VERO BEACH — After an anonymous complaint to the Federal Aviation Administration raised many questions about operations at the Vero Beach Municipal Airport, the city is digging deep to find answers to submit a response.
The complaint spawned an FAA audit of the airport in April, which resulted in a compliance letter sent to Mayor Jay Kramer on August 18. The city was asked to respond within 30 days to findings related to the airport’s financial relationships and dealings with its tenants, and specifically the City of Vero Beach as a tenant of the airport.
The history of the airport goes back many decades and there’s a lot of research needed to find the origins of some of the agreements governing the use of land and resources encompassed within airport property.
The complaint alleged some improper use of airport lands and a few instances where the general fund of the city might not be fully paying the airport for conducting non-airport activities on site.
Councilwoman Tracy Carroll asked that the staff give an update on the audit and the compliance letter at Tuesday’s Vero Beach City Council meeting. She wanted to make sure the items were being responded to “line by line” and that the city would file a timely response to the FAA.
Airport Director Eric Menger told the council Tuesday that the concerns in the letter did not come completely out of the blue.
“Over time, the FAA had showed some concern even before that letter,” Menger said.
The airport is run as an enterprise fund, which means it’s a self-supporting entity designed to be run like a business. When the City of Vero Beach wishes to use land or right of way or buildings owned by the airport, FAA rules state the city — or anyone else contracting with the airport — must pay fair market value.
The complainant cited instances where he or she felt the city was not paying a high enough price on leases to its utilities to use airport property. The letter also listed the designation of some conservation land at the airport as improper, as well as the airport paying to remediate a former city dump site and paying the city for police protection when no other city facility is charged for the service.
The citizens charged with advising the City Council on airport matters, it turns out, had previously asked about many of these issues and had never been provided definitive responses to their queries.
“The Airport Commission had questions,” said Chairwoman Barbara Drndak. “Why are we being charged for this? Where’s the backup?”
In addition, the complaint pointed out that the city does not pay the airport for the water rights to have wells on the property. The city has wells that it uses to resell water to customers and it also has a deep injection well into which it deposits brine waste material, which is a byproduct of the reverse osmosis process of treating water.
Menger and City Manager Jim O’Connor said they are working to draft a point-by-point response to the FAA. The city’s Airport Advisory Commission will meet on Sept. 16 and the members, most of whom have aviation backgrounds, have volunteered to assist the staff in crafting the response.
“We’re going back literally to the beginning and tracing back,” said Councilman Craig Fletcher.
The Vero Beach Airport Commission meets at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 16 in Council Chambers at City Hall.