City Council OKs airport grant application
By JESSICA KELLER
ARGUS OBSERVER
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:56 AM PST
ONTARIO — Ontario city officials say they have not abandoned their plan to seek outside funding to make essential upgrades to the Ontario Municipal Airport.
At Monday’s regular City Council meeting, the Ontario board approved a request from Ontario Airport Manager Alan Daniels to submit an application for ConnectOregon III funding to rehabilitate — through a maintenance overlay — the airport’s runway and parallel taxiway, replace the aging runway edge lighting system and rejuvenate and expand other airport infrastructure.
Monday, Daniels explained to the council this is essentially the same project that the city applied for under the ConnectOregon II funding program. He explained, the city was not put in a funding position for that project because, at the time, no match funds had been secured, so it was put on a waiting list. To this date, no other project has been abandoned, and the city has not moved up the list, although it still expects to be.
He said the current application, which has to be submitted by Friday, only includes a little more money for additional asphalt work.
“Hopefully we won’t have to use it, and we’ll be funded before that, but we don’t want to take any chances,” Daniels said.
In other City Council business:
The Ontario City Council passed the first reading of an amended Ontario nuisance ordinance, which changes the procedure for notifying people of ordinance violations and also expands the list of nuisance conditions.
The council also approved receiving grant funds from the Oregon Department of Energy in the amount of $17,500 to complete a lighting upgrade at the Ontario Water Treatment Plant. Additionally, the city will receive $8,750 from Idaho Power and the same amount in the form of tax credit to make up the balance of the approximately $35,000 project that was originally made possible from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant funding. The Ontario Council approved spending $12,050 from the city’s Economic and Community Enhancement Grant fund to rebuild the city's Web site. Of the $12,050, $11,300 would pay for the initial upgrade, and the remaining $750 would go toward the first year of the annual software and program subscription costs.
