Council wants airport to pay more rent

The Naples City Council wants the Naples Airport Authority to declare whether it would be willing to renegotiate its airport lease.

The council agreed Wednesday to pose this basic question to the authority: If it’s legal, would you consider renegotiating the $1-a-year lease agreement to operate Naples Municipal Airport on 700 acres of city-owned property?

Council members also agreed that in a joint meeting this coming Monday, they and authority commissioners would craft questions to be posed to the chief counsel for the Federal Aviation Administration.

The City Council wants to know whether it is even legal to increase this token lease payment. It has gotten mixed legal opinions to date.

“I’d not be in favor of asking the Airport Authority: ‘Are you willing to renegotiate the lease?’ until I saw that (legal) answer,” Naples Mayor Bill Barnett said.

City Attorney Robert Pritt said he believes the city could legally charge the authority a fair market lease amount. But authority lawyer Joseph McMackin said the FAA would likely review this as illegal “revenue diversion.”

Some residents, as well as council members, want the authority to pay more to help city coffers.

The authority runs the airport as a self-sustaining operation. It brings in millions each year from fuel sales and leases. And authority commissioners have vowed not to ask for tax money to support the operation.

Several hundred residents have signed a petition expressing strong opposition to a proposal to increase the lease payment.

Ron Pennington, a former council member and authority commissioner, defended the $1-a-year lease at Wednesday’s council meeting.

Pennington said by the late 1960s the airport was becoming expensive for the city to maintain, costing taxpayers almost $200,000 a year to operate before it became self-sustaining.

“This is the only government facility in this area which (now) receives no local taxpayer support and returns significant dollars to the local economy,” Pennington said.

Councilman Bill Willkomm said the city is strapped for revenue, and if it is legal, he would like the authority to pay more than $1 a year.

He has crafted a letter he plans to send to authority members, who are appointed by the council, to individually respond whether they would be willing to resign if asked.

He also said there are several appointments to the authority coming up in September and it would be helpful for him to know the members’ position on the issue.

Pritt has crafted a draft letter to be sent to the FAA with specific questions, including the rent question but also whether the city could see if the authority wants to purchase the city’s property.

He said the authority might find there are benefits to renegotiating the lease.

A high-ranking FAA official recently wrote a letter stating that an increase in the lease would be an illegal diversion of airport dollars.

Naples Airport Authority Executive Director Ted Soliday received a letter May 30 from the manager for the airports division in Atlanta. Robert Chapman states in the letter that federal law requires that revenue from airports like Naples Municipal be spent on maintaining and operating the airport.

He writes that federal law prohibits grants from going to a local government that diverts airport revenues.

“Therefore, we believe that an increase in the lease amount would clearly be an inappropriate diversion of airport revenue from the airport to the city,” he writes.

But Naples council members want Pritt, instead of Soliday, crafting the questions to the FAA.

Pritt said after Wednesday’s council meeting that he didn’t necessarily agree with Chapman’s position on this issue.

“I don’t think it (fair-market rent) is revenue diversion,” Pritt said.