Clock Ticking on Airport Capital Improvement Agreement

February 12, 2025 by Allison Wilson

After a previous motion to approve transferring $1.33 million to the Geauga County Airport stalled out, Geauga County Commissioners voted 2-1 Feb. 4 to rescind that motion and renegotiate a new agreement.

Before casting his dissenting vote, Geauga County Commissioner Ralph Spidalieri expressed frustration about reneging their previous decision.

On Dec. 17, commissioners voted yes on a motion to approve the airport authority’s request for $1.33 million to construct a new T-hangar facility and upgrade existing facilities at the airport,  Acting County Administrator Linda Burhenne said.

The motion for the money to be transferred in January 2025 was “pending the execution of the agreement for capital improvement funding,” Burhenne said.

As the board never got the agreement to the finish line and January is over, the board needs to decide what to do next, she said.

“As far as I could understand from what I read, what we got from (outside counsel), there doesn’t have to be an agreement,” Burhenne said, referring to the original agreement commissioners have with the airport authority which states, “the board of commissioners in its own discretion can give money to the airport.”

They do not need a formal agreement on how the money is used in order to approve the transfer, she explained.

Commissioner Carolyn Brakey, however, had reservations about approving that amount of money without a contract in place.

“Even if we legally can just hand this money over without a contract, I personally don’t think that’s a responsible decision to the taxpayers,” she said.

Commissioner Jim Dvorak said prior to last Tuesday’s meeting, he had received a phone call from a member of the airport authority board who had been willing to renegotiate the contract.

“So, did we not appropriate that money then, at the end of the year?” Commissioner Ralph Spidalieri asked. “Because my understanding was that we committed those dollars.”

The mechanism under which they would transfer the money was never finalized, Finance Director Adrian Gorton replied.

“What my understanding was is that we were working on what the stipulations were for the money to make sure that we just didn’t give the money and then not have … certain expectations for that money being met,” he said.

Spidalieri said he thought the discussion was clear.

“It was pretty specific that $1.3 million was going to be transferred over to the airport and that there was not a (repayment requirement),” he said. “It was going to be that they were going to be able to utilize that for that next hangar project.”

Speaking to Airport Manager Ric Blamer, who was in the audience, Spidalieri said he supported 100% the money being transferred to them and encouraged Blamer to speak to the airport’s legal counsel.

Brakey asked for the language of the original motion again, noting she thought the money was dependent on an agreement.

Burhenne read the motion once again, reiterating the “pending the execution of the agreement for capital improvement funding” phrase.

“I think what happened with that is that we had a situation where … the language was basically not accepted, possibly, by our prosecutor,” Spidalieri said, asking Burhenne for more information.

An agreement outlining what had previously been discussed in session had been presented to the prosecutor’s office, Burhenne said. When it came back, there had been numerous changes based upon an already existing loan commissioners have with the airport related to their first T-hangar project and other similar agreements.

“It all kind of came to a halt at that point,” Burhenne said, adding they then reached out to outside counsel for another opinion.

The county owns the airport property, which is why Dvorak wanted to have a contract in place, he said.

“When we were looking at these decisions last year, we weren’t just trying to play Santa Claus handing money out, we were looking at a responsible decision of basically making improvements to move our airport forward because I can tell you that airport supplements a lot more economic growth and development than people realize,” Spidalieri said.

An investment there is an investment to the local business community and an investment to the airport’s future, especially in making it self-sufficient, he said, calling it a small investment for a big goal.

“I know that there’s a lot of people that are very much dissatisfied, hurt and just feel that they were wronged, and I hope that the legal counsel on the airport side of things looks into this to see if there’s any action they can take against the commissioners to retain that money,” he said.

A reporter in the audience later asked him to clarify that statement.

“If (the airport wants) to litigate or take some kind of legal action against us to get what we agreed on in December — we weren’t mincing words,” Spidalieri said. “Our position was to give the airport the $1.3 million with no other strings attached — it was that simple — to improve our airport and the future of our airport.”

Dvorak said he’d like to take up the call he got that morning and renegotiate a contract combining the language from the prosecutor’s office and the airport.

Burhenne asked the board how they wanted to proceed.

Spidalieri said if outside counsel’s opinion suggested the money could have just been transferred without an official agreement on how it was spent, he would have supported that from the beginning.

“There was a lot of time and a lot of money that went into this,” Spidalieri said. “This wasn’t just something that we just balled up a figure of $1.3 million and threw it out there like Santa Claus. This was a lot of time and effort that went into this.”

“Commissioner Spidalieri, if we’re not playing Santa Claus, then we should have a contract in place that protects our taxpayers,” Brakey replied.

After the motion passed to rescind the Dec. 17 decision, commissioners agreed to continue talks with the airport as fast as possible.

“Clock is ticking,” Burhenne warned them.

In a follow-up email Feb. 10, Blamer confirmed the airport was working with the commissioners to draft a new document for the projects “with some slightly different terms to satisfy the new makeup of the BOCC.”

“One of the projects (T-hangar) that this covers is partially funded by the (Federal Aviation Administration) through BIL (Bi-partisan Infrastructure Law) funds,” he said. “I am confident that we will be moving forward with the projects once everyone has had a chance to review the new agreement.”

Burhenne gave commissioners a summary of Dvorak’s discussion with the airport authority at the Feb. 11 commissioners meeting.

“It involves that the commissioners sign an agreement to build a T-hangar and puts the $1.33 million into the airport construction fund, which is controlled by the commissioners,” she said. “The commissioners manage the bid process … and the airport would select the contractor. The bills would come to our office to be paid and we would provide prevailing wage coordination until around the beginning of October when the (Federal Aviation Administration grant) money comes through, which is somewhere between $5-600,000 by my understanding.”

At that point, the bills would be paid by the FAA money and the remaining money in the construction fund would be available to the airport authority for other projects, as needed.

The prosecutor’s office will need to approve the agreement, she said, adding she had a draft she could send as a starting point.