West Lebanon
The City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to increase the cost that visiting planes pay to land at the airport.
The move is expected to bring in an additional $50,000 in revenue, putting the airport one step closer to financial stability.
“At the end of the day, 16 years is too long. We have residents who are not using this airport who are paying (for it),” Mayor Sue Prentiss said in a CATV recording of the meeting. “We have to help them out and it’s all hands on deck in getting this done.”
City officials have recently set their sights on making the airport self-sufficient, a goal that it’s long struggled to attain. With a $1 million operating budget, it’s expected to run a roughly $250,000 deficit this year.
As an initial step forward, airport officials pointed to landing fees as a potential revenue generator. The fee is charged to visiting planes and collected by the private company Granite Air Center, which services those aircraft and keeps 25 percent.
For more than a decade, the price to land in Lebanon ranged from $10 for a small twin-engine plane to $125 for airline jets.
That system provided the city with $152,670 in revenue last year, with more than 2,100 planes paying the fee, according to a city count.
Twin-engine planes will now pay $12 in landing fees, while the cost of landing airline jets will jump to $250.
Councilors began work to determine new rates last month, and made few changes to the proposed fee increases on Wednesday, aside from adjusting the charge for jets under 27,000 pounds to land in Lebanon.
While the city’s administration proposed a $175 fee — up from $125 — Assistant Mayor Tim McNamara argued that $150 would be a more fair price.
McNamara told the council that he recently sat down with officials at Granite Air Center, and they worried that raising the price for small jets could lead some pilots to go elsewhere. The jets, he said, could be worth anywhere between “a couple of hundred thousand dollars” to millions.
“At the lower end of that range, there are a significant number of owners who are not affiliated with (Dartmouth College), or the hospital or a large business in the Upper Valley,” he said.
Greg Soho, the co-owner of Granite Air Center, agreed with McNamara’s assessment during Wednesday’s meeting, adding the company also agreed with the remaining fee increases.
The airport saw 815 jets under 27,000 pounds land in Lebanon last year, amounting to $76,407 in revenue for the city, according to information presented to the Council early this month.
Another 631 jets over that weight visited the airport last year, which contributed roughly $60,000 to city coffers.
Councilor Karen Liot Hill supported the adjustment, but expressed skepticism that new, higher fees would amount to a loss of business. But without an increase in 16 years, she said, the impact can be difficult to predict.
“At least every fee is being increased, so we are asking all users of the airport to chip in and help support the airport get closer to sustainability,” she said.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.