Time to focus

Nov 14, 2007

Barry Morris will be the first to say he’s no politician, and it is clear that for all of the enthusiasm and aviation experience he has brought to his position as chair of the South River-Sundridge airport, he has made some mistakes on the political side.

His intentions are good. Make no mistake. There is no doubt Morris is sincere in his desire to save a valuable community asset, nor that he is the councillor with the drive and the expertise to lead the effort. He’s working hard.

Since taking on the job almost a year ago, Morris has made it his mission to get people excited about the airport, to make them believe in its potential. He’s been generating hype. The problem is, he might also have sent entirely the wrong message to the people who most needed to listen to him.

Morris began with self-promotion. By his reasoning, bragging a little about his background would give him credibility. It did for many people. Unfortunately, more than a few saw it as some hotshot blowing his own horn.

Morris has also talked at least a little pie in the sky to get people excited about the airport’s potential. He’s been looking far into the future, and presenting every possibility as though it were just around the corner, encouraging everyone to think big. However, some of these ideas are too far removed from the present situation for many people to accept them. All the talk of paved runways, industry, coffee shops and the like have given some the impression that Morris is proposing something huge and costly and unrealistic. In fact, there is no solid plan yet, just possibilities that the committee has been investigating.

And it is the whole committee. The problem is that Morris has not delegated enough of the airport work. While it’s true that most on the committee know next to nothing about running an airport, they do agree that it is worth saving. They need to grab some of the spotlight from Morris, who would, no doubt, be happy to give it up. But that is, perhaps, one goal he hasn’t looked at closely enough.

Morris deserves credit for passing some of his enthusiasm on to the committee members. What he hasn’t done enough of is pass on his knowledge. One of his concerns all along has been that his committee is unable to help much. But he should consider whether the problem is that his committee lacks his experience and dedication, or that he simply lacks patience. A better approach might have been to delegate the work, then devote his time to being teacher, coach and constant nag. He needs to have a little faith in the committee members and share more of the responsibility. Help them. Guide them. Hold their hands if necessary. It will take time, but the results will be worth it.

Morris knows he’s taken too much on himself. It’s taking up all of his time, and he’s burning out. On top of that, to those not in the know, the airport looks like his own vanity project, when there are five municipalities and many citizens behind it.

The good news is that he’s recognizing this and trying to delegate more, to the point of forming subcommittees, smaller groups under the airport committee with specific responsibilities. Morris wants to step back, and he’s recruiting respected local people who know business and aviation to help out.

The other bit of good news is that real plans are beginning to take shape, and those plans will most likely begin with making proper use of the airport’s existing strengths to bring in users who will buy fuel, lease lots to build hangars, pay taxes and give the airport some income to make other improvements.

And now that things are starting to happen, it’s time for the pie in the sky to go bye-bye for a while. No more talk about attracting visitors with miniature golf and hiking trails. By all accounts, people will keep their planes at our airport because it’s only a 15-minute flight from Parry Sound where things are getting crowded. The municipalities can get away with providing clean washrooms, a vending machine and one employee to maintain the runways, pump the gas and deal with the public.

The time has come to focus and prioritize. The only things the committee should be concerned with at this point are getting a new manager, buying a tractor, making the terminal presentable, and especially marketing lots for private hangars. The income from hangars will greatly offset those other costs, as could some fundraising by the flying club.

The estimate floating around is that the airport, as it stands, has room for about 70 hangars. If that number can be firmed up a bit, it’s safe to say that acquiring Crown land is not an immediate concern. Save it for later, when it’s needed.

Paved runways are something else that can go on the back burner. Grass is adequate for small, piston-driven planes, and there are plenty of those around. It might also comfort the neighbours somewhat to hear that there are no plans to attract jets or large turboprop aircraft anytime soon. That means no more talk of water bombers, at least for now.

And with all of that stuff off the immediate to-do list, the task at hand seems less daunting.

This is not to say that Morris doesn’t deserve credit for keeping the airport’s problems and it’s potential in front of residents, councillors and higher levels of government for months. He just needs to scale his vision back to what can happen in the next couple of years and put the same energy into promoting that. He’ll spin his wheels far less.

And Morris is right that committee procedures need to change. A lot of time gets wasted going to every council for approval of everything that needs to be done. The councils should control the purse strings, for sure. However, they should only be concerning themselves with the big-ticket items: vehicles, salary, yearly budgets, major improvements. There has to be a reasonable threshold below which the airport committee can act autonomously.

What pilots need more than anything right now is some assurance that if they invest their money in a hangar, the airport management will have answers to their questions, the municipalities won’t bury them in red tape, and the airport itself won’t be closing up in the foreseeable future. To give them that assurance, the buck has to stop somewhere. It can’t go on getting passed five ways.

But in order to have that autonomy the airport committee needs to have a few (emphasis on few) set goals that are simple, realistic and affordable. It’s time for the brainstorming to stop and the action to begin. No more dreaming. No more hype. Just make the airport viable.

The time to talk about the airport’s future is when everybody is sure that it has one.