March 2014 Meeting Minutes

Open­ing:

The Board Meet­ing of the Pana­ma City-Bay Coun­ty Air­port and Indus­tri­al Dis­trict was called to order at 9:00 a.m., March 26, 2014 in the Air­port Board Room by Chair­man Pilcher.

The Invo­ca­tion was giv­en by Ms. Pat­ty Mitchell.

The Pledge of Alle­giance was led by Chair­man Pilcher.

The Exec­u­tive Sec­re­tary called the roll and indi­cat­ed that all Board Mem­bers were present except Mr. Del Lee.

Approval of Minutes:

The Feb­ru­ary 26, 2014 Board Meet­ing Min­utes were approved as distributed.

Reports:

Mr. McClel­lan pre­sent­ed and reviewed the activ­i­ty report. Ms. Hen­der­son pre­sent­ed and reviewed the finan­cial report.

Con­sent Agenda:

a. Approval for Pur­chase of Spring Fertilization

This item pro­vides for Board approval for the pur­chase and appli­ca­tion of fer­til­iz­er for approx­i­mate­ly 500 acres of air­port property.

Fol­low­ing Board dis­cus­sion, Ms. Moliter­no made a motion to approve an amount not to exceed $60,000 for the pur­chase and appli­ca­tion of fer­til­iz­er to be applied to approx­i­mate­ly 500 acres at the air­port, and autho­riza­tion for the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor to exe­cute any nec­es­sary doc­u­ments. Mr. Math­is sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

b. Lease Assign­ment – Sky­tank­ing USA, Inc. to Air­craft Ser­vice Inter­na­tion­al, Inc.

This item pro­vides for Board approval of the assign­ment of the Lease Agree­ment between Sky­tank­ing USA, Inc., and the Pana­ma City-Bay Coun­ty Air­port and Indus­tri­al Dis­trict to Air­craft Ser­vice Inter­na­tion­al, Inc.

Fol­low­ing Board dis­cus­sion, Mr. Scott made a motion to approve the lease assign­ment from Sky­tank­ing USA, Inc., to Air­craft Ser­vice Inter­na­tion­al, Inc., and autho­riza­tion for the Board Chair­man to exe­cute any nec­es­sary doc­u­ments. Mr. Fore­hand sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

c. Change Order – Phoenix Con­struc­tion Services

This item pro­vides for Board approval of a change order to the Phoenix Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ramp Expan­sion and Secu­ri­ty Project con­tract to add a rain­wa­ter col­lec­tion sys­tem and make improve­ments to the Maintenance/​Cargo Area Stormwa­ter System.

Fol­low­ing Board dis­cus­sion, Mr. Bruett made a motion to approve the change order to the Phoenix Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ramp Project con­tract in an amount not to exceed

$13,881.78 and autho­riza­tion for the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor to exe­cute any nec­es­sary doc­u­ments. Ms. Moliter­no sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

Busi­ness Items:

a. ZHA Task Order – Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment and 404 Per­mit – Phase II

This item pro­vides for Board approval of a task order to ZHA as the airport’s con­tin­u­ing engi­neer­ing con­sul­tant to com­plete the Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment – Phase II and the Sec­tion 404 Per­mit for Phase II.

The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA), along with con­cur­rence from the US Army Corps of Engi­neers (USACE), sus­pend­ed the air­port from com­plet­ing the devel­op­ment of the Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment (EA) for Phase II in the late fall of 2011, as well as the 404 Per­mit for Phase II that had already been ini­ti­at­ed. Both agen­cies required the air­port address pend­ing envi­ron­men­tal issues to the agen­cies’ sat­is­fac­to­ry accep­tance before the EA and 404 Per­mit could be fur­ther devel­oped for sub­mis­sion to the agen­cies for con­sid­er­a­tion. The air­port has suc­cess­ful­ly resolved these con­cerns to both the FAA and USACE’s satisfaction.

Since the sus­pen­sion of work asso­ci­at­ed with the EA, the project require­ments for Phase II have been updat­ed. The USACE has required the air­port to repeat the scop­ing phase of EA ser­vices due to the pas­sage of time and the lack of their involve­ment in the process. The USACE, along with the FAA, has rec­om­mend­ed the pub­lic notice peri­od for the EA be coor­di­nat­ed with the 404 Per­mit process to occur at the same time to help reduce the cost to the airport.

