February 2023 Meeting Minutes

MEET­ING MINUTES

PANA­MA CITY – BAY COUN­TY AIR­PORT AND INDUS­TRI­AL DISTRICT

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Open­ing:

The Board Meet­ing of the Pana­ma City-Bay Coun­ty Air­port and Indus­tri­al Dis­trict was called to order at 9:00 a.m., Feb­ru­ary 15, 2023 by Chair Hol­ly Melzer. 

The Invo­ca­tion was giv­en by Vice Chair Sheldon.

The Pledge of Alle­giance was led by Mr. Park­er McClellan.

Roll was called. In atten­dance were: Ms. Vic­to­ria Williams, Mr. Matt Algar­in, Mr. Les McFat­ter, Mr. Glen McDon­ald, Mr. Will Cramer, Vice Chair Mark Shel­don and Chair Hol­ly Melzer.

Chair Melz­er asked if there were any Pub­lic Com­ments. Pub­lic com­ment was giv­en by Mr. Ste­fan Richard­son, the own­er of #1 White Sands Trans­porta­tion, a shut­tle com­pa­ny that oper­ates at the Airport. 

Mr. Richard­son believes that there is not a good sys­tem in place to alert the dri­vers to pas­sen­gers wait­ing for trans­porta­tion when they arrive on a late flight. He said that nor­mal­ly AOC sends a text mes­sage when late night pas­sen­gers are wait­ing for trans­porta­tion, but do not send out an ​“all clear” mes­sage after all pas­sen­gers have been trans­port­ed. If they would, it would allow dri­vers on the way to be able to turn back home if they are not need­ed, thus sav­ing fuel. He thanked the Air­port for installing cam­eras to help with this issue. 

He talked about the prob­lem of exces­sive bird feces on the grounds, and said that pas­sen­gers have also com­plained about it. He sug­gest­ed installing chick­en wire in the out­side rafters. 

He also asked if the Air­port could adver­tise the taxi and shut­tles bet­ter, and if the Air­port would con­sid­er chang­ing the max­i­mum charge of $2.75 per mile to a min­i­mum fee and allow the taxi dri­vers to nego­ti­ate their own fees with the passengers. 

Chair Melz­er told Mr. Richard­son that the Board would take his sug­ges­tions into con­sid­er­a­tion, and that Staff would address his concerns. 

Chair Melz­er asked if there were any items on the Agen­da, includ­ing the Con­sent Agen­da, that any Board Mem­ber would like to move to a Busi­ness Item for fur­ther dis­cus­sion, and if not, to make a motion to accept the Agenda.

Mr. Glen McDon­ald made a motion to accept the Agen­da, and Mr. Les McFat­ter sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

Reports:

Mr. Park­er McClel­lan pre­sent­ed the Activ­i­ty Reports. The Air­port is up 4% over last Jan­u­ary. The load fac­tors con­tin­ue to be very good. Delta has brought in the 737 – 800 to 900’s and they are fly­ing out very full. The Air­port is doing very well dur­ing what nor­mal­ly would be a qui­et time of the year for us, and we con­tin­ue to do very well region­al­ly. From the Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion per­spec­tive, he antic­i­pates that as things con­tin­ue to grow for Sheltair and South­ern Sky, as they get ready to open ear­ly next year, that those num­bers will con­tin­ue to grow.

Con­sent Agenda:

a. Board Meet­ing Min­utes – Jan­u­ary 25, 2023

This Item pro­vid­ed for Board approval of the Jan­u­ary 25, 2023 Board Meet­ing Minutes.

b. Rat­i­fy Chair’s Exe­cu­tion of Flori­da Pow­er and Light (FPL) Ease­ment

This request is for Board rat­i­fi­ca­tion of an under­ground ease­ment grant­ed to Flori­da Pow­er and Light Com­pa­ny (FPL) for an under­ground pow­er ser­vice relo­ca­tion on the south side of the Air­port which pro­vides pow­er to the Instru­ment Land­ing System.

