the tax money to attract an airline to PBX.
The concept is that some money is set aside in as the revenue guarantee fund.
An airline doing business in the county would set a financial goal for each month. If the company falls short, money from the revenue guarantee package would be used to bring the amount of money the airline makes up to the monthly goal. The money would be given to the airline on a monthly basis so the company would not incur financial losses during the first two years of operation.
The Airport Authority has already secured a $650,000 grant from the Department of Transportation which would be part of the $2.5 million package, along with money from counties in West Virginia and Virginia that would be serviced by the airline, and funds from a travel bank.
Luke Schmidt of L.B. Schmidt and Associates, a consulting company, hired by the City of Pikeville and the Eastern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce to study bringing commercial air service to Pike County, gave a snapshot of the project so far, calling the project He said commercial air service is vital to supporting existing businesses as well as recruiting new ones to Pike County.
Two court members, District One Magistrate Jeff Anderson and District Six Magistrate Chris Harris, were the only “no” votes when the court voted to support the request.
“Until now, in the public eye, but it has been a one-sided conversation in favor of the project,” Magistrate Harris said.”That is due, in large part to a publicity campaign by the Chamber of Commerce, the newspaper … you have done a good job at getting the word out for your side of the story. But there is the rest of the story.”
“My opinion of what we are looking at is corporate welfare,” Harris said. “We are making sure that airlines will make a profit.”
He added that, if PBX has such potential for profit, he did not understand why the Airport Authority was having to work so hard to bring their service to PBX.
“I am surprised that only two airlines are interested if we are guaranteeing these folks that they’re going to make money,” Harris said.
“You can characterize it as corporate welfare, but I think it is a job creator,” Luke Schmidt said. “The money is there, communities apply for it every year, if the money is available, doesn’t it make sense to try to get your fair share it?”
“No,” Magistrate Harris said. “I don’t subscribe to that theory, that there is this money out there, and we need to waste it before somebody else does. That’s a different philosophy maybe than a lot of other politicians have, I don’t think just because the money is there that we need to go waste that money. I think we, as elected officials, have a duty to the public to protect their tax dollars, to only use their tax dollars on projects that have a good likelihood of success.”
Harris said that with the bleak financial outlook the county is facing caused by the decrease in coal severance funds, he felt government should be spending less money, not investing in the airport project.
“The coal industry is cutting back,” he said. “The airlines are cutting back because less people are flying. Our population in this area is declining. Those are facts.”
He said he thought the project was trying to attract airlines “by throwing tax dollars at them.”.
“We’re saying, ‘Here, look at all this money you can have if you come here and operate,’” Harris said. “If our area was a good candidate for commercial air service, it wouldn’t be much of a sale. I’m not convinced that this project will continue after the subsidy ends.”
Harris said people in his district do not see the project as a benefit to the county.
District One Magistrate said that while he appreciates that the Airport Authority is operating in a more transparent and communicative manner, he still does not think the commercial air service is a viable project for Pike County.
“We want the area to progress,” Anderson said. “But we have had layoffs, it’s like the industry has taken a tremendous gut-punch. We need to manage our money efficiently and effectively. Will it succeed? I don’t think so, I hope I’m wrong.”
Judge Executive Wayne T. Rutherford has had a position that the Fiscal Court was left out of much of the latest airport business by the City of Pikeville and the Airport Authority. He has publicly opposed the use of multi-county money to support the revenue guarantee, but changed his position – with reservations.
“No one worked harder to build this airport than I did,” Rutherford said. “The city needs to sit down with us, and not go off on your own with projects we have worked on. I have had serious doubts, but we are a progressive community and we need to stay that way. I am willing to take a chance, we need to move on.”
Read more: The Williamson Daily News – PCFC to use coal severance to attract air service