By Katie Northcott, News Director
NOTE: Some grammatical fixes have been made to this article.
At its meeting on Tuesday, June 9, the Tullahoma Airport Authority (TAA) voted unanimously to end its moratorium on accepting rent, accepting new leases, and allowing new construction. The moratorium will be lifted on July 1.
In January, the TAA voted to enact a moratorium on all hangar construction and new leases until a new lease guideline can be written and approved. The TAA also stopped accepting rent. In May, the TAA hired an aviation attorney to go over current leases and develop a new lease template.
“With [the aviation attorney’s] advice, I think that we have a recommendation to end the moratorium. There’s no legal obligation to continue it,” Assistant Airport Manager Gavin Dishon said. “We can lift the moratorium for July 1. That gives us enough time to get our letters together, get them sent out, and give people plenty of time to review them.”
Airport clients whose leases have expired during the moratorium should expect a letter of notification that their lease has expired. The TAA also approved templates for tiedown leases and community hangar leases and acknowledged that they voted in November to set ground rates at 5 cents per square foot per month.
Any checks that were sent to the TAA and were not cashed due to the moratorium will be destroyed. Dishon said that the TAA would require clients to clearly label checks with the lease it corresponds to. The name on the check must match the name on the lease being paid.
“They’ve got to put their hangar number on the checks,” TAA Chairman Karla Smith said. “We had checks come in with nothing in the memo, and that’s where we found out, as [the aviation attorney] will tell you, names on checks did not match names on leases, and that’s where there was some confusion on who was on first and who was on second.”
The airport only accepts credit and debit card payments. Cash and check payments may be made at City Hall.
Jeffrey Jackson, who has attended multiple TAA meetings representing Curl Construction, has been vocal about how the moratorium has affected a hangar construction project.
“We ordered a building, had the building delivered, tried to have it delivered to our spot on the airport and was denied access to our spot to our lease to put our building out there,” Jackson said at a TAA meeting on April 14. “So now we have this $400,000 building sitting off site that has already been invested in.”
During the June 9 meeting, the TAA discussed sending Curl Construction a 30-day notice of breach of contract. Curl Construction must meet certain milestones on its hangar project within 60 days or its lease will be terminated.
Jackson said that Curl Construction would likely be able to meet the milestones. He said the company would attempt to get a final permit from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before the moratorium is lifted on July 1.
