Warsaw Board of Aviation Commissioners President Jay Rigdon, right, and Airport Manager Nick King, left, listen to comments from Nathan Lienhart, bottom of screen, CHA Consulting aviation project manager, and Robert LaFayette, top of screen) CHA section manager aviation planning, during the board’s meeting Tuesday. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — In case of any emergency, the Warsaw Municipal Airport has plans.

At Tuesday’s Warsaw Board of Aviation Commissioners, Feb. 14, Airport Manager Nick King reminded the board the Airport Emergency Plan was brought up at last month’s meeting. Board Vice President John Yingling volunteered to read the emergency plan book.

While there are some typos that King needs to go back and fixed, “overall, we talked about it and he’s thinking it’s a really good foundation. This is going to be a living document that, as this evolves, we work with our local emergency partners through the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory, the police department, sheriff’s office and dispatch. We’re going to be getting a lot of input from those departments on how to tweak, work a little better, simplify, maybe streamline things,” King said.

He said there aren’t many airports of Warsaw’s size that “go to this effort to have emergency plans in place, so that if there is an accident, an incident, an in-air emergency, we have protocols in place where we can call dispatch and get the ball rolling a lot quicker than a lot of other air communities.”

King said it’s a great start and he asked the board to approve the Airport Emergency Plan. If the Board of Aviation Commissioners is OK with it, he said the plan book then will be taken to the WWFT board for their review.

King said he’s been working closely with WWFT Assistant Chief Aaron Bolinger in writing up the emergency plan book.

“Honestly, he’s done the majority of the book. I’ve been working on the FAA and the NTSB side. He’s doing more of the fire emergency and rescue side, so I think it’s a really, really good foundation for us to go on,” he said.

Yingling recommended the board adopt it and made a motion as such, which was approved 3-0.

Board President Jay Rigdon thanked Yingling and King for their work on the emergency plan book.

Nathan Lienhart, CHA Consulting aviation project manager, and Robert LaFayette, CHA section manager aviation planning, presented a number of updates, task orders and invoices to the board.

First up was an invoice for the runway 27 obstruction mitigation (power line lowering) project. Lienhart said there were no real updates on the project itself, but forward progress continues in coordination with AEP. The invoice, No.12, from CHA was for $4,495.29, with the local share of that being $224.77.

Rigdon asked Lienhart if he was satisfied the project was moving at the speed that it needs to be moving.

“We are. They are committed on their schedule. We have biweekly calls and their updates are consistent with maintaining the schedule,” Lienhart said, and it’s on target for construction to be completed most likely by November.

Rigdon said the board really wants to see work out there getting done.

The board approved the invoice.

In an update on the runway 9-27 safety area phase 1, program definition and RSAD (runway safety area dimensions), Lienhart reported they are finally getting some traction with agency comments and getting some revisions incorporated to keep it moving. He said they’re trying to keep some forward progress on it, but should have more information at the March 12 meeting on where it should ultimately land.

Looking at corporate taxi lane E-1 and its rehabilitation, Lienhart said under task order #6, “We completed the 75% design and review … toward the end of January, with Nick. Incorporated those revisions and are pushing towards final design and construction document completion so we can advertise for public bidding,” he said.

He asked the board to approve two motions: one was for advertisement of the project for public bidding, and the other was for an invoice for the project for $88,548.75.

“This is being funded by the state award so it’s 100% state-funded. There is no local share,” Lienhart stated.

The board approved both motions as requested.

Moving on to taxiway B rehabilitation, Lienhart said the project itself is on hold for the moment.

“But in some of the discussions that have been transpiring with the FAA related to the runway 9-27 RSAD, one of the conundrums was how to incorporate some additional work that the FAA asked the airport and CHA to provide. Mainly in the way of aviation demand forecasting. And so, the general discussion with the FAA was that this would get tacked on to the next grant associated with the runway project. But as that has evolved and the timing of that could be a few years out, they have allowed for us to add this to the next available grant that is coming to Warsaw, which would be the taxiway B project,” he explained.

Lienhart said they’re describing the forecasting work as project formulation “so that it generally compromises and checks the boxes for eligibility, as far as the work associated with what we submitted and what we will have to finalize in the next few weeks.”

Because it was associated with taxiway B and was a task order CHA already put before the board and had already begun work on that task order, Lienhart said the project formulation is an amendment to that task order. He asked board approval for submission of the grant application as well as the amendment to task order 7. The amendment will add $38,400 to the task order and the grant application will be adjusted accordingly so the FAA can begin processing the grant.

Rigdon asked three questions, one being if the information they will get from the project formulation will not only be useful for the taxiway B project but also for projects down the road.

Lienhart said that was correct. “This will establish not only the forecast for the next 20 years, as well as validate that the design aircraft for Warsaw is a category C-2 corporate jet. So this will set the stage for every project forthcoming in the next five, 10 years.”

The board approved task order 7 for $38,400.

For general services by CHA, Lienhart presented invoice 2 for task order 9 for $13,500, which is 100% locally funded. The board approved it.

The last two items Lienhart presented to the board was a request for signatures for annual financial reports that CHA provides to the FAA that goes along with any federal grant the airport may have received. The airport had two federal grants — one associated with the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriation Act funding and one associated with American Rescue Plan Act funding — that required signatures on the federal financial reports. The board approved the signatures.

The last thing the board approved was the sale of hangar 6H from Robinson Construction to Lee Wahl. King said Wahl is one of the inaugural students in the Lake City Aviators’ first grounds school class. Wahl has already started flight instruction at the airport and is looking for his first airplane now.

The next meeting of the board is at 5:15 p.m. March 12.