Cornwall Ontario – The City and Township of South Glengarry are about to review a report from a consultant about the Cornwall Regional Airport.
After reading the report this writer is stunned at the money pit that it’s been for taxpayers of Cornwall, and how badly the file has been handled.
Simply put, the current paradigm has zero chance of success. The runway is too small and the City of Cornwall essentially has been bankrolling a facility in South Glengarry that South Glengarry hasn’t been paying its fair share for. That’s insane. Almost as insane as the reports recommendation that Economic Development in Cornwall take over.
In a perfect world that might work, but with the utter failure of our ED under Bob Peters and Mark Boileau that’s like having Pennywise the Clown run a city owned daycare.
Frankly this has been a decades old black pit of cash for Cornwall that simply can’t create enough revenue without having at least at 5,000 foot runway. Adding that is only about $2-3 million dollars which for some strange reason hasn’t been done for said decades.
A big problem is that the facility is in fact not in Cornwall. Why have we been subsidizing this for South Glengarry?
Does it make sense at this point for the City to invest any further in this facility? Would it make sense to start a new Municipally owned airport on Cornwall land?
Let’s look at some more info from the report.
Essentially nearly 50% of the revenue to float the airport has come from the City of Cornwall. Essentially local taxpayers are subsidizing an airport for its few clients, nearly none of which are actually from Cornwall. Is that insane?
South Glengarry, only in 2016 upped its yearly kick of only $10K per year. Again, insanity.
Only $4K for the entire year for Cornwall Aviation? Holy Mitch Gagne! Again, how do these sweetheart deals get made?
Does Cornwall need an airport? Not at these costs. Adding a longer runway would change the paradigm, but to whose benefit? Clearly the status quo makes no sense for the City of Cornwall. Closing art galleries, and cutting services and weak infrastructure reserves make so sense when you are subsidizing an airport in another municipality, does it?
Loading ...And clearly short of South Glengarry coming to the plate we should no longer subsidize this airport as it really serves no purpose for our community. None. Zip, nada. You can’t even land a moderate sized jet there. Isn’t it time for Cornwall ratepayers to stop subsidizing the counties?
What do you think dear CFN viewers? You can post your comments below.
Cornwall doesn’t need an airport any more than Fitzie needs a second tail. Cornwall is so mighty small that if you sneeze then word gets around hat you sneezed. If Cornwall had an airport it would have to be a bush pilot thing or an outpost. Well both are out of the question and very close to Ottawa and Montreal for airports to handle all traffic. This was complete nonsense from the beginning.
Jules we have an airport, at least in name, in South Glengarry. It just doesn’t have a large enough runway to be fiscally viable.
Jamie Cornwall no longer has a Voyageur Station like it used to have and that benefitted people who don’t drive or don’t want to drive to their destinations. How in Gods name is Cornwall and area going to afford an airport of all things. Cornwall is in between two major cities even for business and all Cornwall needs is a good train system, bus system that goes to those cities, etc. and trucks.
There is Cornwall city council’s favourite word again, “consultant.” A lot of the consultants “work” handed out by council could be done by city staff. As for if Cornwall needs an airport…..NO. Anyone of significance coming to Cornwall will fly into Ottawa or Montreal. They aren’t going to fly into a large airport then get into a puddle jumper to get to Cornwall. Arrggghhhh!!!!!
Jamie the title that you used BOVINE PROJECTILE is exactly what they are a bunch of BSers and cannot do their job and they should all be replaced immediately. You could have made a movie out of these idiots into the Dumb and Dumber movie and they would fit in exactly. Cornwall went downhill because of people like that and if you compare Cornwall of past years to today it is a real scream. OMG.
.What about essential services such as hydro helicopters that do maintenance on power lines,OPP helicopters for search and rescue,Ornge for emergency air lifts, water bomber for fighting fires from the air. and The Ministry of Natural Resources.These are all services that utilize small airports and small communities are more vibrant because of these airports.