 All right, so we'll call the order of the special airport commission meeting at 4.05 p.m. The first item on the agenda is recording in progress. Do I hear a motion to approve the agenda as presented. So moved. How it has approved. Is there a second. Second. Seconded by Eric. Any discussion. Hearing not all those in favor adopting the agenda as presented please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. That carries unanimously. Item three is public forum. I don't see anyone on the call Hannah is there anyone in the room from the public. Nope. Okay. Then we will close down public forum move on to action items. The first one is item 4.01. The second item is related to north terminal renovations and do I hear a motion to accept recommend exceptions of the FAA grant and the contract with email birth construction for renovations in the north terminal. So moved. That's been moved by Helen. Is there a second. I think I saw Greg's head for the second. All right. Discussion. This will be Nick and Larry. This is a kind of a second step to opening up the terminal integration project, which again is opening this Thursday at 10 a.m. soft opening and then it'll officially be open next week for the public. This is the complete other end of the airport north concourse where American Airlines and United Airlines are. This is the second floor. This is just shy of a $2 million project which will renovate that existing space. Essentially where the north security checkpoint is today will be retrofitted to allow additional seating and additional capacity, specifically for those two airlines and it does require some relocation of concessions. We did add the plan set in there so you can take a take a peek into it. It moves things around changes the exit door add some automation to that exit door. And like I said it does require Hudson news to relocate and they're very happy to do so they're they're in fact going to reinvest into the airport which is outside of this this scope. We did go out to bed about a couple months ago and angle birth was the lowest apparent bitter. It which is a really convenient actually because they also are the contractor for the terminal integration project which does have some work up on the north security checkpoint already as part of that project. So very exciting opens up the door for for new seating new new new space for our public. Nick one other quick thing is the existing escalators and stairway will be removed there'll be more space on the first floor, people giving their luggage and obviously more space upstairs because there will be that that hole there anymore. Thank you commissioners any any questions. No. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for the information on this the memo that's going to the board of finance and city council as well as the other three memos. Nick they still say you're the acting director. So it's up to you if you want to change that or not. That's my fault I'll fix that. Yeah. Thank you. That's a pay increase. All right. Any further discussion. I have a favor of these recommendations. Please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed. That carries unanimously. Item 4.02 is the south apron and taxiway Gulf. Contract so do we hear much into act recommend the acceptance of an SPA grant as well the contract with ECI oil Tanner and. and taxiway golf extension and the related budget amendment. So moved. Moved by Helen. Is there a second? I'll find it. Thank you, Eric, for the second discussion. So Nick and Larry again. Larry, you wanna go through this one? Sure. This basically is extending taxpayer golf and a general aviation apron down towards, in the quarry, adjacent to the new manufacturing facility by Beta. It was bid out. We had three bidders, a Cassella construction, SD Ireland and engineers construction. Engineers was the lowest bidder and acceptable obviously to us. They've done a lot of good work here when they worked here. So the only nuance to this is that the FAA only pays to within 50 feet of that of Beta's manufacturing facility. So they will have to reimburse us for those costs for that 50 feet to connect to our general aviation. This is a brand new apron too. That'll be open to all general aviation. This is a pretty substantial, this is over a $5 million apron project. This is a substantial new space for the Burlington Airport which is really exciting. It supports folks like Beta, but it also supports the overall GA community. This didn't require any fill, right? That's sort of farther south. Actually the majority of the excavation and material is being removed by Beta down there. We will be making some adjustments to put the appropriate sub base in for the bituminous apron, but the piles of materials down there are being moved by Beta. Thank you. On the project location map, is this number 18 or is it somewhere else on the map here? It's in the courier, it's 18 years. Okay, that's what I thought. Thank you. Yeah, that's a good point, Eric, actually. So this is the furthest south that the airport property extends. This is not in the Northwest quadrant. This isn't anywhere up there. This is the south. This is going to be the very southern apron of the airport closer to the Wilston Road property. Any further discussion from councillors? Yes, go ahead, Greg. On the revenue side, it mentions the Interfund Transfer Proceeds. Can someone explain that to me, please? Greg, great question. Oh, there. So the Interfund