Mountain View County is looking for more funding support from the province for both of its regional airports.
Reeve Angela Aalbers says they are also looking for more flexibility in how the current grants can be utilized for the Sundre Airport and the Olds/Didsbury Airport.
She says there are a lot of stipulations on those that don’t allow the County to utilize those funds for projects that are for the most benefit of the airports. Reeve Aalbers says they recently received a disappointing letter of correspondence from the province regarding their ask for more support. She says it very similar to a letter they received months ago.
She points out that they did do a lot of lobbying of different municipalities and they had a lot of municipal support from others – both rural and urban municipalities. The County was hoping the ministry of Transportation would take that into account, but she says they did not. Reeve Aalbers says “we do see them (airports) as an economic development opportunity. It’s in our economic development strategy to look at both of the airports for growth. We are hoping that, for instance, the growth of aviation within Alberta with De Havilland coming into Wheatland County that we would see some off-shoot benefits. We continue to look for opportunities, we continue to market our airports, and we are hoping that we will see some increased activity for commercial/industrial and just aviation in general.”
Reeve Aalbers says Mountain View County council reviewed the correspondence from the province during last Wednesday’s meeting in Olds. She says they will distribute the letter to the other municipalities, get their feedback, and continue to move forward and look for every opportunity they can to improve the airports and reduce the reliance of tax dollars on those airports and then the County will have another discussion at the upcoming 2025 budget deliberations.