- Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's weekly celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks
- and I'm honored to serve as your president this year. Please silence your electronic devices. We have
- some technical challenges today so we will not have the closed captioning and we're a little bit limited
- on how far speakers can move away from the podium. Thank you all for getting here on this snowy day.
- I think Mike Wade wins an award. I think he walked here from home, which is pretty impressive on a day
- like today. This day in history, December 2nd, 1954, in a vote of 67 to 22, the US Senate censured Joseph
- McCarthy, Republican from Wisconsin, for conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.
- No members signed up to deliver today's reflection. We have open spots for next week and the following
- week as well. If you have something you'd like to say that doesn't cross any political or religious
- red lines, and you can say it in three minutes, please sign up. We were going to do an introduction
- of a new transfer member. I don't see Elijah here, so we'll skip over that.
- Tracy, we'll introduce our guests today. All right, as I call your name, if you would please stand so
- we can recognize you. First, we have our guest, Jaina Likens, guest of Carlos Loverty. Jaina? All right.
- And Brianna Sololo, guest of Jim Bright. And then Rodney Taylor, guest of Heidi Schultz.
- And do we have anyone online, Joyce? Tracy, we do not have any guests, just a bunch of rotary snow bunnies.
- All right, thank you. Thank you, Tracy. We have one birthday to celebrate today. Don Cedar sitting over
- there on the sixth birthday. We have several anniversaries to celebrate. On the seventh, our scholarship
- chair, Jeff Richardson, four years with the club.
- And on the fifth, Jim Harvey, 19 years, two stints with our club, 50 years total as a Rotarian. We have
- a number of announcements. Club Holiday Party is on December 11th at the Bloomington Country Club. Cash
- bar opens at 6, followed by dinner at 6.30. Tickets are $60 each.
- $10 of the ticket price supports club operations. You can pay for the tickets outright or you can be
- billed by the club for your tickets. So see me in person or email me if you'd like to join us. Our caterer
- wants to have a head count by December 4th. So so far I've heard from 20 either individuals as couples.
- So if you haven't talked to me or sent me an email, please do so. Remember, we will have no club meetings
- the last two
- two Tuesdays in December, so December 23rd, December 30th. We won't meet, please don't come here. One
- of those dates you actually might not be able to get in, but I'm not sure. Rotary Club organizational
- member Wheeler Mission has scheduled their 5K run walk, Dash for Shelter, Pars Farm Park, Saturday,
- December 6th. Please see me if you'd like additional information.
- Salvation Army bell ringing. Seven club members rang bells this past Saturday at Kroger East and Kroger
- South. Good news is we have all our spots covered for December 13th. The challenge is for this coming
- weekend, the 6th, we have five Rotarians signed up and we have seven spots to cover. So we're a service
- club with over 160 members.
- Some of our club members can no longer physically handle this type of service work. Some of our club
- members won't be in town. I don't think, you know, Raj living in Chicago probably shouldn't drive to
- Bloomington for two hour bell ringing. Some of our club members have other commitments. But still, I
- can't help but think that we have some club members who are available on Saturday who could ring bells
- for two hours. I find it as an uplifting experience. I wouldn't want to do it every weekend.
- But once a year, I get a real charge out of it. Both Kroger East and Kroger South, we're kind of in
- that alcove area, so we're not physically outside. It's not bitter cold. It's not warm either. You're
- kind of in that between area, and you'll get some gusts of wind. So please, if you can do it this weekend,
- see either Jonas Chang, Dave Meyer, or me. Send them an email.
- We are Rotarians. We're called to serve. Last announcement, we have a number of Rotarians who are parking
- at Henderson and Atwater. The Atwater garage, the elevator on the west side, has been broken for a number
- of weeks. I've asked about when it's going to be repaired. I've not gotten an answer. But the garage
- on the other side, so the west side is out of order, but the elevator on the east side is working.
- So Atwater garage remains a viable place. Just remember which side to park on. Now we're ready for the
- mystery rotarian. Remember the rules for the mystery rotarian. I'm going to give a clue. If you know
- the answer, put up your hand. Don't shout it out. And then if you're online, raise your hand electronically.
- So here's the first clue.
- A Bloomington area native, this Rotarian studied epidemiology at IU Indianapolis. Balancing studies
- and one to two jobs, this club member graduated with honors as a chancellor scholar. If you know the
- answer, put up your hand. Sounds like someone medical. All right, no takers so far. Second clue.
- This Rotarian worked at the Indiana Department of Health tracking enteric disease outbreaks. Frustrated
- by the software, this Rotarian learned programming and built a patient interview interface with conditional
- formatting and over 1,000 custom entries. Still in use today, this Rotarian's program was described
- as a game changer by health authorities. Does anyone know the answer? OK, we have one hand up.