The total cost for this task order is $549,000. Fund­ing for this amount was not includ­ed in the FY2014 bud­get; how­ev­er, the project should be eli­gi­ble for 90% fund­ing by the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Administration.

Fol­low­ing Board dis­cus­sion, Ms. Moliter­no made a motion to approve the task order to ZHA for com­ple­tion of the Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment and 404 Per­mit — Phase II and to amend the FY2014 Bud­get to reflect the addi­tion of this project, and autho­riza­tion for the Board Chair­man or his designee to exe­cute any nec­es­sary doc­u­ments. Mr. Fore­hand sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

b. Pur­chas­ing Card Program

This item pro­vides infor­ma­tion to the Board con­cern­ing a pro­posed pur­chas­ing card program.

Staff has con­tin­ued work­ing on meth­ods to increase non­air­line rev­enues. One area that is under- uti­lized is the use of cred­it cards, or purchasing/​procurement cards (P‑Cards), to gen­er­ate rebates or rewards. To learn more about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of gen­er­at­ing rev­enue through this method, Staff con­tact­ed Sun­Trust Bank, the bank which han­dles the District’s accounts.

Sun­Trust offers an aggres­sive P‑Card pro­gram for stream­lin­ing the pro­cure­ment process by elim­i­nat­ing invoic­es, pur­chase orders, and checks while help­ing reduce admin­is­tra­tive costs. Using P‑Cards would enable the air­port to gain greater con­trol over pur­chas­es while pro­vid­ing access to man­age­ment report­ing for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of purchases.

The use of SunTrust’s pro­gram would allow the air­port to use an online pro­gram for admin­is­tra­tion of the cards, with the abil­i­ty to set lim­its on indi­vid­ual cards, receive detailed data trans­mit­ted by mer­chants and gen­er­ate reports by ven­dor or purchaser.

The most attrac­tive fea­ture of SunTrust’s P‑Card pro­gram is the rebate offered. As long as the Dis­trict makes over $500,000 in P‑Card expen­di­tures annu­al­ly, because the air­port is an Inde­pen­dent Spe­cial Dis­trict, the Dis­trict becomes part of a con­sor­tium of Flori­da gov­ern­ment enti­ties, which allows the abil­i­ty to earn a 1.35% rebate on all P‑Card expen­di­tures. This rebate would be deposit­ed into the airport’s account annually.

After a sum­ma­ry review of expen­di­tures for the last fis­cal year, staff locat­ed over $1.5 mil­lion in expen­di­tures that could have been made on P‑Cards, which would have enti­tled the air­port to a $20,000+ rebate.

Staff did not go through a bid process to locate this pro­gram. The City of Hal­lan­dale Beach Flori­da recent­ly went through a bid process, and on Feb­ru­ary 19, 2014 award­ed their bank­ing ser­vices, to include the P‑Card pro­gram, to Sun­Trust Bank. The City of Hal­lan­dale deter­mined that Sun­Trust Bank offered the most com­pet­i­tive rebates for P‑Card use. In order to save time and effort, Staff elect­ed to ​“pig­gy-back” on the bid process com­plet­ed by the City of Hallandale.

There is a one-time set-up fee of $5,000, which would pro­vide access to all facets of the pro­gram, and would allow for inte­grat­ing the P‑Cards into the airport’s account­ing sys­tem and allow for the cre­ation of cus­tom forms for use with this type of purchasing.

This item is for infor­ma­tion­al pur­pos­es only and required no for­mal action by the Board.

c. Cross­wind Run­way Update

This item pro­vides for an update to the Board regard­ing the sta­tus of con­struc­tion of the cross­wind run­way and the sug­gest­ed direc­tion to move forward.

Devel­op­ment and con­struc­tion of a cross­wind run­way has been in the plan­ning stages for many years, is includ­ed in the orig­i­nal Air­port Lay­out Plan (ALP), and has been includ­ed in fund­ing efforts for the past 18 months. Recent­ly, staff met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Flori­da Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (FDOT) to dis­cuss var­i­ous projects in the future, specif­i­cal­ly the cross­wind run­way. Dis­cus­sions includ­ed var­i­ous fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and pos­si­bil­i­ties of addi­tion­al fund­ing to reduce the impact on the air­port, while max­i­miz­ing the avail­able funding.

