The Federal Government unilaterally decided to transfer airports to local governments in the late 1990s and, since then, local taxpayers have had to increasingly subsidize their local airports with their property taxes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought this untenable situation to a head in many communities in BC, including Quesnel ... and that’s not a bad thing.
The Quesnel airport, like most local government run airports, was already being subsided by property ratepayers, even in the good years. Quesnel airport’s annual operating deficit was moderated for city ratepayers in 2018 when regional district ratepayers agreed, by referendum, to contribute to its operations -- but, that simply means all the ratepayers in the North Cariboo are now subsidizing this service.
Previous Quesnel City Councils' have attempted to improve the operations of the airport and reduce or eliminate the deficit, to no effect. An external consultant prepared Airport Business Plans from 2006 and 2015 suggested ways to increase the operations at the airport, but in a staff report presented last week to Quesnel Council, the recommendations in these dated reports were characterized as “self-evident” and, in many cases, “impractical, unrealistic, (and) unlikely to increase air traffic or airport revenues.”
Over the past couple of years, the situation at the airport has been getting worse: Central Mountain Air (CMA) has reduced and adjusted its schedule a number of times for a variety of reasons; CMA was switched over to the South Terminal at Vancouver airport causing connection issues for Quesnel passengers; landings in the spring and fall remained iffy due to fog, increasingly stranding Quesnel passengers in other communities or forcing them to quickly drive to Prince George or Williams Lake to catch their flights; and, for business travelers, we still didn’t have a reliable and easy way to get into and out of town by taxi or rental car.
So, when Central Mountain Air decided to cancel scheduled passenger flights in April this year due to the precipitous drop in air travel resulting from travel restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the City of Quesnel was faced with a $275,000 to $300,000 shortfall in revenues in 2020 and the prospect of a similar kind of revenue deficit again in 2021 if passenger service does not return to regional airports, the Band-Aid was effectively ripped off what has been a long standing financial sore spot for the City.
Fortunately, we have proactive staff managing the airport function within the financial and operating framework imposed by Council. In response to CMA’s cancellation of scheduled passenger service, staff quickly made operational changes that have reduced the net negative impact on the City’s budget to $30,000-$40,000 from a potential $300,000 loss in revenue.
The $2.5 million the City received from the Province for COVID-19 related revenue loses and operating costs will cover any actual 2020 and 2021 airport deficits we do incur, giving local ratepayers in the North Cariboo some much needed tax relief.
The challenge now is to develop a new operating model for the Quesnel Regional Airport, one that takes into consideration the fact that we may not see a restoration of scheduled passenger service after the pandemic is behind us (that decision is completely out of Council’s control).
This is a long overdue deep rethink of the airport brought on by COVID-19 and it has the potential to force us to find more creative ways to turn our regional airport into a very active, diversified, and more financially sustainable venture.
Stay tuned … much more to come in the New Year.
The initial staff report on the status of the airport can be found here
Bob Simpson is the Mayor of Quesnel, BC. He can be reached via email here
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