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?