ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
A project with Air Products could be one step closer to happening thanks to some action from the Liberal City Commission Tuesday evening.
Liberal City Manager Scarlette Diseker opened the conversation.
"As you all are aware, the City of Liberal has been in talks with the Air Products Helium team for close to a year regarding the purchase of land south of the Mid-America Air Museum. The survey and appraisal have been completed. We have attached the formal Letter of Intent for the commission's approval," Diseker said. "The appraisal came in at $34,000, or $11,564.63 per acre. We don't typically do LOI's with these types of things, but in the case of Air Products, we are."
"We didn't want another Air Products project that didn't come to fruition, so this is part of their side of everything," City Attorney Lynn Koehn added. "They just wanted to make sure all the ducks were in a row."
"So then how binding is an LOI?" commissioner Jeff Parsons asked.
"Pretty binding, actually. They're going to do feasibility studies and other studies, and if they find it's not feasible to proceed with the project, that terminates everything before an actual contract is put in place," Koehn said. "And if all conditions are met and they feel the feasibility study shows everything they want it to, then that's when discussions of the contract and everything get started, and I know there's a certain amount of time that all needs to get done in."
"And it's my understanding the only way to terminate everything is the clause that says after six months, if things haven't moved forward like they should, then everything is shut down?" Liberal Mayor Jose Lara asked, which Koehn affirmed.
After some more discussion, Liberal citizen John Smith spoke to the commission with some concerns.
"I want to first say, I'm all for economic development and helping grow the community, but I think in this particular instance of doing the development in what appears to be land that's non-aviation oriented and utilizing ramp/taxi space and airport access, that could potentially be cutting off opportunities in the future for aviation development," Smith said. "Whether that's flights, air spraying, etc., there has to be that taxiway access. I've had a couple people ask my thoughts on this, and it was only brought to my attention this morning when I saw it was on the agenda. I don't know what the airport advisory committee has recommended, if anything. I think this is a wrong space to be selling property with airport-direct access and cutting off potential activity for the development of aviation-oriented work in the future. I wanted to share my concerns, having been involved in aviation for multiple decades now. I've been to a lot of airports and seen a lot of things, and to have the airport we have, it's an asset the community must protect in order to keep that airport access available along with other industrial spaces located around that area."
"Would any of those lots actually have the ability to build access to the airport?" Lara asked.
"The only thing is, on the south side of that lot, there is a drainage ditch that does interact, so that's a bit of a barrier to get to the airport from that lot," Airport Manager Brian Fornwalt said.
"From what I can tell, though, it's not as though that lot buts immediately against the taxiway and still a bit of a distance away," Parsons said. "The southern border is really almost on the curve of General Welch Blvd., so I would consider it more industrial property than airport property. However, I also agree with John's concerns, and we probably should've run this past legal counsel at some point. That's how I see it."
After some more discussion, the commission ultimately voted to table voting until its next meeting in order to give the airport committee time to review some aspects of the agreement.
Also on the agenda was discussion of updated lighting at some of the parks in town.
“Per the agenda information, the Parks Department is requesting approval to purchase solar walking path lights for Country Club Park, South Blue Bonnet Park, Mahuron Park, and McCray Park,” Parks Director Bruce Young said. “There are many members in the community who feel there is a need for better lighting in our parks. The addition of lights to our parks will increase the safety and accessibility for our citizens. This purchase will consist of the following: Country Club Park/Sunflower pathway (75 Bollard path lights with 30-foot spacing); South Blue Bonnet Park: (32 pole mount lights on 20-foot poles with 120-foot spacing); Mahuron Park (19 pole mount lights on 20-foot poles with 120-foot spacing); and McCray Park (15 pole mount lights on existing poles with 80-foot spacing). These lights are backed by a five-year bumper-to-bumper warranty, and batteries with a 10-plus year life expectancy. Installation will be done in-house by the Parks Department.”
“Didn’t we just do some updated lighting at McCray Park?” Parsons asked.
“This would replace those lights,” Young said. “They worked fine when we got them, but they reached their two-year warranty limit, and we’ve had failures on roughly six of those lights. I reached out to that manufacturer, and they claim their warranty on the battery is already over. And right now, with the way things are, the expense of replacing the batteries is more than the fixture itself. But we would use those existing poles, there are no issues with them.”
After some more discussion, the commission approved the purchase of path lighting from First Light Technologies to include Country Club Park, South Blue Bonnet Park, and Mahuron Park for an amount not to exceed $348,000, to be funded by the Streets, Drainage, and Capital Improvement portion of the 1-cent Sales Tax. Also approved was the McCray Park lighting for an amount not to exceed $52,000, which will be funded by the Crime Prevention portion of the 1-cent Sales Tax.
In other new business, the commission awarded the Doll Addition RHID bid to French Construction in the amount of $1,439,755 and later approved the addition of a parallel taxiway to the crosswind runway at Liberal Municipal Airport, with the total project cost estimate for the project being $6,353,000. With the project, the FAA will pay 95 percent, and the City of Liberal will pay 5 percent, which amounts to $317,650.
The commission also approved the purchase of Genesis rescue tools & chargers from Emergency Fire Equipment for $48,948 and accepted a bid from INA Alert for the installation of door access control systems and entered into a contract for this project, with a total not to exceed $170,000.
To conclude the meeting’s new business, the commission approved utility billing waivers for Stepping Stone Shelter in the amount of $6,779.75.
