Airport Master Plan 2012 - City of Waterville

7.0 Airport Management Structure Assessment
This Chapter comprised of Working Paper #4 - “Assessment for Creating an Airport Authority”:
Summarizes findings to aid the City of Waterville in choosing the best course of action for the ownership
and management of the Airport.
7.1 Review Current Management Structure
As with Phase 1 of the Master Plan, the scope of work for this task involved the collection of data for the
purpose of evaluating the City’s current Airport management structure. Based on information provided
by the City, other data collection efforts, interviews with City personnel, Airport tenants and other Airport
users, the objective was to:
Evaluate how well the Airport is currently being managed as a city entity, both the Airfield
Management and the FBO management. This effort will include a review and assessment of the
Airport manager’s role & responsibilities, staffing issues, airfield operations, and budget
requirements.
Identify any (obvious or potential) problem areas in the current management structure.
This task of the working paper focuses primarily on assessing the facility’s Airport management structure.
The Phase II Master Plan Update discusses business planning issues as part of the Airport’s future
implementation plan.
Airport Management
Historically, there was no legislative requirement in the State of Maine for cities or towns to provide a
formal, full-time Airport manager. Title 6 of the Maine state statutes requires general aviation
commercial Airports to have at least a part-time Airport manager 1 . Budgeting issues, municipal
resources, aviation market demands and regional competition are just some of the factors that influence
municipal leaders when considering the best management option for their Airport. With ever-increasing
economic pressures and considering the nature of the state Airport system in Maine, in particular the
relatively high number of Airports compared to the low number of based aircraft resulting in a diluted
client base, it is not surprising that many host communities opt to manage their Airports with part-time
personnel; in some cases there simply is not enough activity to warrant, or local resources to support, a
full-time Airport manager. In other instances based aircraft numbers are higher, more transient activity
occurs, Airport leasing potential is greater, and other development opportunities exist, which contribute to
revenue streams that support more staff. This AMPU study addresses many of these issues as it relates to
the Waterville Airport.
1 MRS Title 6 § 102.2 Airport Managers, paragraph A.
The City of Waterville Maine
Airport Management Structure Assessment – Page 7-1
Airport Solutions Group, LLC & The Louis Berger Group, Inc. December 2011