BY DAN HILDEBRAN
A change in funding requirements for Keystone Heights Airport projects could put large projects out of reach for the municipally owned airport.
Typically, state grants for airports require a 20% local match. However, since the Keystone Heights Airport has a Starke address, and half of the facility lies in Bradford County, it qualifies for the state’s Rural Economic Development Initiative funding because Bradford County is classified as an economically distressed rural community, while Clay County is not.
The 20% match has been waived for REDI communities.
During the July and August meetings of the airport authority board, Airport Engineer Bill Prange informed board members that, due to a 2023 change in the law, only runway and taxiway capacity projects would now qualify for the 20% match waiver.
Therefore, only projects that extend runways or expand taxiways would qualify for the waiver. Projects considered economic development projects would also qualify for the waiver.
$4.5 million runway rehabilitation could vanish
Runway rehabilitation projects, like one the airport has in place with a $4.5 million price tag, would not qualify for the waiver, meaning the airport would have to find 20%, or $900,000, to fund the project.
Prange told board members that he asked Florida’s Department of Transportation to put the $4.5 million project on hold while the airport considers its alternatives.
“The FDOT agreed to put the project on hold, Prange told board members. “The funding is still sitting there for at least a year. The funding will go nowhere. But if in the next year we don’t figure out a way to either get the legislation changed or come up with other creative ways to justify the project as a capacity project, again, worst case scenario, that project could die.”
After Prange’s analysis, board members speculated that without the rehabilitation, the airstrip could deteriorate over the next decade to make insurance coverage difficult to obtain and make passing the state safety inspection more onerous.
“And if a runway does not have a public funding source, an airport will struggle to maintain it,” Prange explained. “And eventually the three-year inspections will give it such a low rating that it’ll be down in the failed category. So many cracks, ruts, so much loose gravel, at some point down the road, the (Florida Department of Transportation), not the FAA, the FDOT might come around and say that pavement is failed, and unless you do something, we’re not going to license that runway for use under the state licensing program. Honestly…I think you’re probably 10 years from that.”