Transfer, we have a grant like this. It's funded 90% by the FAA. So the 10% that we have left, that's what we call our local share. And that typically, if there is enough state funding, which there hasn't been, but the formula calls for 6% coming from the state of Vermont and then 4% coming from the airport. In our case, what we do, if the state funding is not adequate, because it's across all of our grants, we have a cap under the state of Vermont. They give us a half a million dollars a year. So we have more needs than that with these grants. So once we expend that and hit our cap, the rest is on us. So it may be up to 10% at worst case, 10% of airport would be covering the local share. What we are allowed to do, this qualifies to be reimbursed under the PFCs. So that's the passenger facility charges. It is a per ticket charge for everybody who flies a leg out for Burlington. And so we bring in quite a bit of money that, and then we have to put together applications to spend that money. So that is how we go ahead and essentially reimbursed the airport for covering those local shares. So that's what we call an inter-fund transfer. It's just that's an accounting side of things where our auditors want us to show it that way on for our financial statement purposes. Thank you. Thank you, Marie. I just, I wasn't sure if it meant that you were going from one line item to another in terms of the inter-fund transfer, but that explains it. One follow up question on that, since it is sort of like a user fee, I'm just sort of curious, what's, any idea what the added plus per ticket is? You're talking about your question specific to the PFCs? Yes. Yes. So it's $4 a ticket. That is set by the- $4.50. Oh, $4.50, sorry. Yep. $4.50 a ticket and it is set. So when you purchase a ticket or anybody purchases a ticket, you'll see taxes and fees and $4.50 out of that is a PFC fee. And all of the airlines, then they submit that to us. So any airlines that are, it's actually people that are coming into Burlington and landing their ultimate destination is Burlington. So we get the primary airlines, but sometimes we get some really interesting ones from around the world where somebody starts off some place and they end here, we'll get a check for 17 something dollars. You know, depending how many people fly in so that money is restricted. We have a separate bank account that's on the cash statement that I provide every month. We have a PFC account. It's very, very regulated and we can only use it once we apply to use it. We have to apply to collect the money and then we have to apply to be able to use the money. And when Marie is talking about applications this is a federal aviation administration program. So they set that cap of $4.50. It's up to an airport to essentially apply to the FAA, like Marie said, to collect those fees from the airlines. The airlines then have to have a consultation fee. We go through all of the projects that we're collecting on making sure that they approve and not just the airlines that you're used to, American United Delta. We're talking about all of the residual and smaller airlines as well. ExpressJet and PSA, every airline that operates out of Berlin to the airport. $4.50 is added to the ticket. The airlines do keep a small administrative fee of 11 cents and then we retain the $4.49. So it is an extensively large regulated FAA program to help airports fund either local shares or additional projects that the AIP program, which are the grants that you've seen approved in the past for those types of programs that the FAA can't fund because there's not enough budget. I will say just a big push and there's a national advocacy for all airlines and Burlington is one of them to expand that PFC program. The $4.50 has been like that for decades and there is significant capital and infrastructure needs that the FAA can't fulfill on the regular airport improvement program budget, but PFC programs could potentially fill that backstop. I don't see that going anywhere soon and it's a tricky situation with small hub airports. Of course we would like to slightly increase that but we also know of the highly competitive market in Burlington, we don't necessarily wanna see it take a price increase either. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. So we're talking about extending G so it meets the apron where beta is gonna have its facility, right? This will eventually go into the front, the hangar doors of the new manufacturing facility for beta. Golf won't but the apron will. You got it, yep. Yeah, so where is the golf gonna extend to? I think the number eight in there so it's just gonna go straight and then the apron will meet it. That's correct. If you look at that map again and the South Hangar there, the dark roofed hangar that's in the picture next to 18, the front of the beta manufacturing site is just about in line with that building. So if you extend taxiway golf, that the apron is in front of that entire width of the beta hangar. So it's equivalent size to the Valley West apron. And then, okay so in theory that apron could be used by anybody in the valley. That's correct. This is a general aviation ramp. In fact, the FAA does not allow us to apply for grants unless it is public accessible and public use. Of course, there's a hangar that's right there, no different than any other hangar. So there's going to be procedures and rules and preferential parking for tenants that are adjacent