RTA votes to accept grant, but maybe not the money

Grant awardees to be announced September 30

The Gunnison Valley Rural Transportation Authority (RTA) voted last week to accept, if it’s offered, a $350,000 federal grant to expand summer air service.

At the same time, the group agreed that accepting the grant does not mean actually accepting the money. Confused?
The RTA applied for the grant—which requires a local match of up to $175,000 for each of the next two years—in August after it received more than 190 letters of community support. Yet, even as the final paperwork was being submitted, RTA board members were voicing their concern about the impact the grant and its associated increase in summer air service would have on winter flights in and out of the valley.
“The big questions is, should we be helping summer more at the expense of winter?” asked RTA board member Aaron Huckstep during the group’s August meeting.
Chris Morgan, RTA board chairman, went so far as to say that if an expansion in summer air service reduced the group’s ability to support winter air service in any way, he would not support the program to any degree.
The issue was not resolved, and instead was revisited at the September 13 meeting in Gunnison, where once again the board went back and forth over the import of encouraging year-round service to the valley. This time the conversation focused on the realization that the awardees of the grant would be announced on September 30—and the group needed to reach a consensus on whether it would accept any money, if it were to be offered.
“As far as the board is concerned, we need to have a discussion because there are things that need to happen,” said RTA airline consultant Kent Myers. “Grant winners need to put out a letter of acceptance for the grant. It’s not a final agreement; you can still decide at a later time that you don’t want to pull the trigger on this, but they do need a letter of commitment.”
While Myers went on to say it was premature to begin negotiations with any airline prior to the grant’s being awarded, the RTA’s tentative plan for using the grant money would be either to contract with United Airlines to bring in direct summer flights from Houston, or to work with American Airlines to secure flights from Dallas. There is also the potential to sign-on with US Airlines to operate direct flights from Phoenix. The increase in operations would take place from mid-June through mid-September.
“This is an opportunity to do something new and different and to leverage outside dollars to make a more sustainable year-round air service,” said RTA board member Paula Swenson. “The best-case scenario is that we fill every flight, we grow our service and we don’t pay the cap. If the money we’re putting out for this isn’t needed we could put it toward winter service and grow that program.”
Board member Jonathan Houck offered his support of the summer program. “If we can put some money toward summer service, we can redirect savings back to growing the whole program, which could include winters.”
But Huckstep still appeared uncomfortable with banking on summer service to back winter flights. “We really don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “It’s a risk versus benefit scenario. Are we really going to grow the air service? I can’t help but feel we don’t have enough planning if things don’t work out. We’ve seen continued declines in winter service nearly every year and that’s hard. That’s not good.”
“There is some risk involved,” said RTA executive director Scott Truex, “but summer service may build recognition and consistency and the people who fly on that summer flight would come back in winter.”
Morgan then told the board that they needed to put aside the details and decide simply if they would accept the grant, should it be offered. The group voted unanimously in favor of accepting, saying they would figure out whether they would actually take the money at a later date.
“We can still back out if negotiations are not successful, or if finances do not allow,” said Swenson.