- All right, third and final clue. Thankfully, this Rotarian returned to Bloomington. Today, this club
- member works as a senior law clerk with Clendenning, Johnson, and Borer, and is scheduled to graduate
- from the Maurer School of Law in May of 2026. Put up your hand. Okay, we have a few more. And the answer
- is one of our newer members, Peyton Flynn.
- Peyton, could you just stand for a minute so people? So since joining the club earlier this year, Peyton
- has been a faithful meeting attendee despite having a law class immediately before our meeting and another
- law class immediately after our meeting. So Peyton normally will kind of slip in at about 11 to 59.
- And about 1255, she's discreetly going out the door. This week, she's studying for finals. So we actually
- get her for a full meeting today. Hopefully, after Peyton graduates, she'll be able to practice law
- here in Bloomington. Peyton also serves as an intern for the Elmore Entrepreneurship Law Clinic.
- Peyton and her partner Luke have a rescued Siamese cat named Toothbrush, which I imagine can lead to
- interesting conversations about where is my toothbrush. So anyway, Peyton and Flynn, congratulations.
- We're happy to have you in the club. I know you and your partner Luke are making decisions as partners,
- but hopefully after graduation, what will work for the two of you will be for you to land here in Bloomington
- for you to be a Rotarian. 50 years from now, the president will honor you as a 50-year Rotarian. Reminder,
- Rotary 7 areas of focus. This month is disease prevention and treatment. A Bill Gates quote here, which
- you probably can't read, treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable. And remember, happy dollar
- proceeds in
- November, December will be given to the Rotary Foundation. That's Rotary International Foundation. And
- I think at this point, we have a Paul Harris presentation.
- We're going to rotate and guess. A clue. Roll tide. Any guesses? Roll tide. Okay, we'll move on. We
- have one person today we're going to recognize. Will Akir Abdullah please come up here?
- If I have to drag you up here, I'll try. Thanks, Americans. Yes, okay. I have to change this a little
- bit because we were going to have another person that couldn't make it because of the weather. Likur,
- you are a new member of our club. You've already embraced club service projects like the Teacher's Warehouse,
- Salvation, Army Bell Ringing, Charlotte Zittlow Habitat for Humanity House, just to name a few. Likur
- has served as a mentor for Real Men Read and director of the Community Kitchen.
- all this while working on his PhD at IU in African American and African de Sopa studies at IU. He and
- his wife Heather are both from Alabama, Roll Tide might have come in there, and he has some roots with
- the Alabama Crimson Tide program. While Alabama is not a football school like IU, they try hard with
- some success.
- So before we proceed, because this is a big weekend, for those of you that are Hoosier fans, just a
- very short little brief. If I can get some help here. Who, who, who, Hoosiers. Ready? One, two, three.
- Who, who, who, Hoosiers. I just wanted to make you feel welcome. This club is recognizing you with a
- Paul Harris Fellow for your work in the community and service to our club. I'd like to present you with the pin.
- and the certificate, which means that you'll have to get a photograph, right? You know, we had sort
- of a Thanksgiving dinner together at Sarah Laughlin's for the Friends of the Refugees. And I found out
- that he really didn't like Turkey, but he was very intrigued about the whole wishbone thing. So my wife
- and I got the wishbone and wrapped it all up and we're ready for it to dry out to do the ceremony.
- and Sarah threw it away, but that's all. We're going to find one. Okay. Congratulations. Thank you so much.
- Thank you, Mike. Congratulations to Keir. I meant to ask, after Mr. Rotarian, Byron, I think you were
- the first one with your hand up. Did you get it right? OK. And then I think there were several who got
- it right on the third. Tracy, you might have had your hand up. I think Sally Gaskell, did you have it
- right? OK. And then Joy, did anyone have it right online? No Zoomers had it. Nope. OK. Well, I deliberately
- misled you with the medical clue, so sorry about that.
- Elijah Ramos, can you come on up? And Jim Bright, if you would come up as well. So we have pretty elaborate
- ceremonies for new members, members transferring in from other clubs where
- We're not as regimented, but I wanted to recognize that Elijah joined our club here a month or two ago
- as a transfer member, and I wanted to introduce him to the club. So Elijah Ramos is a Master of Public
- Affairs student at the O'Neill School, where he's studying public finance, foreign affairs, and national
- security. Originally from Los Angeles, Elijah's work has been driven by a passion for economic development
- and public sector reform.
