Council approves Airport Advisory Committee

Home City News Council approves Airport Advisory Committee

The Hillsdale City Council approved the formation of an Airport Advisory Committee Monday. Councilmembers hope it will better the Hillsdale Municipal Airport and improve Hillsdale’s economy.

Councilperson Adam Stockford, who will assist Mayor Scott Sessions in choosing the candidates for the committee board, said it’s been a long time since the council created a committee and should use the opportunity to promote ne ways of prospering Hillsdale’s economy.

“The airport kind of just sits over there and hasn’t been used as a tool for economic development,” Stockford said. “So many other communities try to do that with their airports. My vision is that [the committee] will operate pretty much sovereign from city council, because airport economic development is very specific, and nobody on the council or city administration really knows that much about it.”

Stockford said the committee will have three goals: improve the airport, generate more revenue, and encourage more people to use it. While the committee will make recommendations to the city council, the committee is still “100 percent advisory,” Stockford said.

After approving the committee, the council also approved an amendment to the purchase of a vehicle for the police department. The final price of the vehicle was approximately $1,000 more than the original price presented to the council at its Sept. 15 meeting, due to what acting City Manager Doug Terry called “a simple administrative oversight.”

“Administratively we saw an error, and we went back to the city council and it was corrected,” Terry said. “We still ended up buying locally.”

From the purchase date, it will take 120 days until the vehicle is delivered to the police department.

“I take sole responsibility for this, I apologize,” Terry said during the meeting.

In other business, Councilperson Patrick Flannery proposed a procedural modification to the city council so meetings will run smoother. Flannery asked to create a deadline by which councilpersons must submit amendments to meeting agendas.

Without a deadline, “I’m concerned that councilpersons and the public don’t have proper time to review amendments to the agenda,” Flannery said.

Before Monday’s meeting, for example, Flannery said he didn’t know about new additions to the agenda until “late [that] afternoon.”

The council sent the proposal to the Operation and Governance Committee while Terry looks into other cities’ procedures for reference.

“We should have the flexibility to put stuff on the agenda, however, I have no problem investigating what other cities do,” Terry said.