SEBASTIAN — The City of Sebastian won’t be taking $285,000 from the FAA to update its airport master plan. The city won’t be receiving $7,500 from the Florida Department of Transportation, either. That’s because the city doesn’t need it.
“I felt it would be frivolous,” Sebastian Municipal Airport Director Joe Griffin said of going after $300,000 in taxpayer money to update a plan that doesn’t need updating.
The airport received an FDOT grant in 2010 for the purpose of updating the site’s master plan, which had last been reviewed in 2002. That grant would have required the city to put up $7,500, which FDOT planned to match.
Griffin told the Sebastian City Council that the main reason he had gone after the grant was because the last update did not incorporate the conservation area in the northwest portion of the airfield, nor did it include the buffer along Roseland Road.
Besides, he said, the plan typically needs updating every 10 years and the city was getting close to the end of that timeframe.
In the time between working on the grant and receiving it, the city completed a supplemental update addressing the conservation area and buffer.
That update, according to Griffin’s discussions with FAA officials, satisfied the 10-year update requirement.
Griffin said the city could go another five to 10 years before another update will be required.
“I feel this is the way government should be,” Mayor Jim Hill said of the request to turn down the grant funds. He explained that if the government doesn’t need the money – it shouldn’t get the money.
The Sebastian City Council voted unanimously to terminate the grant agreement.