- In his career so far, he has supported nonprofit operations, helped launch startups, and managed donor
- systems for organizations across the country. Elijah's passion for community-based development has taken
- him from South Central Los Angeles to rural villages across Southeast Asia, where he spent six months
- working directly with communities to implement clean water systems. Elijah currently works as chief
- financial officer for the Institute for American Leadership,
- a nonprofit think tank in Washington, where he leads many of the organization's marketing and outreach
- projects. When he's not engaging in his academic and professional pursuits, Elijah enjoys traveling,
- making music, and exploring new foods. Elijah has been a Rotarian for two years, originally joining
- the Rotary Club of Los Angeles, where he supported various scholarship programs, and the Myanmar Water
- Systems Management Project,
- We are happy that Elijah is now a member of our club. Please join me in welcoming Elijah Ramos. And
- we have a couple of minutes for happy dollars.
- Anyone who's happy? I see Tina in the back, Michael. I have two happy dollar little notes. One is both
- daughters, stepson, grandkids, and a myriad of other friends made it to Thanksgiving, and I was very
- thankful. And then the IU Women's Volleyball
- team made it to the NCAA first time in like 15 years, I think. And the first three games in their division
- are here this weekend, Thursday, Friday. So tickets are not very expensive, but it's a good time and
- it's a good way to support IU.
- Michael, Michael's working today. I might have mentioned, here's a couple of happy dollars. I mentioned
- this before, my son's working on, I'm glad my son came down for Thanksgiving. He's working on a project
- at Riley. He's leading the research project.
- And the final stages of finding actual vaccination for peanut allergy. They're doing a study at Ryland,
- I think two other locations around the country. And only one person so far has had a reaction, so they
- don't know if that person had a placebo or not, but that's a good sign of only one person that had a
- reaction. But additionally, not only could this what they're hoping for is for this to be a vaccination
- or peanut allergy, but a vaccination for all food allergies. They hope it shuts off whatever your body
- does when it gets
- it's alleged to a certain fruit. So this could be absolutely revolutionary. And during the final stage,
- it's still going to be probably six months to a year to complete everything. But it's in the works.
- And I'm proud of my son for doing this. I always called him a little shithead, you know, but he's...
- But I am really proud of him.
- I have five happy dollars here and Art, you should hear what he calls you. Anyway, for doing Bell Ringing
- with Dad at the Kroger South on Saturday, it was a lot of fun and it was good to get over there because
- we usually do the Kroger on College Mall and we know everybody there. So we saw, we didn't know anybody
- at Kroger South. And by the way, it's warmer there, I'm just telling you.
- Um, but there was a gentleman who rode a bike and he had like three layers of coats and he had a walking
- stick and kind of, you know who I'm talking about. And he kind of struggled walking in and he asked
- what salvation arm was about. And we told him and he pulled out four ones and put them in the bucket.
- And I, you know, you know, the classic bias. I thought, my God, I feel like we're probably raising this
- for him. And he took the $4 out and put it in. He really said, I love what you guys are doing.
- Thank you. So you never know.
- don't judge and to Steve's point, it's good to get out there and help. Yes. Sandy. Sorry, I didn't realize
- I was on. I had a wonderful experience happen and it was just a reflection on the entire community and
- what we do here with our organizations but about
- Three weeks ago, we were asked to videotape somebody who was on one of our boards because they were
- receiving a nice award in our community and for their volunteer work through the the real estate association
- here and He was just given an address to show up and he didn't realize he was actually coming to my
- sister's closet because that's where they want to do the video and
- After it was all done, he walked up to us and he said, I hope it's okay for me to tell you this, but
- I have heard about my sister's closet my entire life because my mom was living in a shelter and my sister
- was in one foster home and I was in another foster home. And it was really, really difficult for her
- to bring us all together. But she got a voucher from my sister's closet and you guys made it happen
- for her. And then you kept in touch with her for several,
- you know, years to be able to help her move forward into other jobs. And so I will always help my sister's
- closet, but we got help by the shelter. We got help with, you know, one organization after another,
- like the community kitchen. And he says, I just love this community and everything that it does. And
- it was just a very warm, fuzzy moment because you never hear from the son of a client from several years
- ago. And it was just long-term impacts that happen again and again.
- 69 days until pictures and catchers report. Thank you all. And Jim Bright will introduce today's speaker.
- Thank you, President Steve, and it is an honor to introduce to you today my friend Alan Boyd of the
- Monroe County Airport Board of Aviation Commissioners.
- Alan will share his thoughts and insights about the future of our local airport. Alan is a retired Army
- Colonel with 26 years of active service as military intelligence officer, followed by 20 years in executive
- leadership positions with Collins Aerospace in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and with ITT Aerospace Defense in
- Fort Wayne. Alan is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm
- and numerous other operations in the Balkans and Southwest Asia and Korea and other areas of conflict.