It was deter­mined that the project design/​construction esti­mates for the cross­wind run­way were exceed­ing our abil­i­ty to ensure a strong finan­cial posi­tion in the future. The orig­i­nal esti­mates includ­ed a con­tri­bu­tion of air­port funds of $1,000,000, which max­i­mized fed­er­al and state fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able today. As staff refined the work pro­gram on the cross­wind run­way and reviewed the avail­able fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, the airport’s con­tri­bu­tion had climbed in excess of $2,500,000. That increase would there­by reduce the amount avail­able in cap­i­tal reserves.

As prepa­ra­tion of the airport’s Mas­ter Plan is near­ly com­plete, there is an iden­ti­fi­able need for a longer cross­wind run­way that could be uti­lized by a larg­er por­tion of the exist­ing fleet mix.

Con­struc­tion of a longer cross­wind run­way would require addi­tion­al time for the devel­op­ment process, and would also cre­ate addi­tion­al fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to the airport.

Staff rec­og­nizes the impor­tance and pri­or­i­ty of the cross­wind run­way as part of the future devel­op­ment of the air­port. As a result, staff rec­om­mends not pro­ceed­ing with devel­op­ment and con­struc­tion of the cross­wind run­way at a length of 5,000 feet but to begin plan­ning and devel­op­ing a longer cross­wind run­way that would meet the needs of the cur­rent fleet mix uti­liz­ing the airport.

Fol­low­ing Board dis­cus­sion, Ms. Moliter­no made a motion to approve staff’s rec­om­men­da­tion not to pro­ceed with devel­op­ment of the cross­wind run­way at a length of 5,000 feet and to pro­ceed with the plan­ning and devel­op­ment of a longer cross­wind run­way to meet the needs of the fleet mix uti­liz­ing the air­port, and to begin the process of review­ing addi­tion­al fund­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for a longer cross­wind run­way; and autho­rized the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor to noti­fy the FAA and FDOT of the airport’s inten­tions; and autho­riza­tion for the Board Chair­man to exe­cute any doc­u­men­ta­tion nec­es­sary with this action; and fur­ther advised the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor to update the Board in a few months as to a tar­get date for mov­ing for­ward with the longer cross­wind run­way. Mr. Fore­hand sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

d. Employ­ee Recog­ni­tion of Aus­ter­i­ty Efforts

This item pro­vides for Board approval of a one time employ­ee recog­ni­tion for aus­ter­i­ty efforts made by staff.

As a result of aus­ter­i­ty efforts uti­lized by air­port staff dur­ing the 2013 fis­cal year, the air­port saved approx­i­mate­ly $800,000. These sav­ings were accom­plished through var­i­ous cost sav­ing meth­ods includ­ing not fill­ing vacant posi­tions, con­trol­ling the use of pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, and ensur­ing cost effec­tive pur­chas­ing procedures.

In recog­ni­tion of these aus­ter­i­ty efforts, it is request­ed that a one-time allowance for each employ­ee to receive 8 hours of paid time off, under the guide­lines that the time must be used by Decem­ber 31, 2014; the time off must be coor­di­nat­ed in advance in each depart­ment so as not to incur any over­time; and there is no cash val­ue for the time if you leave the employ of the Dis­trict. In addi­tion, a let­ter of recog­ni­tion will be placed in each employee’s per­son­nel file.

Fol­low­ing Board dis­cus­sion, Mr. Bruett made a motion to approve the one-time recog­ni­tion for 8 hours paid time off for each employ­ee, under the spec­i­fied guide­lines. Mr. Math­is sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Reports:

Ramp Project: Mr. McClel­lan advised the Board that the ramp project was approx­i­mate­ly 50% com­plete and work con­tin­ued to be on schedule.

Air Traf­fic Con­trol Tow­er Fund­ing: Mr. McClel­lan advised the Board that dis­cus­sions had begun again with Con­gress regard­ing the need to main­tain fund­ing for the Air Traf­fic Con­trol Tower.

Pub­lic Comments:

There were no pub­lic comments.

Adjourn­ment:

The meet­ing was adjourned at approx­i­mate­ly 9:45 a.m.

Pat­ty Mitchell, Exec­u­tive Sec­re­tary John Pilch­er, Chairman