Recent­ly, the Airport’s cur­rent Fixed Base Oper­a­tor, Sheltair, exe­cut­ed sev­er­al lease options in sup­port of con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of their facil­i­ty on the Air­port. A por­tion of the devel­op­ment includes the con­struc­tion of a 19,980 square foot hangar to be locat­ed on the south­ern­most bound­ary of the Sheltair lease.

Dur­ing devel­op­ment and ini­tial con­struc­tion activ­i­ties, it was dis­cov­ered that an FPL (for­mer­ly Gulf Pow­er) under­ground pow­er sup­ply line was buried through the pro­posed hangar loca­tion site. Air­port Staff was unaware of the pow­er line loca­tion and the pow­er line was not part of any Air­port ease­ment with FPL.

Since that time, Air­port Staff has tak­en nec­es­sary steps to coor­di­nate with FPL for the relo­ca­tion of the pow­er line to an area out­side of the Sheltair lease­hold and to sur­vey and devel­op an under­ground ease­ment with FPL reflect­ing the new loca­tion of the pow­er line on the Air­port (attached).

Airport’s legal coun­sel has reviewed and approved the Under­ground Ease­ment doc­u­men­ta­tion. Due to its time sen­si­tive nature with regard to con­struc­tion activ­i­ties, it was deemed in the best inter­est of the Air­port to pro­ceed with exe­cu­tion and record­ing of the ease­ment so as not to dis­rupt ten­ant con­struc­tion activities.

Staff rec­om­mends rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Board Chair’s exe­cu­tion of an under­ground ease­ment with Flori­da Pow­er and Light Com­pa­ny for the relo­ca­tion of a pow­er ser­vice line at the Airport.

Mr. Will Cramer made a motion to Rat­i­fy the Chair’s Exe­cu­tion of Flori­da Pow­er and Light (FPL) Ease­ment, and Mr. Glen McDon­ald sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

c. Approve Pol­i­cy Change – Man­age­ment Ben­e­fits Program

This item pro­vides for Board approval of a change regard­ing the Man­age­ment Ben­e­fit Program.

The cur­rent Pol­i­cy #8.7 – Man­age­ment Ben­e­fit Pro­gram. Gov­ern­ment Required Cov­er­age was last approved by the Board effec­tive March 1, 2015. In review­ing Pol­i­cy #8.7, it has been deter­mined that the sec­tion of the Pol­i­cy address­ing Sev­er­ance Ben­e­fits need to be modified. 

The updat­ed Pol­i­cy defines Ter­mi­na­tion With­out Cause and Ter­mi­na­tion With Just Cause and the asso­ci­at­ed sev­er­ance benefits. 

The changes above and oth­er mis­cel­la­neous admin­is­tra­tive changes have been incor­po­rat­ed into the pro­posed Pol­i­cy #8.7, and it has been reviewed and approved by legal counsel.

There is no impact to the Airport’s Oper­at­ing and Cap­i­tal Budget.

Staff rec­om­mends the Board approval of the updates to Pol­i­cy #8.7 – Man­age­ment Ben­e­fits Program. 

Busi­ness Items:

a. Review and Adopt 2022 Finan­cial Audit Report

Mr. Eas­t­on Ramer, the Audit and Tax Part­ner with Tip­ton, Mar­ler, Gar­ner and Chas­tain, pre­sent­ed the 9/30/2022 Audit Report. He said that the Air­port had a clean audit with no write-ups. He explained the GASB 87 adjust­ment num­bers in the Bal­ance Sheet relat­ed to our Leas­es and com­mend­ed the Air­port Account­ing Depart­ment on being the first client to suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment those entries. Unre­strict­ed Cash is at $25 mil­lion, Restrict­ed Cash is at $10 mil­lion; up $8 mil­lion from last year, with a net posi­tion of $255 mil­lion, show­ing that the Air­port is finan­cial­ly strong. There has been tremen­dous growth over the last 10 years and in his opin­ion the Air­port is very sound. 