- In the mid 1980s, Allen served as a military aid and emergency operations officer at the White House
- for President Reagan. How cool is that? He spent his formative years, many of them in Terre Haute. He
- holds a bachelor of aerospace engineering degree
- and a Master of Electrical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech. Is that a football school? Anyway.
- He's a recipient of many military and civilian awards, including a presidential commendation, the US
- Army's General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award, and the Georgia Tech Engineering Honor Award,
- and many, many more. As a volunteer with Engineers Without Borders,
- Alan has led clean water and construction teams to communities in Africa and South America. Together
- with Monroe County Airport Director Carlos Laverde, Alan is a corporate member of our club. Fellow Rotarians,
- please join me in extending a warm welcome to today's special speaker, Rotarian Alan Boyd.
- Okay, let me make sure I got all the rules of engagement right. I'm using this microphone. The camera's
- over here somewhere. And I'm fixed in place for the duration. Oh, okay. How cool is that? Say again?
- I have the clicker. I'm good. And it works. Okay.
- Thank you for having us today. I'm joined today by Carlos Laverty, our airport director, who's been
- in place for, what, six years? Seven. I'm the vice president of a four-member board. Ken Ritchie, our
- president, attended to be here today, but fell ill after Thanksgiving in New York City. But also Pat
- Murphy and Fred Schmucker. Relatively speaking, I'm the newest guy on the board
- Fred is the latest acquisition, but he's a reacquisition coming back after serving terms in the past.
- So that's the four of us. We are your Board of Aviation Commissioners. Earlier this summer, we were
- at a point at the airport where we were neck deep in a strategic plan update. We were learning a lot.
- We collected a lot of data.
- gone through quite a bit of analysis. We were beginning to draw some early conclusions, and I thought
- it made sense for us to share that with the county council, which we did in July. We talked a lot about
- development, and I'm going to speak a little bit about development here, because we are a board
- of commissioners who are working very much to move the progress bar to the right.
- and leave you with an airport that's different than the one you had 20 years ago. That generated some
- attention in the Herald Times. You may have read a newspaper article about that. That got us invited
- to the other two ordering groups, which we just completed a couple of weeks ago. And I'm happy to be
- here today to go for third base and go for a triple here. So what I'd like to do very quickly, I know
- time is limited. I want to leave room for questions.
- I'll take you through the current state of the airport, give you an update on what this master plan
- is, because it's different than than what you might think. And it's a lot more rigorous than what you
- might think. And then talk a little bit about development and then answer whatever questions you have.
- How many of you over the last five years, let's say, have been to the Monroe County airport? Is it because
- of the BEDC event that was held in a hangar out there last summer?
- Why did you go? Okay. Okay. Good. There you go. How many people knew there was a barbershop up at the
- airport? I mean to have, you know, there's a B and Airbnb at the airport. This guy took a double wide
- trailer and I don't, I don't remember what it was being used for, but he fixed it up. He had this idea.
- There's a lot of flying nurses coming in and out of here during COVID.
- So I fixed it up and turned it into, what, a three or four bedroom, magnificent little palace. Marble
- countertops. Marble countertops, you name it. And we could get business there. We're actually earning
- money from Airbnb at the airport. But I digress a bit. Let me talk to you about the current state. We
- have two what are called fixed base operators, FBOs out there, BMG jets does jet
- maintenance, and Cook Aviation tends to Cook's corporate flight activities as well as provides common
- services that you would expect of most any airport terminal. And it's good that they do because we don't
- have a terminal per se. We have an administration building. If you've been out there, that's kind of
- it. So the two FBOs that we have together perform the variety of services that you see here.
- It's possible to rent aircraft out there. It's possible to get flight training out there. We have a
- number of people renting hangars that we own, both for corporate and regional aircraft. Swift Energetics
- and Engineering, it's a small engineering company that came here about a year ago, is leasing some hangar
- space from us for a business that they're operating in support of interests in crane down south. So
- that's our first tech business
- to appear out there. And we'll talk about the potential for more before I get done today. Plenty of
- charter activity. And then, as we mentioned, the barber and the Airbnb. Significantly, though, there's
- over 120 acres of developable property within the fences at the airport today. And that's the key to
- the airport's future.
