BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2016) — Some people love flying. Others dread it. All of us, however, want the plane always to fly level, whether it’s on or off the ground. In some ways, on-the-ground activity is the most important of an airport, since it’s there that the facility operates within the confines of honesty or dishonesty, the parameters of up-front of hidden, the boundaries of one or two sets of books.

Since the airport study group commissioned by Mayor Linda Tyer began poking around the runways on Tamarack Road, many questions have emerged about the mysterious operations the a taxpayer-owned, public-use facility and the Westwood Business Center, where businesses lease seven buildings on 23 acres of airport land. THE PLANET will come back to that in a moment.

Our spies, moles, gumshoes, and members of The Secret Squadron have infiltrated the mess, and they are reporting back some interesting “chatter.”

The Revenue Stream? Not Even a Trickle

The Pittsfield Municipal Airport (PMA), you may recall, ate up $22.5 million of public money in alleged improvements, and this investment itself would be enough to warrant further scrutiny. Add to that the mystery that surrounds so much of the airport’s operations. A seven-member Airport Commission operates the facility. Robert Snuck manages the airport, although the city’s unreliable web site, ever out-of-date as usual, still lists Brian Spencer as manager. Commission members include Gail Molari, David Keator, Robert Malhotra, chairman Chris Pederson, Ned Kirchner, Cliff Carmel, and a person named “Vacant.”

The city’s web page describes the airport’s six “primary functions” this way. Notice the bold faced section:

1. Provides airport infrastructure; marked asphalt runways, navigable airspace, taxiways, apron areas (36 acres), and to generate revenue for reliable and safe aircraft operations to accommodate both based and transient users.
2. Provides for and manages:

• nine aircraft hangar ground leases that comprise over 70,000 square feet of building space and over 250,000 square feet of asphalt aircraft tie down and apron areas;
• the Westwood Industrial Park which includes seven leased lots with buildings totaling over 23 acres; and
• one terminal building that is handicap accessible with managed lease spaces to accommodate the fixed base operator for aircraft charter, fueling, maintenance, flight training, sales and general aviation services.Ensures and regulates aircraft fueling services which are provided to both based and transient aircraft as part of contractual services by the fixed base operator.
• 3. Ensures and regulates aircraft fueling services which are provided to both based and transient aircraft as part of contractual services by the fixed base operator.
      
  4. Contracts with two national rental car agencies to provide rental car services for transient aircraft operators.
      
  5. Provides, manages, and maintains over 80 short and long term parking spaces.
      
  6. Manages public vending services that include soft drinks and snacks.

The Westwood park came into being in the mid-1980s, when Charlie Smith was mayor. The idea was to create the park and sell outright or lease the lots to create a new revenue stream for the city. That’s you, taxpayers. As we’ve seen during this probe of the airport, it didn’t work out that way. There has been plenty of revenue, but precious little of it went to the public treasury. Where did the rest of it go? To whom? How much? and Why?

Leases Done ‘Under the Table’

The city and the Pittsfield Economic Redevelopment Corp. (PERC) developed the business park using federal grants, the kind of “free” money that destroyed West Street in the name of “urban renewal.” The initial plan was to sell the building lots outright, but when the state objected, the city offered long-term leases. Get this: The first two leases were for 40 years at $40 — yes, the city agreed to a whopping $80 over the collective 80 years. And you thought the Indians got rooked selling Manhattan for $24 worth of trinkets. Heck, that’s worth about $1,000 in today money.

Snuck said his research showed the leases were done “under the table.” At the mayoral panel’s second meeting, Ann Dobrowolski of the Office of Community Development claimed that the leases were signed by all affected parties: the city, the state, the FAA, and the renters. But when THE PLANET asks, “Show us the contracts,” Dobrowolski told the mayor’s panel that the city couldn’t find them. Put that together with what Snuck said about leasing arrangements being done under the table, and you can guess why no paperwork can be found — “Wink-winks” among “Friends, Allies, and The Connected” written in invisible ink.

Even at the ruinous lease rates, Dobrowolski says, the city agreed to give 85% of the money to PERC. Taxpayers get a measley 15%. Let’s see: 15% of $80 = $12. Thus, THE PLANET can break this shocker: For 80 lease years at Westwood, taxpayers will receive a grand total of 15 cents a year, or a little more than a penny a month.

Does anyone wonder, with this sort of practice going on not just at the airport but for a generation in just about every municipal department, why the final act on The City of Pittsfield is about five years away?

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“Mind is a light which the Gods mock us with, / To lead those false who trust it” — Matthew Arnold, from Act 1, Scene II, Empedocles on Etna, (1852).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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