Frank Castiglia Jr.: Oswego County Airport Is A Money Pit

To the Editor,

Money Pit- A possession that creates substantial ongoing expenses, one whose costs are considered to be unsustainable.
Since 2013 the Oswego county Airport has lost a total of $1 million dollars. (If we went further back in the history of the Airport the total loss might be around $2 million)

With this knowledge in hand your Oswego county legislature again on Thursday April 15th voted to add an additional $600,000 to help build a 3,000 sq.ft. Terminal, bringing the cost to $1.8 million dollars. In the words of the Mgr. of the airport in the monthly Infrastructure committee meeting,” It’s about the size of a double wide”.

Now someone will say that only about 5% of the costs will be local share. I for one don’t know of anyone that doesn’t pay Federal or State taxes, which is where the other 95% will be coming from.

They moved the additional $600,000 at the April 15th meeting from the fund to do the Volney Sewer project. Now that project would bring a service to the taxpayers and also bring in revenue.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have an Airport in Oswego County, what I am saying is that it shouldn’t be at the cost of the Taxpayers of Oswego County.

Taxpayer money should always go for services for the taxpayers. If this were a business and you were on the board of directors you would look for a buyer and get out of the Airport business. I don’t want the Airport closed but the county should start looking for a private buyer to take on the costs.

In that April 15th meeting Minority leader Marie Schadt presented an argument to stop the spending. It was such a strong argument that the majority caucus called for a time out to get their troops all lined up.

Each year the airport management asks for more and more money and makes promises to bring in profits. It hasn’t happened yet and the spending to keep a losing business open has to stop.

Frank Castiglia jr.

Print this entry