to that area. No different than any other hangar on our airfield. You can't block a hangar door. Right, right. What about the other hangar that may become vacant in the future, the large one that also abuts that apron? Would that have access potentially? To the ramp? To the new apron. That's correct. To the new apron, that's correct. Off of taxiway golf. So logistically you'd have to move aircraft over movement area, getting into the technical stuff, but absolutely, this is absolutely available to any transient traffic or a based aircraft at the Burlington Airport. And does it not look... I mean, in reality, you're extending golf so that the beta facility can get to the airport, right? Otherwise, they wouldn't actually really have access. So how do you write that in for funding when it's... Yes, it's general aviation, but the real significant person that is benefiting from it, and the only reason you would even do it is because you have a new facility down there. Is that... That's not necessarily, yeah. So go ahead, Dixman. Yeah, not necessarily. This was part of our master plan. This new building is one of a new tenant of ours that is building off of this ramp space, but there's future availability and future concepts off of this apron that we haven't really dove into just yet. But no different than any other new tenant or new facility or new access to an airport, we need to extend that tax away golf to allow accessibility to the public use runway. So this isn't exclusive to beta. This isn't about beta. This is about a general aviation facility. This was also a huge... This has been on our master plan for decades, in fact. And the only reason that we're really able to move this forward ahead of time, this isn't part of our regular entitlement funds, our normal funds that we get from the FAA or our entitled amount, which is approximately 3.5 million per year. This is above and beyond that. This is not part of discretionary funding. We're not competing for this funding. This was a congressionally directed spending bill that allowed us to not necessarily have to justify the apron, which is what the FAA's language is. We just have to make sure that it's an eligible apron, which means it's publicly accessible. But we still couldn't move forward on it if beta wasn't coming up with the other part that they're contributing. No, that's not true. It's not true either. No, this apron is being built regardless of if beta is building or not. But it... Okay, so maybe I'm reading this wrong. So what is the part that they're contributing then? So under FAA rules, any apron space 50 feet from the edge of a building that is privately owned up to any federally funded apron is not eligible for federal funding because it's exclusive use space. So therefore this is not part of the grant application because of cost, because of the design of the work. We did go ahead and design it and bid it out as part of this project. It doesn't make sense to just bid out the 50 feet in front of the hanger. So that's what's not eligible and will have to be reimbursed or direct build to beta. I see. All right, because they have to make a general use but it stops short of the hanger. That's correct. If they want to connect to the apron, they need to build the 50 feet. That's funny. Ironic. Okay, and then so we don't need any other entryway like we have with, it's not even actually called anything, that little curve that goes up from the valley onto golf. It's sort of that no man's land, the tower can't see us. Oh, by the way, will the tower be able to see the new apron? Probably not. No, still a stealth apron. Okay, so it won't take a new connecting taxiway to meet golf to meet the apron. No, this golf will end at this new G.A. apron. Okay. All right, thank you. All right, any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying hi. Hi. Hi. Any post? Carries unanimously. Item 4.03, do I hear a motion to recommend to the Board of Finance and City Council to enter into a contract with the Carlin Johnson for Burlington Tech Center Exploratory Works? I'll move. Second. And that will take my home. Discussion, Larry and Nick again. Yeah, so we talked about this a little bit at the last meeting, but this is now the contract with the Carlin Johnson to make sure that we as an airport are able to help as much as possible. We're thankful that there are residual funds from a previous grant that we are still able to use specifically for an aviation technical center for high school programs. As the memo states, it's just shy of about $680,000. So we're using this to support the school district's mission to set this, the particular use into study with the school districts. They have their own team, they have their own engineers on board already, but at least to collaborate with them to get a little bit ahead start. The grant funding, the $10 million that you may have seen in the news that the school district applied for is still coming their way, is still being processed. So this gets us a little bit of a head start, gets us a little bit moving forward and allowing alternate sites to be located. As soon as we have a better site map and a better site plan, we can also share that with you as well. It is a really exciting program. It supports that high school educational facility, which right now stands at about 25,000 square feet of space that the school district is requesting and is moving forward with those site alternatives through a