Residents are questioning the need for a possible expansion at the Carroll airport that has mostly lost money in the last five years.
“It calls into question the economic viability of yet another expansion,” Mary Kowalski, of Westminster, said after Wednesday?s meeting of the Joint Carroll Neighborhood Association, a group of residents who are against the runway and corporate hangar expansion at Carroll County Regional Airport.
Last year, the airport reported $1.7 million in revenue, but also spent $1.8 million, showing an operating loss of $100,000, according to the annual financial report outside auditors prepared.
Since fiscal 2000, the airport has recorded losses in four out of six years, the report shows.
Joseph Varrone, airport administrator for the county, said Thursday that as part of the enterprise fund, the airport aims to break even, and all profits are redirected to the airport.
If the county commissioners adopt the preferred proposed airport plan early next year, he said, 11 corporate hangars would be added to the existing seven, and the airport would stay in the black from then on.
Kowalski questioned the demand for more corporate hangar space, which will cost the businesses who will occupy them ? not the county ? $2 million each to build and $2,000 to $3,000 a month to rent.
Varrone cited information from the Federal Aviation Administration, which said all corporate hangars along the East Coast are occupied.
“[Businesses] are anxious” to rent hangar space, he said. “They are chomping at the bit.”
As one of the most vocal opponents to a possible airport expansion, Kowalski has taken a step beyond trying to sway commissioners against extending the runway. She filed this week to run against them in this fall?s election.
“I have gone out to hundreds of houses, and 95 percent of the people tell me they do not want the airport expanded,” she said.
kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com
