PHOTO: Archuleta County Commissioner Warren Brown, speaking during a visit by U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper to the Pagosa Springs Medical Center. Photo by Laura Vanoni.
I admit to being a bit surprised, last month, when U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper toured the Pagosa Springs Medical Center and then met with some of the PSMC Board and staff to chat about the future of rural health care services.
Not surprised by Senator Hicklenlooper’s visit, per se… but surprised by some of the comments from Archuleta County Commissioner Warren Brown, during the conversation held in the PSMC Board Room.
The central focus of Commissioner Brown’s comments seemed to be on the problems at Stevens Field, the airport on Piedra Road funded partly by Archuleta County taxes.
Commissioner Brown:
“As I see it, an important part of our medical care and health care capabilities is our air medical transport. I don’t know if you are familiar with that. We have a small airport in Archuleta County.
“I believe we need to create infrastructure, or that we need to improve the infrastructure that we have at our airport, to enable us to create an environment where we have a more reliable and timely flight, in these emergency situations, especially during our seasonal weather events. Like the five feet of snow that we get.”
“Because we have outdated equipment that’s both on the airport and that we use to maintain the airport, those services have sometimes fallen short. And we can’t afford this, because emergencies happen all the time, as you know.”
Interesting comments. We are falling short, it seems, in terms of proper maintenance at the airport. So we need to create infrastructure.
“To accomplish this, what I’m asking is for any assistance that you can provide to us, in accessing the IIJA [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] funding while the FAA is under re-designation, so that we might either upgrade our airport’s infrastructure by adding to the capabilities of our current runway, or by constructing a second runway, that have the capabilities.”
“I think this effort would be beneficial to us in several different ways. One; it would provide a more reliable and timely medical air service. Also, it would allow the Archuleta County-owned airport to seek a new designation. It would provide considerable financial opportunities for the County, should we receive a different designation, where we might be able to open up our airport to limited commercial services such as FEDEX and UPS. And other charter services.
“We are a community on the cusp of greatness. We really are. We have come so far, and there’s been so much work done by the people who sit in this room, collectively, that we would so appreciate any effort that you could make in helping us get over the hump to that greatness.”
Interesting comments.
A few of my own interesting comments:
1. Commissioner Brown seemed to be suggesting an expansion of the Stevens Field airport, and also suggesting that such an expansion would benefit the timeliness of emergency medical flights. But he also tells the Senator that we’re unable to properly maintain and plow the airport we already have. How does an airport get easier to maintain, by becoming larger? Just wondering.
2. The story shared with Senator Hickenlooper was constructed partly around the idea that medical emergency flights justify increased airport investment. But has anyone ever died because an emergency flight from Stevens Field was unable to land or take off? That might be interesting information.
3. We are a community on the cusp of greatness. I attended the annual Town Council retreat last week — a total of 10 hours of discussion, over two days — and some of the main topics of discussion were the Town’s inability to find employees, staff burn-out, the lack of housing for our workforce, a municipal sewer system on the verge of potential failure, and the inability of Town departments to keep up with maintenance of our existing parks and streetscapes.
For some reason, neither the expansion of the Stevens Field airport, nor the greatness that we’re on the cusp of, were mentioned as topics during 10 hours of somewhat intense discussion by elected Town officials.
But at least one County Commissioner, given the (rare) opportunity to address one of our U.S. Senators about the serious issues facing Archuleta County, wanted to make an argument for an expanded airport.
The day before Senator Hickenlooper’s visit, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners held a work session at their administrative offices on Lewis Street, and one of the items discussed was a “Proposal to Conduct an Economic Impact Study (EIS) for Stevens Field Airport.”
The EIS proposal was approved by the BOCC a week later, at a regular meeting. You can download it here.
I have a passing interest in this proposed study, because back in 2012, I wrote at some length (and rather critically?) about a previous economic impact study of Stevens Field.
Based on the cover of this 2012 report, the authors were apparently enamored of jet planes. Although the Stevens Field logo portrays an older, historical-looking airplane… (perhaps a 1937 Beech D17 Staggerwing?)… the five airplanes shown in the cover photographs are exclusively private jets.
You can download the 2012 study here (large file).
2012 was a fine year for an economic impact study for Stevens Field, because couple of years later, (as we can see below, in graphs found in the 2019 Archuleta County Budget) the County spent approximately $6 million on the airport… counting the years 2015 ($5 million) and 2016 ($1 million).
Much of that money — but not all — was provided through a federal grant. The rest came from local taxes. Yours and mine.
As we also see, the County has plans to spend maybe $8 million more on the airport in the near future… close to $1 million in 2026 and nearly $7 million in 2027.
A total of perhaps $16 million, projected to be spent between 2015 and 2027?
It’s possible this level of spending, on an airport that serves the owners of private jets, deserves an Economic Impact Study, so that our elected leaders can justify what they are doing with taxpayers’ money.
But what, exactly, is an Economic Impact Study?
I wonder if we expect to the upcoming study to be “honest” and “unbiased”.