- I don't understand or pretend to know how Indiana Department of Transportation does its math, but this
- is their math that shows economic impact for the Monroe County Airport, both here locally and
- then regionally. It's not an insignificant contributor to the economy, as you can see. Just in the year
- ending in September,
- Over 30,000 aircraft operations and aircraft operation being a takeoff or a landing that averages out
- to about 82 operations per day over 365 days. Air carrier operations, charter operations, a lot of that's
- flying IU athletic teams in and out and bringing IU competitive athletic competitors in and out. So
- a lot of a lot of business there were restricted pretty much to 737
- uh, level, level flight or level planes. Uh, the football team has outgrown us. Hey, by the way, I thought
- I can, as a Georgia Tech grad, I can think of a whole lot of things to say about go Bama, you know,
- and roll tie. We played you all back in the day. Uh, then then we got smart, uh, about a hundred, a
- hundred aircraft and we sell, uh, we sell fuel out there through cook. So,
- A lot going on, a lot more than you would imagine is going on out there. I found this chart interesting.
- Our engineering contractor put this together as amongst other products for our master plan update just
- to show the reach that you have in Bloomington, Indiana. It's all over the United States, into the Caribbean,
- over to Europe. If we zoomed out, you'd see planes actually going out over the Pacific.
- and more up into Canada. So it's a lot more than just a small town airport with some private pilots,
- you know, boring holes in the sky over the weekends. There's a lot more going on out there than that.
- And we're happy to have it. We'd like to encourage more. Master Plan
- is our version of a strategic plan. It's mandated by the FAA. It's even funded by the FAA. They ask
- us to do that airports of our size every five years. In our case, we've not actually done a good one
- for about 10 years. And so the one where we're in the process of completing today is all the more important.
- Once it's done, the airport owns it. It's ours. It's not the county's plan. It's not the city's plan.
- It's our plan at the airport.
- having brought in consideration of all those equities that we serve and stakeholders. They asked us
- to look 20 years into the future. Now, I don't know about you, but I've been in business and the idea
- of any business as a strategic plan or strategic look is usually about five years out. And you're kind
- of licking your finger and sticking it in the air beyond year one, right?
- They ask us to do a very serious job looking at aviation trends, technology trends, local and regional
- trends, community trends, community business trends. So we work very closely with BEDC and
- other organizations here to ensure that we bring all of that into consideration for this master plan.
- It typically takes a couple of years to do it. We are well over a year into it, and I'm anticipating
- that we finish in the spring. Part of this is called an airport layout plan. It's a subset of the master
- plan. That accounts for all the geography, the infrastructure, everything physical at the airport. That
- gets us into considerations of zoning,
- who owns what, what infrastructure is supplied by whom, on and on. But that's a very comprehensive plan
- that we have to, once we get that in place, that governs FAA decisions about what to support here, what
- to help fund here and whatnot. Let me just show you an example of that here. I've teed up a sum of real
- and pursuing projects and work
- to the tune of about $11 million. We're spending $600, over a half a million dollars to do the master
- plan update. We are concluding $2.2 million worth of FAA-supplied investment in airport lighting. If
- you flew in and out of the airport today, you would see a completely refreshed lighting system out there
- on all runways.
- We are at the point of near completing the $5 million stormwater and an anti-erosion project out there
- that became all the more necessary in last April's or last spring's rains, where they just came and
- came and came, if you remember. And that exposed a lot of risks and weaknesses that we had, and courtesy
- of ARPA funds supplied by the county, we're able to address and mitigate just about all of that here
- by this winter.
- We're competing for a complete refurb of the air traffic control tower out there. If you've seen it,
- it's ancient looking. It dates back to the 50s to the 60s. It's got 1960s and 70s radios inside. We
- want to bring that up into the century. We need to for safety purposes and to attract more of the business
- that we want.
- So we believe we're very competitive with that. We spend a lot of time working with the FAA in that
- business development and business growth role. Carlos spends a fair amount of time back and forth through
- Capitol Hill. We've entertained the FAA's air traffic control chief for small airports here just a few
- months ago. And we think we're in a good position to win the funds to completely modernize the tower.
- We've also just gone through a complete or a major equipment and vehicle refresh that was evidenced
- this morning about what, two weeks ago, we had a board meeting where Carlos staged three, not new,
- but well, good condition used trucks with big snowplow blades on the front and they were flanked by
- these two big roller, these brushes that you see at airports, brush and snow way in formation.
- and this morning they got a chance to use that. So what would have normally taken them all day to do,
- to clear the runways out there and make the airport operable again, took them about, they were done
- by about eight o'clock this morning. I had visions of a die-hard movie when he told me that, but then
- I saw the pictures and thought, you know, they're all clear, there's no damaged planes anywhere and
- we're all in good shape.