The Audit Report indi­cates that the finan­cial state­ments present fair­ly, in all mate­r­i­al respects, the finan­cial posi­tion of the busi­ness-type activ­i­ties of the Dis­trict and the changes in finan­cial posi­tion and cash flows there­of in accor­dance with account­ing prin­ci­ples gen­er­al­ly accept­ed in the Unit­ed States. 

The Man­age­ment Let­ter of this audit notes the fol­low­ing comments:

• There were no cor­rec­tive actions tak­en to address find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions made in the pre­ced­ing Audit Report, as there were no rec­om­men­da­tions made in the pre­ced­ing annu­al Finan­cial Audit Report.

• The Dis­trict oper­ates as an Inde­pen­dent Spe­cial Dis­trict cre­at­ed by an act of the Leg­is­la­ture of the State of Flori­da and is not con­sid­ered a com­po­nent unit of any oth­er local gov­ern­men­tal unit.

• The Dis­trict did not meet any of the con­di­tions described in the Flori­da Statute Sec­tion 218.503(1).

• There were no rec­om­men­da­tions made to improve finan­cial management.

• There were no find­ings regard­ing non­com­pli­ance with pro­vi­sions of con­tracts or grant agree­ments or abuse that have occurred, or that are like­ly to have occurred, that have an effect on the finan­cial statements.

In sum­ma­ry, the Auditor’s Report express­es an unqual­i­fied opin­ion on the finan­cial state­ments of the Dis­trict and no reportable con­di­tions were dis­closed dur­ing the Audit.

Staff rec­om­mends adop­tion of the Audit Report.

Vice Chair Shel­don made a motion to review and adopt the 2022 Finan­cial Audit Report, and Mr. Matt Algar­in sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

b. FY 2022 Rates & Charges Set­tle­ment for Sig­na­to­ry Air Car­ri­ers (Infor­ma­tion Only)

Mr. McClel­lan explained that as part of the Airport’s Agree­ment with the Air­lines, a per­cent­age the rev­enue earned through­out the year is shared with the air car­ri­ers at the end of the year. He shared the amounts of the checks that will be sent out to the air carriers.

This item pro­vides infor­ma­tion to the Board con­cern­ing sig­na­to­ry air­line rates and charges for Fis­cal Year 2022, in accor­dance with the Air­line Use and Lease Agree­ments that went into effect Octo­ber 1, 2021.

The frame­work of the Air­line Use and Lease Agree­ment charges two basic rates, one for land­ing fees and one for ter­mi­nal rent. The land­ing fee rate rep­re­sents the total costs asso­ci­at­ed with oper­at­ing the Air­field Cost Cen­ter and includes all oper­at­ing and main­te­nance costs along with debt ser­vice costs for con­struct­ing the Air­field. The ter­mi­nal rental rate includes both the debt ser­vice and O & M costs in the Ter­mi­nal Com­plex Cost Cen­ter and is charged on a rentable square foot cal­cu­la­tion. This busi­ness frame­work also calls for a rev­enue shar­ing pro­gram with the sig­na­to­ry air­lines after the Air­port has paid all oper­at­ing expens­es and annu­al debt service.

In con­junc­tion with the FY 2022 finan­cial audit, we have final­ized rates and charges for the sig­na­to­ry air car­ri­ers and deter­mined the rev­enue shar­ing amount for FY 2022. The sig­na­to­ry air­lines have been briefed on the Set­tle­ment, and Staff will send checks for the amount of the set­tle­ment to the sig­na­to­ry air­lines sub­se­quent to approval of the FY 2022 Finan­cial Audit.

