Fullerton : Council Due to Consider Increasing Airport Fees

The city’s effort to make its municipal airport self-supporting could cost plane owners up to 79% more in monthly rents.

A proposal for new fees is on the City Council agenda for tonight. If adopted, the new fees would raise the monthly tie-down fee to $75, up $5 from the current price, and the monthly hangar fee to $260, up from the present $145.

Airport Director Rod Murphy said the new fees are in reaction to both the City Council’s and Transportation Commission’s desire to keep fees comparable to other airports’ and to raise enough airport revenue to pay airport operating costs.

“The way we have it penciled out now, we would reach that point and have a little left over in about four years,” Murphy said.

Murphy is also proposing that the city spend about $1 million to build five new hangars that would house 56 aircraft. That would about double the hangar space available at the airport.

“We have 160 people waiting for hangars, and some have been waiting for 15 years,” Murphy said.

If included in the upcoming city budget, the new hangars would be ready early in 1988, Murphy said. Plane owners displaced by redevelopment construction at the airport have first priority for new hangar space, he said. That would leave about 30 new spaces for owners on the waiting list.

About 580 planes now are based at Fullerton Municipal Airport, where about 170,000 takeoffs and landings were recorded last year.