Paulding Airport Authority (PCAA) last week voted to move $559,198 to the county to be used to repay principal and interest on the Series 2013 $3.6 million bond issue. Funds are set to move upon the maturity of the residual funds investment instrument around the middle of September, as discussed in the PCAA’s August meeting.
Interim Airport Director Terry Tibbitts said during a town hall-styled open meeting that followed last week’s airport authority meeting that the Paulding County Airport Authority does not have the funds to make its next payment due on bonds issued in 2013 for lengthening the airport’s runway and taxiway – leaving it to the Paulding Board of Commissioners, since the county government secured the funds.
Tibbitts, who has been guiding operations at Silver Comet Field since June, noted that the airport authority earlier that day had voted regarding the almost $560,000 in static funds.
In 2012 New York-based Propeller Airports contracted with the airport authority to recruit a commercial passenger airline that would offer limited commercial service and applied for federal approval of the plan in 2013, which soon led a group of local residents and a divided Board of Commissioners to file lawsuits, seeking to halt the commercialization effort. The FAA in May then announced it would not decide on the airport’s request until all legal actions cannot be appealed – which some officials have said could take up to two years.
Propeller had agreed to make bond payments but stopped prior to deciding to sue the county commission for intervening in its effort to bring limited commercial service, which is one of several suits still ongoing.
Tibbitts told Paulding Commissioners in July there are “....half a dozen legal actions over the Part 139.” The ‘139’ certification is associated with approval to add limited commercial service to Silver Comet Field.
PCAA’s legal budget for next year is set [initially] for $60,000, which Tibbitts said, he expected would probably go higher based on last year’s expenses. According to Tibbitts PCAA officials were relying on the revenue from the company to repay the bonds. Tibbitts responded to a query during last week’s town hall regarding any alternate funding source for repayment of the $3.6 million in bonds, saying that airport officials have no solution for that.
Tibbitts had served since May as the airport’s liaison to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates and provided much of the funding to build Silver Comet Field in 2007. The Paulding County Airport Authority then hired Tibbitts to a three-month contract as interim director to take over from former director Blake Swafford, who left in May. And he is included among several candidates under review by the Airport Authority’s board for the permanent position.
In terms of the airport itself Tibbitts stated that he felt Paulding’s Silver Comet Field could compete as an aviation airport since other metro airports McCollum and DeKalb-Peachtree are at their capacity.
The airport makes revenue from aircraft owners along with tenants McNeel Builders Inc. and newest tenant Silver Comet Maintenance, which keeps operations in the black, Tibbitts said.
With regard to the amount of activity at the Paulding airport, Tibbitts said the FAA and Silver Comet Field will not limit use of any airport to certain times of the day.
To do so, Tibbitts said, would violate an agreement made with the FAA in exchange for millions of dollars in grant money used “to build this airport and maintain it.”
He added that the federal government formerly controlled the number of flights at each U.S. airport, but government deregulation by the late 1970s removed those controls.
Volume is now based on the economics of those flights for their owners, Tibbitts said, but he pointed out that the airport can control the volume of flights based on what it can physically handle.

Photo Credit: R. Grant