contract with the airport, with McFarland Johnson to cite this. If there's additional funds remaining after we determine and with the school district where the site is located, then we're going to push some of these funding sources towards preliminary design work to help the school district even further. So very exciting program. Happy to, very happy to help out where we can, where the airport can. Without this funding, we would not have been able to budget or facilitate any additional funding or work with the school district. $680,000 is a substantial amount to get the ball rolling. So very happy and very excited to see what the next steps are. Chancellor, is there any questions for Nick? So is the first piece just to, the first part of the money to be used is to be used to figure out some options for sites. You got it. Okay. So that's the initial scope right now, yeah. Yeah, and how much does that cost? Like, what do you guys, what is a norm for looking at something like that when you hire somebody? So right now the scope of work is larger than just the siting right now, but right now we are looking to sign a contract with McFarland Johnson for that, just under $550,000 with that contingency in there. We may or may not need that. This is based on time. This is based on really the collaboration with the school district, what resources we can share and help them with, but right now it's approximately that $550,000, which does include the next steps. So to answer your question specifically, I don't recall offhand exactly what the cost is for the siting, unless Larry, you have that offhand. Well, I would just add that this also involves some programming with the sub of an architect that working with the school district and with this group. So we know what they need. So we can't cite something until we know what they need. So there's a lot of effort put into programming and that's going on too, because Freeman French and Freeman Berling, an architectural firm, is a sub to McFarland Johnson working also with the school district on the need and the programming. So there's a lot of that going on too. And that need is changing and being discussed throughout this process. So having a consultant with the airport to help refine some of these issues and refine some of these conversations to help the airport better understand what the school district's needs are is really, really important for us right now. And typically if you want to talk engineering throughout a project like this, it's the total would be 25%. I mean, if you're working for a GSA or something like that, they look at 45%. So typically it's about a 25% of construction costs. And we're way below that here. 20%. Okay. Maybe missing something. The, so part of this citing is also consulting with architects that could get it into the scope. Because if you don't know what the project is, you can't cite a project. If you don't know how big it is or what you're really looking for for needs, you can't figure out how much of the airport property you want to be looking for. Mike, isn't that right? 100% correct. That's exactly right. We need, we as the airport need to understand what the school district's needs and requirements are as part of this, this building. And that's part of the scope of work. And with this money, that's it, even though it's slated as an aviation grant, it doesn't matter if they're slipping in the other ideas of the auto tech and all that. Unfortunately, we're not involved with that particular grant. In fact, we don't have a copy of the grant itself, the $10 million grant. Yours, yours, yours. Because yours. Gotcha. Ours is, right now ours is cash. This is not a reimbursement grant. This is cash in our bank account right now that does not have any grant requirements or grant ties, except that it must be used for that high school aviation technical program. We'd have to go back to our congressional delegation to make sure if the scope does diverge from that a little bit, to make sure that we can use it in that way. Gotcha. Okay. But we don't, as the airport that I am aware of, we do not have any signed grants or signed restrictions on this $678,000. Gotcha. Cool. Is there a time frame? There is. Our goal, well, a couple of time frames, but the ultimate goal is to complete everything from siting, design, bidding, construction and having students move in by summer or after summer of 2025. That's the school district's goals. So we're kind of backtracking on that and putting that as part of this initial scope. We don't see that this McFarland-Johnson's contract is going to go that far because eventually this will roll right into just the school district finishing up their design and of course construction for our goals and our timeline for McFarland-Johnson. It really is right now. We have weekly meetings with the school district, engineers from the French Freeman McFarland, all of these groups of people to make sure that we're moving forward very quickly so that the school district can do what they need to do. There's larger conversations with the school district that this is a piece of the puzzle for them, such as the large bond that they're looking for and some of the savings that come out of the technical program being cited at the Burlington airport. So McFarland-Johnson, we've asked to move as quickly as possible to get an appropriate site at the airport so we can move right into design work. And also the permitting is going to