Utah audit recommends higher planning to bolster Ogden airport, a money-loser for 17 years

OGDEN — For 17 straight years, Ogden-Hinckley Airport has misplaced cash, and a brand new state audit suggests higher metropolis planning might assist reverse the development.

“Whereas the airport just isn’t required to be income impartial, we imagine poor planning has prevented progress towards lowering the airport’s working deficit,” says the report, launched Wednesday by the Workplace of the Legislative Auditor Normal.

The small city-owned facility, at the moment house to at least one business provider, has been the main focus of loads of debate through the years amongst metropolis leaders desperate to lure extra carriers and bolster its fortunes. Nevertheless it’s additionally been the main focus of lawsuits by disgruntled hangar homeowners upset over town’s strikes to prod them out as a part of airport redevelopment efforts. Furthermore, in response to the hangar homeowners’ considerations, airport operations have been the main focus of a legislative committee listening to final November, which led to the audit.

The audit did not dive into the authorized dispute, since it’s nonetheless winding its approach via courtroom, however centered on how the airport has been managed. Notably, state auditors advocate town replace the airport grasp plan each 10 years and create efficiency measures to help in monitoring whether or not efforts to bolster the airport’s fortunes yield outcomes.

Although town thinks the ability’s 2020 grasp plan can assist counter losses, “we couldn’t discover efficiency metrics or different processes which are very important elements of monitoring, evaluating and adjusting the airport’s efforts to enhance,” the audit reads. “With out these processes, efforts to enhance the airport could not help the imaginative and prescient of the grasp plan and enormous investments could not yield commensurate outcomes.”

Annual airport losses between 2006 and 2022, offset by town, vary from $200,000 to $1.7 million and work out to a mean of $885,000 a yr, in accordance with the report. Losses at airports aren’t unusual, the report mentioned, however Ogden’s are increased than different smaller amenities auditors reviewed. The audit discovered minimal threat of “misuse or abuse” of airport funds.

Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski referred to as the auditor’s suggestions “exact and useful” in a response included within the audit report launched Wednesday. He additionally wrote that town had not too long ago employed an airport consulting agency to assessment the operation and assist implement new administration practices.The guide, he went on, will even assist create “quantifiable objectives that may be measured to confirm progress.”

The stakes are doubtlessly massive.

Breeze Airways launched air service out of Ogden-Hinckley Airport to Orange County, California, final February and metropolis officers have dreamed of bringing in additional carriers. They’ve additionally mentioned they’d prefer to spur further basic aviation and bolster aeronautical enterprise operations on the facility. Metropolis officers put estimated funding potential on the facility round $454 million via 2038. Auditors famous that considerations from Weber County leaders have stymied creation of a tax-increment finance plan that might generate as a lot as $120 million in funding for airport infrastructure.

Whereas not delving into the authorized points with hangar homeowners, the report notes traditionally strained relations between them and metropolis leaders. Nadolski, who took workplace as mayor in January, has mentioned smoothing the sometimes-rocky relationship between airport stakeholders and his predecessor, Mike Caldwell, could be a precedence.

The report recommends airport officers implement a extra common inspection scheme to ensure hangars adjust to federal use necessities and metropolis code. Airport data point out 23 of the airport’s 244 hangars are doubtlessly getting used as dwelling quarters, and 22 hangars do not have functioning airplanes in them. “For 43 different hangars, OGD has no data concerning the presence of functioning plane,” reads the audit.