Upper Cumberland Airport Board Votes to Raise Rates for Tenants

Upper Cumberland Regional Airport has, after many years, raised their hanger rates for tenants. At the May 12 Board meeting, it was passed to raise the hangar rates to $350.00 monthly. This was after a lot of calculations from both Director Dean Selby and board members Chad Marcum and Martin Ing.

During the April meeting, it was addressed that the airport was far behind on their hanger rates, not having raised them in some time. Director Selby confirmed that the standard, break-even rate would even be an increase. With upcoming repairs on some hangers as well, he believed it was untenable for them not to raise the rates. The matter was tabled so Chad Marcum and Martin Ing could evaluate the numbers themselves and present to the Board a potential rate. Marcum reported that with the current rates, taxpayers from White County, Sparta, Cookeville, and Putnam are basically having to cover some of the costs from these hangers.

“It’s a large change, but it’s important we don’t use taxpayer funds to cover costs that tenants should cover,” said Chad Marcum. “Taxpayer dollars are for improvements to the airport, improving it for the residents.”

The new $350.00 rate will take place starting July 1 at the beginning of the next fiscal year. The hangers also had repairs that needed to be addressed due to issues arising from the old construction. While there was debate if the full $28,475 could be split up to only repair the part of the hangar roof that needed repairs, the board eventually agreed to approve all the repairs.

The new airport website also got an update. It is expected to finish within the fiscal year, so the end of June at most, but it is the hope of the airport that it can get up and running by the end of May. The new website will have agendas, hanger information, and policies all publicly available on a single, uniform website.

The Airport Board has also changed its scheduling due to some changes in uploading those agendas to the website. To ensure the agendas are publicly viewable 48 hours before the meeting, Airport Board meetings will now be on the second Wednesday of the month, instead of Tuesday.