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Salmon Arm airport: Appreciation Day plans underway, borrowing flies for new runway

City to go ahead with borrowing more than $800,000 to construct Taxiway Charlie
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Air show pilot Paul Dumoret is all smiles in the cockpit of his Nanchang CJ-6A after putting on a thrilling aerial show for the crowd in 2018. (File photo)

Plans are underway for the popular Airport Appreciation Day at the Shuswap Regional Airport in Salmon Arm.

Mayor Alan Harrison, who sits on the airport’s operations committee, told council that the event is scheduled for June 28 this coming year. That’s one week after Father’s Day, June 21.

He said funds come out of the city’s airport marketing and promotions reserve.

The Salmon Arm Flying Club puts on the event funded by the city, but then takes 75 per cent of the gate revenue to pay back the funds.

“Thank you to Tim Auger and the flying club,” Harrison remarked. “They do a lot of work in advance to make this successful.”

Read more: City considers borrowing half-a-million dollars for airport upgrade

Read more: New taxiway plan for Salmon Arm Airport taking off

In other airport news, city council will be going ahead with borrowing $845,000 for the construction of Taxiway Charlie. An alternative approval process generated only two letters in opposition to the borrowing, and the threshold of opposition required to force a referendum is 10 per cent or 1,503 electors.

The city’s chief financial officer Chelsea Van de Cappelle noted the city won’t be able to access the long term bond market until the spring, so she recommended temporary borrowing until that time when the interim financing could be paid off in full.

In 2015, the city completed an Airport Development Plan for the Salmon Arm Airport that included as Phase 1 the relocation and upgrade of Taxiway Bravo, which would become Taxiway Charlie.

In July last year, the city received word it had been approved for funding of $520,000 from the BC Air Access Program. The estimated cost to complete the project, including a 15 per cent contingency, would be about $1.3 million. The city subsequently launched the alternative approval process for long-term borrowing of the remaining $845,000.

@SalmonArm
marthawickett@saobserver.net

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Martha Wickett

About the Author: Martha Wickett

came to Salmon Arm in May of 2004 to work at the Observer. I was looking for a change from the hustle and bustle of the Lower Mainland, where I had spent more than a decade working in community newspapers.
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