There currently is no legal requirement that there be a nexus between urban renewal spending and an increase in the property tax base. If there were, any number of urban renewal projects –past, present and future –would fail that test.

Yet I strongly suspect that if such a requirement were added to the current law, Mr. Landauer’s group would howl in protest.

The right kind of services and/or maintenance spending could easily be as justifiable as any number of things that the Portland Development Commission and the City Council spend TIFF dollars on.

Should that authority be reeled in? Absolutely! But opposition from the special districts and redevelopment agencies seems based on no principle beyond the desire to avoid sharing their pie with anybody else.

There are 36 companies here employing over 900 people (most of who live north of the river) including of course; Columbia Helicopter’s which has approximately 600 employees with 400 onsite.

My company; Aurora Aviation, Inc. is a Flight School, Aircraft; Charter, Maintenance, Refueling, Rental, and Sales company that has been here since 1968.

Vans; the largest kit plane manufacturer in the world is here along with dozens of companies business jets, HTS another large commercial helicopter company is just building a thier new headqaurters here, an air-ambulance company, two flight schools, one of the largest Avionics sales companies in the Nation, and much more.

This Airport is a very significant piece of the local economy and could do much more with this “self-funded” bill passed.

Thank you and please contact me with any questions.

All that being said I don’t think this is the best mechanism to support what are arguable real needs to upgrade and expand in some cases some of our rural airports.

I also would say that I think Aurora is a unique situation and is in no way what you typically think of as a rural airport. Over the last 10 years or so it has grown quite rapidly and with most of that growth coming from serving customers in the metro area. The airport is not in metros boundary but for all intensive purposes it is an integral part of the metro regions transportation network, and thous would be useful for it to be thought of as such. It might make sense for it to become a special district that would work more closely with metros transportation authorities. With the assumption that coordinated long term planning would result in a more efficient, economical and reliable air transportation system for the metro region going into the future.