List­ed below are the over­all results for FY 2022:

Descrip­tion FY 2022 Bud­get FY 2022 Settlement

Land­ing Fees per 1,000 lbs. $3.39 $2.68

Ter­mi­nal Rental per square foot $61.65 $59.13

Sig­na­to­ry Cost per Enplane­ment $5.62 $2.08

Amer­i­can Air­lines $632,631

Delta Air Lines $1,362,213

South­west Air­lines $1,774,780

Unit­ed Air­lines $168,990

Total Set­tle­ment $3,938,614

No for­mal action was required regard­ing this Board Item. It was pre­sent­ed for infor­ma­tion­al pur­pos­es only.

c. Approve ZHA Task Order #57‑D – Admin Replace­ment Park­ing and Con­struc­tion Administration

Mr. McClel­lan explained that the plans for the Admin Park­ing Lot kept chang­ing through­out the plan­ning for the expan­sion project. This Task Order is for the design for the project.

This item pro­vides for the Board’s approval of Task Order #57‑D to ZHA as the Airport’s con­tin­u­ing engi­neer­ing con­sul­tant to per­form design, engi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion admin­is­tra­tive ser­vices for the Replace­ment Admin­is­tra­tion Park­ing Lot. 

As part of the Ter­mi­nal Devel­op­ment Pro­gram, the Bag Room Expan­sion Project is to allow for the expan­sion of the exist­ing bag room to the west and into the present Admin Park­ing Lot. The Admin Lot today, has 20 park­ing spaces and is used dai­ly for park­ing by Air­port Staff, Air­line Man­agers, Con­ces­sion Man­agers, TSA Man­age­ment, Board Mem­bers, and oth­ers as deemed appropriate. 

The new lot will be locat­ed between the Air Traf­fic Con­trol Tow­er and the expand­ed Cell Phone/​Taxi Queue. Ini­tial plan­ning allows for approx­i­mate­ly 18 spaces. The lot will have access con­trol as well as oth­er secu­ri­ty features.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the project will be fund­ed through a change order to the Ter­mi­nal Park­ing Expan­sion Project.

The not-to-exceed costs of Task Order #57‑D is $31,500. Fund­ing for this Task Order will be through the use of Unre­strict­ed Air­port Funds. 

Staff rec­om­mends Board approval of Task Order #57D for Engi­neer­ing, Design, and Con­struc­tion Ser­vices for the Admin­is­tra­tion Replace­ment Park­ing Lot.

Mr. Matt Algar­in made a motion to approve ZHA Task Order #57‑D – Admin Replace­ment Park­ing and Con­struc­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, and Ms. Vic­to­ria Williams sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

d. Approve ZHA Task Order #62‑C Amend­ment – North Ter­mi­nal Design Ser­vices

Mr. Rick Mellin of ZHA explained that they are request­ing addi­tion­al fees above what was in the orig­i­nal Task Order due to the addi­tion­al plan­ning that was need­ed when they were met with unfore­seen issues with the orig­i­nal design that need­ed to be worked through. He said that there was addi­tion­al time, ser­vices and pro­gram­ming uti­lized when plan­ning the design. 

This item pro­vides for the Board’s approval of an Amend­ment to Task Order #62‑A to ZHA as the Airport’s con­tin­u­ing engi­neer­ing con­sul­tant to per­form design, for the North Ter­mi­nal Expan­sion Project

As part of the Ter­mi­nal Devel­op­ment Pro­gram, the North Ter­mi­nal Expan­sion will be an addi­tion to the Build­ing to the north to allow for up to three new expand­ed gate hold rooms, expand­ed bag­gage claim and new pas­sen­ger cir­cu­la­tion from the expand­ed and recon­fig­ured pas­sen­ger screen­ing check­point. Addi­tion­al ancil­lary spaces are also pro­vid­ed to meet pas­sen­ger needs.

