Comments and feedback are being accepted by the City of Williams Lake as Council seeks to consider adopting a new improvement airport fee that would see passengers at the Williams Lake Regional Airport paying an additional $10.
The amendment to the airport fees bylaw received first, second, and third readings Tuesday.
If added to the Per Passenger Fee, the then combined $25 fee will become one of the highest charged when compared to nearby airports.
“That’s why we want to go to the public to see is that exorbitant, is too high,” said Cobb.
“I don’t know that an extra ten dollars on a ticket to Vancouver or whatever is going to make much difference one way or another, and we don’t want to be the highest in the province for sure so we looked at that, and we looked at other areas and who’s charging what.”
“We took the maximum and then we can adjust accordingly depending on the feedback that we get.”
Cobb maintains because the airport is regional users should be paying the costs of maintaining it and not just the residents of the City of Williams Lake.
“There’s going to be an increase one way or the other in the fees at the airport for tickets and passengers,” he said.
“By us going to a user fee or increasing the user fee to cover the costs rather than just putting it on the tax notice is in my mind the way to go.”
The implementation of the Airport Improvement Fees if adopted will provide on average estimated $352 thousand per year in additional revenue.
It was determined according to the City’s Chief Financial Officer, Vitali Kozubenko to provide the amount of funding needed for upcoming ground side projects at the airport.
“The incremental revenues collected through this fee will be sufficient to repay the short-term capital borrowing to fund these airport ground side capital projects over 4 to 5 years,” Kozubenko said in a report.
A tentative date for the adoption of the bylaw is September 18.