- Allegiant, great second-tier airline servicing secondary cities to popular leisure destinations stopped service after 9 months.
- Allegiant has not only not stopped service anywhere else, but have added six other cities to fly out of and has one one more destination St Pete's.
- Airport administration refuses to believe there is anything wrong at the airport and all fault lies with Allegiant
- IMG has been paid over $100,000 to recruit commercial service, in addition to the intial $100,000 for their study, and I have heard nothing.
- Master Plan, Leigh Fisher, is still not done
- New England Regional Air Study Plan, Louis Berger, is still pending
- Approximately $300,000 remains in the Small Community Air Service Grant
- RFP's seem never to get issued
- Airport Commission board meeting minutes take over a month to become public.
- Relatively new terminal roof leaks
- Losing money at an approximate rate of $200,000 per month
- 290 days left in current operating agreement, which when it ends the entire deficit (2,300,000) falls on the tax-payers of Worcester.
- Worcester Telegram editorial basically says all is well, not to give up??????
Let me say here uncategorically all is not well and we seriously need to consider "retreating". Maybe we we will have some good news from Festival Airlines or IMG, but I doubt it. We need to seriously consider an outright sale, or 99 year lease, to MassPort (or another private party) or the scaling back to a General Aviation Airport.
9 comments:
I will always be a supporter of the airport. I read today in the T&G that we might waive fees for the new preforming arts facility which I think is good, Worcester needs a preforming arts center.
I just wonder why we couldn't waive all fees for Allegiant. Maybe there is more behind it than just waiving fees? I do not know but I would rather have kept Allegiant and made little to no $$ than to be back to zero airlines and making no $$.
It would have been nice to be able to fly to Tampa/St Petes and wacth the Sox play the Devil Rays or Yankees in spring trainning.
Tim:
Every business person I talked to today mentioned to me, that they were upset with waiving 200K in fees. No offense to the guys building the performing arts center, but why should they have their fees waived. New construction right now costs $990 per bedroom and $1,000 for sewer. In other words a 3 bedroom new construction costs $3,970 in water and sewer fees, not to mention all the other permitting fees. At least we will get property taxes when the performing art center is done, right?? Nope it is a non-profit so we will not get any property taxes either ...
The announcement by Allegiant that they are adding St Pete's and that Festival Airlines is not adding ORH is going to be tough to read.
Bill
you say the "airport administration says there is nothing wrong at the airport" and it was all Allegiant, yet previously you said that you have heard nothing from the Airport Director. The only people that I read saying that Worcester did all it could and Allegiant left even though they had great passenger loads is people from City Hall. They must speak for the city on issues like this,so they must believe it. Make up your mind.
Jim:
When you read editorials in the Telegram that say nothing is wrong at the airport and it was all Allegiant's fault, where do you think think the editorial is basing their information from???
Check out the editorial in yesterday's paper posted on the blog.
Bill
And the folks that will rubber stamp waiving the fees will be the same councillors that rant & rave about non profits not paying their fair share.
Bill, I suspect it's the building permit fee that's the big bucks. i believe the fee is a %'age of the new constr cost which per the T&G is $22M??
Let us not forget this theatre will also benefit form the proposed "Wayfinder" street sign program paid for by who.......yup......Worc taxpayers...and the project will be approved by those who scream about the need for PILOT's (no pun intended),etc. So Holy Cross with their Billion $$$$ endowment wants me to pay for signs to direct intoxicated students and their visitiing parents to MT St. James !!
Maybe we should remove the airport from an enterprise account and treat it as a non profit entity? Afterall it clearly isnt a for profit entity and look at all the City granted bennies it could reap
NOn profits and low income housing are going bankrupt this municipality.
Also, I'd be curious to know where the $22M to re-hab that place is coming from? No private investor in their right mind is sinking that kinda mmoney into that place.
At 8% mortgage the yearly nut alone is going to be $1.6M on $22M. Forget about things like payroll, overhead etc
Jahn:
Good points. Let me add one comment to Jim, for those who view the blog from around the country.
One of the airport board members, Bob Nemeth who actually was the chairman last year, has been a writer for the Telegram for many many years. Although he is not on the actual editorial board, I have always felt that any editorials regarding the airport should have a disclaimer that one of their long-term employees is on the airport board.
Just yesterday the Telegram wrote an editorial that I posted on the blog yesterday, that I refer to as Bob Nemeth's column. Seriously where do you think the editorial board based there attitudes?? Do you think the editorial would criticize the direction of the airport?? By the way they never do...
Technically although nobody from the airport administration has gone on record stating "there is nothing wrong at the airport, all blame lies with Allegiant", I feel that yesterday's editorial reflects the attitude of the airport administration. This begs another question.
Look at Rockford Airport and the success that they are having. Their airprot director writes a letter that he post in their local paper and puts his name on it.. That is what you call leadership.
Jim, why don;t you call the airport administration, and ask them some questions, get some answers and I will post them on the blog so we know exactly what they are thinking.
Bill
I know this is not the place to be spouting off on other City issues, but I just got done paying my monthly bills.
City Water & Sewer !!!!
Since '98 Water rate is up 4% per year...clearly above the rate of inflation..and almost bearable
......BUT SEWER rates ...!!
Since '98 sewer rates are up 14% Annually
98 rate 1.64
06 rate 3.52
That's 115% increase in 8 years.
Now that's how to run an enterprise account. Of course they will blame it on fed'l mandates, which is maybe partly true. So when the debt incurred as a result of the fed'l mandates is piad off our rates will drop precipitously. Right !!
And the Council has the audacity to berate the cable company for being a price gouging monopoly???
I strongly suspect councillors read this site. What do you say ladies & gents?
I know Green Hill had a reservior at the highest point of the golf course eons ago. Can we build one on airport hill?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)
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