Texarkana Regional Airport Board members agreed Thursday to table action on a proposed $1.2 million annual airport operations and maintenance budget for next year, pending further study.
Airport Director Mark Mellinger presented copies of the proposed $1,213,959 2018 budget to board members during the regular monthly meeting.
Presently, airport officials are looking at tentatively asking joint owners Texarkana, Texas, and Texarkana, Ark., to contribute a proposed combined total of $166,280 to the overall projected budget.
As to the exact breakdown of how much each city is contributing to the $166,280, the contributions are based on each city's population. Since the Texas side has about 36,000 residents (about 54.7 percent of the combined population) and Arkansas side has about 29,000 (roughly 45.2 percent), Texas side's contribution is tentatively calculated to be about $91,054, while the Arkansas side's comes in at about $75,225. However, both calculations are still tentative since the Texas side won't be approving its fiscal year budget until close to Sept. 30 while the Arkansas side won't be approving its calendar year budget until year's end.
Apart from the cities' contribution, the rest of the airport's self-generated traditional income revenue for the budget comes from parking fees, contracts with on-site car rental services, passenger facility charges and percentages of profit from on-site commercial aviation and jet fuel sales (fuel flowage sales).
Mellinger told board members that the airport has experienced some increases in parking fee revenue.
Following some discussion, board members agreed to table the proposed budget until the board's Finance Committee meets to review the proposal and compare it with this and last years' airport budgets.
In other business, board members approved allowing the Parking Box company to install a new parking fee paying system for $62,216.
Mellinger added that the airport will likely be receiving its Federal Aviation Administration grant money for designing the airport's proposed new passenger terminal around July or August.