take time. That's all comes into play to meet 2025, which is significant. Sure. Yeah. Nick, you mentioned the time situation with the bond coming up. You may not be able to answer this, but I'm curious that if we move forward on this and the city council does likewise, would there be an opportunity for the school district or the airport or the city or someone to make that announcement before the vote in about a month? I really hope so. I think that would be really important. There has been some preliminary public media attention on this specific from the school district's point of view to cite this at the airport and some of the savings that come from it or the reduction in how much their bond needs to be. I don't know the specifics and if it would help, maybe we can get Superintendent Tom Flanagan to come in to give a broader overview of the tech center program and the tech center director as well. But I think that would be really important though in front of the vote. Any further discussion from commissioners? I'll just add real quick to Greg's comment there, Tim, if that's all right. Sure, absolutely. The school district does have required reporting to the Burlington city council as well. So there is a tremendous amount of communication about the bond, about the overall project at the school district, which I'm not able to speak to because I don't know, as well as to the technical center program here at the airport. So there's an extensive amount of communication at that level to Burlington city council as well. Okay, I just had one question. First, well, first an observation that I, it's always great when you look under a rock from 10 years ago and find this pile of money. So that's great work by you and Marie to find that that's still out there. My questions on that related to, was there any impending expiration date on those funds? And would there have been an alternate, I know it has to be used for technical aviation, but would there have been an alternate, potential alternate use for those funds other than this siting project? I am not aware of an expiration date unless Marie is alternate projects for this funding. There were no alternate projects for this funding. So this was always set aside for this particular next steps. Over the years, we didn't know that this particular earmark or congressional directed spending was coming our way, coming to the school district to develop the program. So it's nice that we're actually able to move this forward. I wouldn't call it a requirement through our audit. There certainly has been a lot of attention on these funds over the years and making sure that we do use those funds. And Marie, maybe you can explain that a little bit better. Sure. So we hold this out on our audit statement, it's restricted and we have an deferred revenue but it's restricted and we have to answer the auditors every year on what our plan is to do with this money. So every year that I've been here, we've had discussions, there have been attempts over the year. This money can only be used for grade 12 and earlier, it can't be used for secondary education or other training programs that would be secondary or older audience. So this has been very restricted in terms of that. So we have been hopeful over the years that there would be some way to benefit this community, this subgroup of people that the money was intended to help. So having this funding come through, this $10 million grant is a breath of fresh air and we're excited because it's here, it's at the airport, we're at Out of E, and we're able to take this money that we've been monitoring and restricting all these years to use it in that way. So I hope that next time you look at the audit report, you'll be like, oh, it's here. Director's gone down, that's always a good thing. Yeah. All right, commissioners, all those in favor of recommending approval, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Our last and final action item is a, relates to the North Concourse Replacement. This is for a, to recommend approval of the contract with JQB Engineering Group for the North Concourse Replacement Project and the related budget amendment. Do I hear a motion to that effect? Move. That's moved by Eric. Is there a second? Second. Second by Greg. Discussion, Nick? Another truly exciting project on the horizon. This is not to be confused with the project that you approved, the first item here. This is not renovating the existing concourse. This is in fact a replacement of a very specific wing of the North Concourse, specifically gates three, four, five, and six. This is an extension of the North Concourse building this building further north or towards the Air Traffic Control Building. Essentially envision the Terminal Integration Project or what we're opening next week, this week and into next week, again, up on the North side to expand opportunities, expand hold room space, to right size our terminal, making sure that there's an appropriate number of seating at each particular gate to make, and maybe the most important one for me in my mind is the safety of aircraft coming in and out of that terminal, the ability for any size aircraft, whether we're talking about small or the largest aircraft that we've seen, especially over this last summer, to park at these gate positions and all be accommodated by new jet bridges. Working with the senator's office over this last year, we're able to finally confirm that there is a $35 