GUERNSEY – “We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people who are for and against it, so we decided to have a town meeting so everyone can come give comments or concerns,” Mayor Ed Delgado said.
At 6 p.m. tonight (Tuesday, Oct. 22) at town hall, the community is invited to a public meeting hosted by the Guernsey town council to share ideas and opinions on whether to invest in upgrades to the town’s portion of the airport or trade it with the Wyoming Military Department / Wyoming National Guard for developable land adjacent to the town’s recently remediated landfill. Or, to both fix the airport and purchase the proposed land outright. The community is also welcome to ask any questions or bring ideas to the table.
To be clear, the town has a 99-year lease with the Wyoming National Guard (who owns the land), to utilize the civilian portion of the airport which includes the taxiway to the hangars and fuel system controlled by the town, explained town planner John Burfeind at last week’s town council meeting. The national guard camp controls the runways, so of course are Federal Aviation Administration–approved, but the taxiway and apron are coded “red” or in need of repair.
The town is looking into exactly how much it would cost to bring their side of the airport up to code, but “because it’s attached to the military, there is no federal money, but there is some state money. Some is 70-30 split, some 50-50. We need an engineer involved [and] have some rough numbers back, but not enough to move forward,” Burfeind said.
Currently, private planes can use the civilian airport by requesting permission from the air tower, then if they choose to utilize the taxiway and runway, they do so at their own risk, since the FAA has it listed as “red.”