Santa Paula wrote:

I would first like to apologize for not getting something out to all of you sooner.  As you can imagine everyone has been really busy.

The first news is that we should have some kind of a runway up and going by Monday afternoon.  I will not know the specifics of it until we hear from Cal Trans on Monday.  The best I can hope
for right now is an "R" runway that will have a Prior Permision Required status so that we can let people in on a limited basis to get to all the shops.  It will be about 1220 feet with a displaced
threshold of 200 feet on the west end.

The second news is that it looks like we will have the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Services) working to repair the river bank and fill in the big hole in our airport in the near future.  It
is my understanding that we have gotten funding approval and the engineering design will start next week.  I think that once they have the engineering worked out, they will start working.  All of
this is wonderful, but we can expect to be working off of a limited use airport for some time.  The more this process moves on, the more I will be able to tell you.

I think all of you need to understand that the Airport Association at this point has had about $250,000 in work done to shore up the damage and stop the erosion from getting any worse.  It appears
as if at this point we are holding our own, but we are going to be watching things very closely.  It does not look like we are going to be re-imbursed by any agencies for this work.  I have started
soliciting for donations on our web sites.  There are actually two up and going now, santapaulaairport.net and santapaulaairport.org.  I want to thank Jennifer Lawrence and Kris Dawson for getting
those up and running in such a short time.  We have a link from the AOPA website and we hope that people will do whatever they can to try and help us with these bills.

If any of you have any suggestions on fundraisers, please come by and see me.  We can use all the help we can get at this point.

I have been trying to apply for disaster funds for the airport since the January Storms damaged the tie down area that is now completely gone.  What I have learned is that because of the way the
Airport Association is structured, we are not eligible for any disaster assistance.  I have been looking into ways that we can re-organize so that if any future disaster ever strikes the airport we
will not be in this position again.  I am getting things organized and will present all our options to you at our Annual Meeting.

I will try and get updates out to you as they come in.

Rowena Mason

 
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