The Heber City Council passed the Heber Valley Airport Master Plan during a late June meeting in a 4-1 decision, but not before a lengthy conversation of varying viewpoints and disagreements.
The decision was made after Jeremy McAlister — whom the meeting minutes list as the airport master plan consultant — gave the council a presentation regarding the process that led to the proposed plan.
He noted that the public had several opportunities to provide input for the plan, saying it has been the subject of five open meetings and numerous online blog write-ups and question-and-answer posts on the airport’s website.
In 2021, he continued, there were 12,605 landings and takeoffs. That number is expected to grow to about 16,320 in 2041.
The airport has also seen a rise in small jets landing and taking off in recent years. As of now, Heber Valley Airport’s critical aircraft — defined by the Federal Aviation Administration as “the most demanding aircraft type” that uses the airport at least 500 times annually — is the Challenger 350.
To accommodate this growth, according to the “Master Plan Findings” portion of McAlister’s presentation and a conversation with Airport Manager Travis Biggs, the FAA recommended the airport be upgraded from a B2 to a C2 classification. This means the runway would be widened — though not lengthened — and placed in a position with a larger buffer. This is to ensure that if an aircraft crashes at a high speed, it would be less likely to collide with aircraft on the airport’s taxiway, parked aircraft or even traffic on U.S. Route 189, which runs parallel to the runway about 300 feet away.
This and other updates were slated in the airport’s highly contested master plan, which has been in the works for years.
The masterplan is split into phases, the first of which is centered around initial improvements and maintenance as well as gathering easements and land for what McAlister’s presentation referred to as “safety area compliance.”
According to McAlister, the total cost of the project is estimated to be $118,529,000. The FAA is set to cover over 90% of the expense, with Heber estimated to pay just over $5.5 million and the State of Utah over $6.5 million.
Studies presented at the meeting specified that Heber City’s portion is planned to be paid by airport users through landing and fuel flowage fees. As of now, according to Biggs, the airport is self-sustained through those sources of funding.
To receive FAA finances, he specified, the changes must be documented on an Airport Layout Plan.
The plan’s passage, he specified, does not tie the city to fund anything within the ALP — it only makes the projects possible and eligible for FAA funding. Individual projects within the plan still need to receive funding via typical budgetary procedures.
Heber City Mayor Heidi Franco also specified with McAlister the number of new hangars that would be added in the new master plan. McAlister said it would be roughly 12.
According to Biggs, it is likely the airport would need to build more than that without the implementation of the plan due to the high interest in hangars he’s seen and FAA regulations on how the airport’s land must be used.
After McAlister’s part of the presentation, the council asked questions regarding the future self-sustainability of the airport. McAlister said that — without qualifying for FAA funding — it is unlikely to operate self-sustainably in future years. Curt Castagna, whom the meeting minutes list as an airport consultant, furthered this point when he explained that increasing rates for landing fees and fuel flowage will allow the airport to remain self-sustaining given it also receives federal funding.
Members of the public were also invited to provide their input on the plan. While one member of the airport advisory board spoke of his admiration of the plan, other members of the public voiced concerns that the plan had not been publicly available long enough for people to view and that it did not offer an apt comparison between a continuation of the airport’s current status and what would happen with the implementation of the master plan.
In response to the public comments, Councilmember Ryan Stack explained that the public had been heard in its desire to compare implementing the plan with continuing airport operations out of FAA compliance.
“We listened to the public, we heard their concerns, and so we commissioned the financial study earlier this year,” he explained. “The overwhelming public opinion was people do not want to subsidize the airport’s noncompliance.”
Most of his interactions with constituents concerning the matter, he added, reinforced that view.
“I’m not quite sure what else we can do,” he said, “especially with the study telling us that by making our fees commensurate with inflation and adjusting them accordingly that we will in fact remain self-sustaining.”
Councilmember Mike Johnston also commented about the work that has been done in forming the masterplan, saying many of those who come to him with concerns received their information not from official documents but rather from Facebook.
“We’re not done with the airport,” he specified. “We’re done with the master plan.”
Council member Yvonne Barney said that — while she did wish there was a publicly available side-by-side comparison of the financial impact from both airport scenarios — she understood not passing the master plan will cost Heber City taxpayers. She didn’t want the airport to switch classifications from B2 to C2, she explained, but nothing can be done to prevent the jets that are already frequenting the airport from continuing to do so.
Franco added that she felt the process had been “shoved down the citizens’ throats,” saying the FAA never specifically wrote a letter saying it would definitively cut its funding to the airport if it did not change classifications. She did say that the city has received “verbal threats” from the FAA that it would do so.
Council member Scott Phillips disagreed with the mayor’s comments, saying the passing of the master plan would do “everything the public has told us they’d like to do except for remain B2,” which he said would increase property taxes.
Before the vote was taken, Franco added that land in the city of Daniel would need to be acquired by the city for the masterplan to be implemented, and she was concerned.
Phillips called the question, to end discussion and proceed to the vote.
He said Franco kept bringing up points that were “random and harmful to the city.”
“The owners of that land have an option to sell or not sell that property,” he said. “We don’t plan on using eminent domain.”