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Airport Authority reviews study bids in closed session
By Stephanie Salmons
Members of the Jackson County Airport Authority are in the process of reviewing bids for a study of a slide area, triggered by heavy rainfall in 2005.
The authority, which met Tuesday, March 11, has until June 30 to complete the study which aims to find what needs to be done for slope stabilization.
The slides are the basis of lawsuits filed in November 2006 by R.L. Ammons and Dewayne Pruett, who own property adjacent to the airport.
The complaints contend slope failure at the airport that sits atop Berry Ridge near Cullowhee is threatening their homes and property. Those suits name both Jackson County and the Airport Authority as defendants.
The complaints hinge on landslides that occurred Aug. 22, 2005, when an isolated storm dumped massive rainfall on the Little Savannah watershed, sending large amounts of mud onto the Ammons property. The same rain event triggered movement at an earlier slide on the Pruett property.
“We are currently looking into how to use funds as we were directed by the county commissioners for matching funds for the airport,” said authority Secretary/Treasurer John Glenn.
According to Glenn, the authority needs to complete the study as soon as possible.
“Time is of the essence, so I would like to have an answer on who we would like to talk to or who we would like to give this to (soon),” Glenn said. “The more we drag our feet, the worse it’s going to get.
The authority voted to go into closed session at the end of the meeting to discuss the proposals.
“The purpose of the executive session is to break open the packets and devise a plan among us as to how we will evaluate each one of these,” Glenn said.
The authority also had a special called closed-session meeting to continue discussions about the proposals on Tuesday, March 18.
Based on a guide authored by David Lawrence of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it would appear that closed sessions to discuss engineering firms violate North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law.
The 1994 booklet, titled “Open Meetings and Local Governments in North Carolina,” was published after the law was amended that year and uses a question-and-answer format to explain the provisions of the law. One question is “Can a public body discuss independent contractors, such as planning consultants or engineering firms, in closed session?”
“Not any longer. Before the 1994 amendments there was an exception in the Open Meetings Law for discussions of the performance of independent contractors, but it was deleted by the amendments,” the book states. “Because independent contractors are neither officers nor employees of the local government, their reputation or performance may not be discussed under the personnel exception. Therefore, unless the discussion involves a claim or litigation or is within the attorney-client privilege, a public body may not hold a closed session to discuss independent contractors or their employment or discharge.”
No attorney was present during the recent airport authority closed sessions, and the selection of the engineering firm is not related to the pending litigation, authority Chairman Greg Hall said Tuesday.
When asked about the reasons for discussing procedures and engineering proposals in closed session, possibly in violation of the state’s Open Meetings Law, Hall said that none of the members present thought the authority was breaking any statute.
“We’re going to discuss the proposals openly during our April 1 meeting,” he said. “I’m new at this, but I’m going to strive to do everything right.”
Hall, who was absent from the March 11 meeting, indicated the authority has narrowed down the field to Altamont Environmental Inc. of Asheville and W.K. Dickson, whose corporate office is in Charlotte, and that a decision will likely be made at the authority’s regular meeting, which has been rescheduled to Tuesday, April 1.
Also March 11:
– Glenn proposed consideration of the purchase of rehabilitated construction trailers for use at the airport by pilots and visitors who do not have access to the hangar.
“We’re a long way from building a terminal, we’re a long way from building hangars right now until we get everything settled,” Glenn said. “So in the interim, what do we do? The county has purchased several rehabilitated construction trailers and they’re nice. There’s one at the Green Energy Park (in Dillsboro) and that was purchased at a nominal fee.”
Glenn said that a temporary trailer could double as an administrative office.
“It’s a place to go in and use the bathroom and sit down and have a meeting if you want to,” he said. “We do not want people to have general access to the hangar, for very good reasons. People have their property in here. This is locked up and people pay a premium for that.”
Glenn said it was his thought that a trailer would be the “most sensible” way to go.
“For the moment, that meets our needs. We can remote everything we need to have in that trailer for flight planning and a telephone communication center,” he said. “I think that will meet the ticket until such time we can build an office building.”
Local pilot and former authority member Jim Rowell said that if the authority decides to go that route, they also need to consider upgrading the telephone line at the airport, because the line that is currently available doesn’t support laptops.
“We need to do this no matter what,” Rowell said. “You come up here and try to hook your laptop up because you can get weather, for everything around here on the Internet, but you can’t even (connect).”
Authority member Jason Kimenker said he has researched getting wireless wi-fi connection to the airport.
“This is something I wanted to find out so that if a pilot has a laptop and wanted to access weather stations or even our Web site, they could,” Kimenker said.
Authority member and county Manager Ken Westmoreland said that trailers are available for around $4,000 and that it costs about another $1,000 to fix them up and set them up.
– Kimenker proposed creating a sitting area on the airport property.
“I’m very interested in having a sitting area outside where folks can sit down and have lunch and watch the planes take off,” he said. “It doesn’t appear that there are any picnic tables on the property.
Rowell said that the airport has had picnic tables in the past, which were vandalized, and raised concerns about safety.
Herald Editor Lynn Hotaling contributed to this report.
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