City councils in Loveland and Fort Collins voted last week to approve an intergovernmental agreement to immediately dissolve the Northern Colorado Regional Airport Commission. It's a step toward creating a governing authority for the airport that is owned by both cities.
Before the first airport authority can convene, the facility will be governed by Airport Director John Kinney and the two city managers, Loveland’s Jim Thompson and Fort Collins’ Kelly DiMartino, with major policy decisions remaining with the city councils.
The seven-member commission included the mayors and city managers of both cities and three other stakeholders. Because neither Loveland mayor Jacki Marsh nor Fort Collins mayor Jeni Arndt chose to run for re-election, commission members felt this would be a good time to disband the panel.
Loveland and Fort Collins agreed in 1963 to jointly build and operate the regional airport, which opened in 1964 under joint agreement and ownership. The governance structure was updated in 2015, and efforts to reshape it began in 2023.
Concerns have emerged from general-aviation aircraft owners and other stakeholders that the gap between the dissolution of the commission and the establishment of the authority would lead to problems in addressing issues at the airport, codenamed FNL. Rick Turley, a board member of the FNL Pilots Association, unsuccessfully urged Kinney and the panel not to disband until an authority is in place.
“While the current NCRA Commission includes three pilots as members,” Turley wrote, “the City Councils do not include citizen members with expertise in aviation issues. It seems unlikely that either City Council will have the time, energy or expertise to provide this oversight. Since the beginning of 2025, current airport users have seen a substantive decrease in their ability to influence or contribute to airport direction or decisions.”
Turley wrote that “the Airport Authority is not planned to be fully formed before January 2027. This is more than a year away. This will leave only the respective City Councils with any authority to review airport staff decisions or hear airport stakeholder concerns. Given the other important topics before the respective councils, it seems unlikely that airport staff will be subject to any meaningful oversight between the dissolution of the current commission and the creation of the new authority.”
Turley cited major issues yet to be addressed, including the scheduled increase in the Airport Operations Area badging fees from $15 to $70, the permanent closure of “crosswind runway” 6/24, and the “lack of progress on proposals to build replacement hangars for the razed A/B hangars and the planned closure of C hangars.”
Reached last week, ahead of the vote, Turley said the new governance model, once in place, is “a great idea, and I have no problem with the long-term direction we’re headed. I think their perception is that the commission is somewhat of a hindrance to the process of creating an airport authority.”