- Well done. So a lot of that comes from Carlos's deputy, Brent Thompson, who's a retired Bloomington
- fire captain. And we brought on a few years ago and he runs that airport in concert with Carlos like
- you'd expect the old fire captain to do. So we're all proud of that and happy to have them all there.
- So a lot of going on out there, a lot of investment, a lot of it's FAA investment.
- We have an annual operating budget of about 1.6 million, which is about to dip down a bit because of
- Senate Bill 1. And we supply about 50% of that out of airport operations, fees, leases, such things.
- We have two tracks of land out there that are quickly developable that we show here.
- And I'm going to see if I can do that. 45-acre tract here on the northeast side of the runway. What
- you're seeing here, this is 48 Kirby Road, and then the fairgrounds are right down here in the lower
- left in the southeast corner. So a 45-acre tract up here, Kirby in 48, and then an 80-some acre tract
- up here in the southwest corner of the airport.
- It looks smaller than this, but that's only because of the angle of the photography masking that. But
- these are two very, very desirable pieces of land. This is also developable in here, 80 some acres in
- here. It takes a little more work with the terrain, but it's workable. And all of that begins to account
- for that 200 and some acres.
- We're getting a lot of attention here. We'll talk about it in a few minutes from businesses that want
- to come in from out of state attracted to their business opportunities at Crane. They want to be both
- near Crane and in Bloomington. Some of them want to be at an airport or prefer to be at an airport.
- In one case, it's a CEO requirement that they find a property on an airport because they want to, he
- wants that business
- to be around the aviation business and just aviation in general. So we work closely with BEDC and other
- stakeholders in reaction to these opportunities, and I'm going to get to talk about that in just a second.
- First, let me remind you who we see our stakeholders being. Clearly, FAA is
- top dog here because we must abide by FAA policy practices and procedure and all that we do. We're also
- heavily funded by the FAA over time. So underneath that are all airport operations and services that
- are listed out here. Local and state organizations over here, we certainly work with the county,
- the city, and the economic development organizations here with BEDC, IEDC. At the state level, the Uplands region,
- and Indiana Department of Transportation. On the defense side, obviously, Crane, we also do occasional
- work with the National Guard. We host the Civil Air Patrol unit. We have supported several Defense Department
- aviation exercises. Over the past year, earlier this year, we had a Special Operations Command flew
- a number of helicopters from Port Campbell, Kentucky to Minnesota.
- Um, and then back and they asked for permission to set up a forward refueling point, uh, here at the
- Monroe County airport, which they, they came in very quickly, popped it up. Um, helicopters came in
- and refueled. It was a night refuel, uh, and then, and then tore it down and went away. We were very
- happy to support that and that hope that leads to more. Um, we can have, we can have F eight F a 18th
- and, uh, from the Navy.
- We've had pairs of those come in because Crane does a lot of the electronic warfare work on those aircraft.
- Other defense industry or defense contractors here that are gathering around Westgate, around Crane,
- local industries, of course, IU Athletics and IU alumni aviators. There are a number of IU alumni who
- have planes, who come in here for games or the Indy 500 or go to the Uptown Cafe. I don't know what
- all they do.
- And then on the education and training side, clearly IU, Ivy Tech, and then a body of flight students
- in and out. So altogether, those are the stakeholders that we seek to serve and care about. Quick through
- here, I put this in here only to show you that there is a rigor to this master planning process. We've
- gone through one and two into the solutions phase. We're about here ready to
- finalize all that before we go through what FAA considers the implementation phase. This is when we
- will bring in a stakeholder group to the airport in late January to finalize this, finish it up, and
- then outbrief it. I plan to outbrief this or we will outbrief this to the county commissioners, council,
- city, and others when complete.
- We formed a project advisor committee with many of those stakeholder representatives on it. We've had
- them out for multiple days going through what if exercises, visioning exercises, and all manner of drills
- to try to elicit from our stakeholders what's important to you. What would you like to see?
- What do you need? Out of that came a number of
- ideas. I'm going to set the developable acreage for tech business just to the side for a few seconds
- and talk about technical education and partnerships. We do on-site aircraft maintenance. Certainly there's
- a potential to expand that. Avionics engineering and research development tests and evaluation. One
- thing of note is the unmanned aerial systems work.
- The state of Indiana along with DOD and Crane and the Indiana National Guard is in the process
- of establishing drone quarters in the state. I believe it would go from Lafayette to Muscatatuck, Atterbury,
- from there over to Crane, and from there over to Terre Haute. These are kind of low density, not interfering
- with, you know, much aircraft
- commercial aircraft operations where you could safely try or safely fly and do your experimentation
- with drones, which are increasingly critical. It doesn't make the papers much, but on any given week
- down on the Texas, New Mexico border, there are at least a thousand hostile drone penetrations attempted
- across the border, over a thousand. We're in this arms race.