The orig­i­nal con­cept includ­ed an approx­i­mate­ly 65,000 SF addi­tion, which would extend the Build­ing to the north. As the Ter­mi­nal Expan­sion Pro­gram devel­oped, the need for addi­tion­al space was nec­es­sary in order to ensure the expand­ed Ter­mi­nal gained effi­cien­cies and meets the needs of our diverse pas­sen­ger mix. Some of the effi­cien­cies include the pas­sen­ger ingress and egress to the check­point, and relo­cat­ing the exist­ing mechan­i­cal room at the north end of the exist­ing build­ing to allow for cir­cu­la­tion to the new expan­sion. The new ver­ti­cal cir­cu­la­tion also required addi­tion­al space move pas­sen­gers to both the exist­ing east con­course and the new con­course expan­sion to avoid pas­sen­ger con­ges­tion and lim­it cross­ing pas­sen­ger flow, as well as a broad­er scope of option­al pas­sen­ger ser­vice require­ments. To accom­mo­date these issues, the build­ing has expand­ed to approx­i­mate­ly 81,900 SF.

The addi­tion­al $374,725 fees are based the expand­ed size of the build­ing, addi­tion­al pro­gram­ming time to work through numer­ous poten­tial alter­na­tive solu­tions, expand­ed scope of low voltage/​data and secu­ri­ty as well as Con­struc­tion Man­ag­er at Risk solic­i­ta­tion and nego­ti­a­tion ser­vices, which was not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal design Task Order. 

The Task Order Amend­ment with a not-to-exceed amount of $374,725 will be added to the exist­ing Task Order for a total fee for design of $1,785,617. Fund­ing for this Task Order will be through the use of Unre­strict­ed Air­port Funds and will be includ­ed with future grant opportunities. 

Staff rec­om­mends Board approval of Task Order #62‑C — Amend­ment to Task Order #62‑A for Design, Ser­vices for the North Ter­mi­nal Expansion

There was dis­cus­sion about the fees, con­tract nego­ti­a­tion, and the 26% increase of cost and con­cerns with the 70% increase in ZHA con­sult­ing fees. The con­sen­sus was that the fees should be reviewed and pre­sent­ed at the next Board Meeting.

Vice Chair Shel­don made a motion to reject the approval of ZHA Task Order #62‑C Amend­ment – North Ter­mi­nal Design, and Mr. Will Cramer sec­ond­ed the motion. This Agen­da Item did not pass. ZHA will adjust Task Order #62‑C and present it to the Board at the March 29, 2023 Board Meeting.

Con­struc­tion Update (infor­ma­tion only):

a. Air­port Entrance Round­about and State Road (SR) 388 Realignment

Mr. Richard McConnell report­ed on the S.R. 388/​Airport Entrance Round­about and the con­struc­tion updates. There was an antic­i­pat­ed 2‑week weath­er-relat­ed delay on paving. Once the weath­er clears and they can lay pave­ment they will. 

b. Park­ing Lot Expansion

A Devel­op­ment Order was issued for the Park­ing Lot Expan­sion and they should begin mov­ing dirt today. The over­flow park­ing por­tion, which is Task #1 of the project is ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled to be com­plet­ed by ear­ly April. Long Term, Employ­ee, Cell Phone and Man­age­ment Lots should be com­plet­ed by August, which will com­plete the project.

c. Ter­mi­nal Buildout

Ter­mi­nal Con­course Build­out, the con­trac­tor is mobi­lized and has done as much as they can until the per­mits are issued.

d. Bag Make­up Expansion

The con­trac­tor for the Bag Make­up Expan­sion is cur­rent­ly mobi­lized onsite. This is the same con­trac­tor that is doing the Park­ing Lot Expan­sions. They are cur­rent­ly doing as much work as they pos­si­bly can on both projects until they get the per­mit for the Bag Make­up area. Both per­mits are in the review process.

Plan­ning Update (infor­ma­tion only)

a. North Ter­mi­nal Expansion

Mr. Rick Mellin with ZHA report­ed on the Plan­ning Updates: 

TSA Design — Design doc­u­ments should be received by the end of the month. The 95% CD’s are due in ear­ly June. Per­mit doc­u­ments are due by the end of June.

North Ter­mi­nal Design – Design doc­u­ments are due the end of March. The 95% con­struc­tion doc­u­ments are due the mid­dle of Sep­tem­ber. Per­mit draw­ings are due in November.