million written line or a congressionally directed spending bill being proposed at legislation for the Burlington International Building to build this area. We need to get ahead of that bill just slightly. That doesn't mean there's a little bit of risk and that's why this is a very small, relatively small contract on the grand scheme of things. You just heard Larry say that most of the contracts that we deal with can be between 10 and 25% engineering costs for the total part of 10 to 25% of cost of engineering towards, oh my gosh, 10% of the engineering towards the project, of a $35 million project that's not sustainable for us to move forward with right now. That's too much of a funding, but at least if we keep to around that $300,000 mark to move our engineer into the design phase, making sure that next year, when this congressionally directed spending bill, most likely in the January timeframe gets passed, we're ahead of the game, we can continue to work with the FAA to apply for the grant that would allow us to finish the total project. Part of this $300,000 is also going to determine how we bid this out. Are we gonna continue moving this forward into full design using local costs right off the bat? Or are we gonna wait and do something a little bit different similar to what we did the Terminal Integration Project and bid this out slightly different so we don't have to fully design it yet? There's pros and cons to all of these scenarios and that really is part of the scope and part of our work over the next several months to determine what we do next as the risk of this project decreases, meaning it's closer and closer to passing at the federal legislation. It really is an exciting project and probably once in a lifetime for us to actually get this amount of funding specific to a Terminal Project. It is very unheard of for Small Hub Airport to receive Terminal Funds without either a supplement grant such as the Terminal Integration Project, again outside of normal funding of the FAA or a Congressionally directed spending bill. So we're very lucky to even be considered for this particular project and we wanna make sure that we're prepared to build it when the time comes. It'll take a few years before actually shovels in the ground, lots of work to it to perform, but at this point in time with a small contract we're able to start that site work, start the design work, get ideas flowing of exactly how we wanna build this building out, making sure that it's as eligible as possible. This project not only includes the relocation of the North Concourse, this does also replace all of our Jet Bridge, all of our eligible Jet Bridges that are at the airport which are aged and most of them are past the useful life. It also includes additional funding if there's any remaining leftover to renovate the entire second floor of our existing concourse, creating a linear, longer and open terminal building to allow additional aircraft to come in. And what I'm talking about here is removing this yellow piece off to the right here and building this pink piece towards the air traffic control building. The dark orange piece is the terminal integration project opening next week and then the South Yellow and Pink areas are future projects that we're not quite there yet but that's the overall intention on our master plan to do this. And there's a nice 3D visual drawing from both sides. We are competing for the South End project for that though too, so. Great. So you'll actually see that come back to you under a different grant or sorry, a different contract in the future as we sort some of these bigger things out. Thank you Nick. Discussion from commissioners. I've said one observation on the executive summary was a little unclear as to whether or not this contract is for just demolition and removal or if it's for demolition removal and planning the future. So can you just clarify that? Go ahead. It is for design, permitting and ordinary planning for demolition of that existing concourse. We will not get to bidding with this amount of money and as we progress over the next few months we won't spend all this money as Nick said to ensure we feel more comfortable that we're going to get the larger funds. I don't know if this pertains to the South future build out Tim, but this only pertains to the North project. No, I don't know if it's the North but in the executive summary it says this project consists of design and permitting for demolition and removal of the existing outdated North concourse. It doesn't talk about whether or not this encompasses the future planning for the new concourse to be built. That pink box that was shown on the plan. My apologies Tim, but if you go to the second paragraph I guess I probably should have moved that up. It's in the second paragraph. Okay. I should have added that in there, sorry. So it doesn't incorporate both the removal of that yellow area and the construction of the paint jar. Okay, great. Any further discussion from commissioners? Hearing that, all those in favor please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Next is item five adjournment. Do we hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. Moved by Helen, do we hear a second? Second. Second by Eric, all those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Carries unanimously. We are adjourned. Okay. Thank you everyone. Thank you everyone. Good to see you all. Good to see you all. Making it work, yeah.