- Drone, counter drone measure, counter measure kind of thing going on here. All services, all, all nations
- around the world are having to get engaged in this because of what's, what's come about in Ukraine.
- Big, big deal. We'd like to be part of that. We'd like to be supportive of crane. We have space,
- we have, we have desire. We have, you know, we have opportunity. So we were in fact, we're meeting with
- some of them tomorrow.
- to see what next steps might be for us at the airport. Big, big deal. Future advanced air mobility.
- I can go online today, and if I had 135,000 to spend on it, I could order a quadcopter that I could
- sit in and fly for 20 minutes. I have to wait three years to get it, but I could do it today. I think
- by the time, now I'm an aerospace engineer, so I think about these things a lot.
- Uh, I, I'm fully convinced that by the time I would get it three years from now, I could, I could probably
- go two hours by just sitting in this thing with a joystick. Uh, it's no more complicated for me to fly
- myself in that drone than it is for your kid to fly his or her drone where there's a little joystick
- in the backyard. No more complicated. That's the, that's kind of Jetsons. If you're my age,
- If you remember who the Jetsons were, and if you don't, go look them up. But we're getting there. And
- we will see it in my lifetime. I'm 71, so it's soon. The companies have already formed. They're doing
- business with these things on both coasts, up in Canada, up in Minnesota, all around us. And we want
- to be part of that in the right way, in a smart way.
- Um, as we think this through, but we, we don't want it to pass us by. Would not mind Monroe County airport
- being a place where you could, you could basically take an aerial Uber drone to IMD instead of having
- to drive there. And they could fly that, they'd just drop you off and fly drone right on back. You know,
- it's, it's coming. And then, uh, more of that.
- more flight training. We're thinking about what could we do to attract air traffic controller training?
- This country is in dire need of air traffic controllers. So why not here? Why not some combination of
- Ivy Tech and IU getting involved and using Monroe County airport facilities and a new air traffic control
- tower to make that happen here?
- It's a good place to do it. We've had interns come here, so we know that works. So, excited about that.
- People in these groups always posit the return of commercial service here like you had, and I think
- you last had in 98. That's not coming back. We have nothing in the data that we're collecting and analyzing
- suggests any return of that to Monroe County Airport. It's too easy now to go to Indianapolis.
- It's just too easy. I can get the IND from my house on southeast side of Bloomington about as quickly
- as if I lived in Fishers, you know, if you think about it. And so we don't, we're not envisioning that.
- We're envisioning opening the airport up to these kinds of opportunities, but not a return to commercial
- aviation unless something dramatically different happens.
- Some of their key ideas make the community more aware, and we're certainly out trying to make the community
- more aware. Get this developable land shovel ready, which means utilities. Drone, I mentioned someone
- suggested enhancing the road length to I-69 to make it more accessible. If you think bigger industry
- out at the airport, Kirby Road might need a little bit of a
- A bit widening. Consider the airport as a hub for all kinds of uses of unmanned aerial systems, medical
- supplies, food. I mean, you can sit here all afternoon and think you come up with a hundred things you
- could do. And then airport enhance our hospitality. There's always this notion of we need a terminal.
- we'd really like to have a real no kidding terminal. If I go to Columbus, the model I have in my head
- is Columbus, Indiana. I can go over to Columbus and I can go to this campus like setting where they
- have an airport about the size of ours. They've got a nice, beautiful terminal that actually has a restaurant
- inside where people make choices to go to, to go out to eat. IU,
- Columbus is there. I mean, it's a beautiful campus setting over there. And why not us? Why not us? Old
- colonels ask why, why not, and when. Yeah, SOC, that's what we do. Bottom lines, we are applying, we're
- properly applying the funds we get from ARPA, FAA, and others
- as well as what we generate ourselves to get this airport in the best possible condition to see business
- growth. But that's not enough. If we don't develop that property, if we don't bring in additional activity
- to the airport, the airport that you see today is the same airport you'll see 20 years from now. And
- that's kind of a community decision. Is that what you want or do you want
- You want something more. You want something better. I don't go to all the BEDC functions, but I go to
- many. And the consistent theme I hear is we're losing population. It's tougher to live here. Housing
- is an issue on and on. And so I think we're trying to do what we can to help bring in offsets to those.
- But we need, we need help to do that. Biggest limiting factor and challenge is sewer availability.