Con­struc­tion Man­age­ment At Risk – The Bid went out on Jan­u­ary 29, 2023. Pro­pos­als are due on Feb­ru­ary 2^nd, they will be reviewed by the com­mit­tee March 6 – 10, and will hold inter­views the fol­low­ing week. The list of rank­ings will be pre­sent­ed to the Board at the March 29^th meet­ing. There will be an option at that time to autho­rize a nego­ti­a­tion and pos­si­bly accept the award.

Esca­la­tor – The con­struc­tion doc­u­ments are due at the end of this month. Mr. Mellin will be meet­ing with Legal Coun­sel to put out a solic­i­ta­tion for the equip­ment (the esca­la­tor will be pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly), and for a Con­struc­tion Man­ag­er at Risk to man­age that project. The draw­ings will take about 6 months. There is a lot of prepa­ra­tion that will take place in the fall before the actu­al work. The goal is to have the esca­la­tor oper­a­tional before Spring Break 2024. Mr. McClel­lan explained that the esca­la­tor comes ful­ly assem­bled, so win­dows will have to be tak­en out and a crane used to get it into the build­ing for the installation.

Bay EDA Update (Infor­ma­tion Only):

Mr. Park­er McClel­lan report­ed that Bec­ca Hardin was in Europe last week. The com­pa­ny that she met with was in Orlan­do, so she was at a site vis­it with them. There are two projects which they are active­ly work­ing on. One is Project Stam­per, with a site vis­it to ECP this Fri­day, and the oth­er is Project Maple. Both projects are mov­ing ahead, with a lot of excite­ment and ener­gy. He is hop­ing to bring good news on both of them in the near future. 

The Moore Agency Update (Infor­ma­tion Only):

Ms. Katie Spill­man of The Moore Agency report­ed on mar­ket­ing. She said that our spon­sor­ship of the 30A Songwriter’s Fes­ti­val was very suc­cess­ful. She also talked about Google search, which will run the rest of the year. Also, our Super­bowl Ad that will run through the rest of Feb­ru­ary and into March. Vis­it­Flori­da will fea­ture ECP as part of a series of arti­cles about acces­si­bil­i­ty at air­ports across the state for trav­el­ers with dis­abil­i­ties. Mr. McClel­lan pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion to the writer about acces­si­bil­i­ty at ECP and on our ADA Com­pli­ant web­site. She is also work­ing with Flori­da­Trend, and has pro­vid­ed them with con­struc­tion infor­ma­tion, ren­der­ings and facil­i­ty pho­tog­ra­phy. They will be fea­tur­ing the facil­i­ty expan­sion in their upcom­ing edi­tion. She also shared images of Pilot the Pel­i­can for our upcom­ing sig­nage and dig­i­tal media for the con­struc­tion campaign. 

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Report:

Mr. McClel­lan gave the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Report. He said that in the upcom­ing months he will be set­ting up a work­shop with the Moore Agency and the Board to go over what the upcom­ing mar­ket­ing plans. He thanked the Account­ing staff for their hard work and pro­fes­sion­al­ism with the Audit. He also thanked the Main­te­nance Depart­ment for sav­ing the air­port $10,000 by repair­ing the air con­di­tion­ing sys­tem in the Tow­er. He said that there are ongo­ing improve­ments such as paint­ing and fresh­en­ing up the Ter­mi­nal. He also wel­comed back Police Chief John VanEt­ten who has been out on extend­ed med­ical leave. He intro­duced the Hid­den Dis­abil­i­ty Sun­flower Pro­gram. He would like to imple­ment the pro­gram at ECP and plans on pre­sent­ing the infor­ma­tion at the next Board Meeting. 

Pub­lic Comments:

There were no Pub­lic Comments.

Adjourn­ment:

The meet­ing was adjourned at approx­i­mate­ly 10:10 a.m.

Next meet­ing is sched­uled: March 29, 2023 – Board Meet­ing 9:00 a.m.

________________________________

Lisa Brady, Exec­u­tive Assistant 

________________________________

Hol­ly Melz­er, Chair