- And that's where the newspaper guy clicked. And we're going to talk about that. Scott, I want you to
- understand what that situation is. Over the last two years, we've had four businesses from out of state
- come to the airport, really wanting to set up shop within our fences. When you think if you're a CEO
- of a business,
- wanting to expand. And I've been that guy in two places. You kind of go through a checklist like this
- of location, transportation, uh, quality of life in terms of housing, schools, healthcare, local amenities,
- wages, and utilities. That's your, that's your top level checklist headers. And I'm going to, I'm actually
- put it to use here with the latest, um,
- opportunity that's come our way over the past six months. It's about a $60 million a year business that
- it's involved in the manufacture of aerospace materials. And I'll just leave it at that because NDAs
- are in place and you understand. They would be a key supplier to a major Westgate subcontractor, about
- 100 and so employees. I think that one actually went up to about 120.
- This is the one where they really want to be on an airport. They are looking at other Midwestern
- alternatives, but BMG keeps coming up over and over as the place they would rather be. They really want
- to be. So you go through the checklist. Blue is better than green in my coding here.
- Transportation's fine, housing, schools, healthcare. There's this constant housing concern, affordable
- housing that you read about in the papers all the time. It's there with these companies that wanna come
- in. And so we work with VEDC on that and wages because they're linked, right? Affordability and wages
- all go together. Amenities are excellent, love Bloomington for all the same reasons you love Bloomington.
- Great place to be. But then you get to utilities,
- And I can check off, they could check off electricity, they can check off internet, cable, water,
- on and on. And they're all good. But sewer, no. No sewer. I'll be done in just a second. I've got the
- message. Aerial photo of the airport, city sewer comes in, fairgrounds down here, city sewer comes in up here.
- and goes out, this is the cross runway, all the way down here, and this is that 85 acres that's developed.
- City sewer comes deep into the heart of the airport here, up around about where the traffic control
- tower is, and then attaches itself to some on-airport sewer infrastructure that's shown in the blue
- here. The 45 acre parcel is right up here. So all we're asking to do, what we've asked to do,
- is to be able to add users to this existing sewer infrastructure that is supplied by the city of Bloomington
- utilities. The answer has been no. Under conditions associated with annexation, the city's answer is
- no additional users of Bloomington sewer until the annexation issue is resolved.
- We are not part of an area that's been targeted for annexation, so I'm not sure why the answer to that
- outcome matters to me or not, quite frankly. I don't know whether things get better or worse or stay
- the same, regardless of however that court case turns out up in Indianapolis. That's the simplest, fastest,
- easiest thing for us to do to provide sewer service to these developable parcels.
- and to continue to attract those businesses that would like to come. Alternative is a standalone package
- plant. A number of small communities or entities out around Monroe County in this region use package
- plants. They're expensive. Costs about a million or $2 million to put them in. It costs $100,000 or
- more a year to operate them. And most people that are employing these things are barely breaking even,
- if they're breaking even at all.
- Because they took out bonds, they took out loans, and paying them back is very, very hard. We did not
- want to go down that road. And then the third alternative, which we're seriously exploring, is look
- at the next nearest sewer system, and that happens to be Ellitsville. So we are preparing ourselves
- to reach north to Ellitsville and in the face of a no from Bloomington in the east.
- We're not in conflict with the city. No, no issue there. It's just a, it's a policy decision that the
- city's made and we've got to work around it. We've got to find alternatives. So I'll just stop it there.
- Uh, you've seen pictures of the terminal. I can bloom magazine. That's a ways off. That's less important
- to us right now than, uh, um, making these, these, these acres developable. Okay. I'll take your questions.
- We're not going to have time for questions. Alan, will you stay around for a couple of minutes? Thank
- you very much. It's nice to know we have such professional and forward looking management at our airport.
- Um, I flew commercially as a student 45 years ago. I flown in and out of Bloomington in a private plane
- and I've had great experiences out there.
- So Alan, thank you for the presentation. In honor of your talk, a donation will be made this quarter
- to the Lake Monroe Water Fund. I'd like to thank today's volunteers, Winston Schindel, Tracy Yovanovich,
- Jim Bright, Joy Harder, Marilyn Wood, Michael Shermas, Amy Osojima. Our next regular meeting will be
- here on December 9th in the Georgian Room. Jeff Emil will deliver a talk titled Beyond Disasters and
- Blood Drives.
- the Red Cross work you haven't heard about. Please remember, if you can ring bells for the Salvation
- Army, see me after the meeting or email with either Jonas or Dave Meyer. If you want to go to the holiday
- party, see me after the meeting or email me. Tyler, will you please share the graphic for the four-way
- test? And please stand if you are able.
- of the things we think, say or do. First, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concern? Third,
- will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all concern? And fifth,
- is it fun?