Airport board recommends ending VIP parking passes

A divided airport advisory board voted Monday to do away with free VIP parking passes at Wichita Eisenhower National Airport.

The vote was 6-4 to recommend ending airport courtesy parking passes beginning Jan. 1.

The 113 passes now in circulation expire Dec. 31, and the board recommended that no new ones be issued.

The final decision belongs to the City Council, which sits as the Airport Authority for Eisenhower Airport.

City Manager Robert Layton has said he also will recommend getting rid of the passes. The issue is expected to come before the council on Nov. 17.

Although the board vote Monday is advisory, the panel’s recommendations carry significant weight in setting airport policies. With the advisory board and the city manager on the same page, the council vote on getting rid of the passes could be a formality.

Advisory board member Charles Fletcher made the motion to dump the parking passes.

“I agree with what the city manager said. It’s more trouble than it’s worth,” Fletcher said.

The parking passes are held mostly by city, county and congressional elected officials and staff members; local business-community leaders, including representatives of the chamber of commerce, economic development and tourism bodies; plus current and retired aircraft industry executives.

Airport director Victor White said he has been rethinking the free-parking pass system since July, shortly after the airport opened its new $40 million parking garage.

The courtesy passes were separate from those issued to everyday airport employees and could be used in any public parking, including the garage and the close-in surface lots that cost $15 a day.

Tracking use

White said he inherited the courtesy system from his predecessors but never found a formal policy about who should get a pass.

The passes were intended for official use, but without electronic monitoring, there really was no way to tell whether holders of the low-tech plastic cards also used them for personal travel, White said.

As part of the garage project, airport parking gates now have electronic access card readers, so it would be possible to keep track of who uses passes and when, he said.

White had originally proposed trimming the number of passes and issuing them to departments and agencies, rather than the current system in which passes were issued as wallet cards and went mostly to individual users.

On Monday, he told the advisory board that, based on his 40 years in airport management, it’s not uncommon for airports across the country to issue courtesy passes.

But he said he changed his mind and decided to recommend doing away with the passes entirely after seeing negative community comments and an editorial after The Wichita Eagle reported on the issue.

“The good news is the airport will make more money this way,” he said, adding that city officials and others will have to pay the airport for parking and file for reimbursement from their own agencies.

Airport officials and advisory board members who travel on airport business will be reimbursed for their parking by the airport, he said.

‘Public perception’

Not everyone agreed with the new no-passes policy.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” said airport board member John Hennessey, who pointed out that City Hall officials have free, and in some cases reserved, parking spots at municipal buildings.

Courtesy parking doesn’t cost the airport anything, he said. “There are empty stalls over there right now, so it doesn’t impact anyone directly.”

Board members Carl Koster and Bill Ward said they knew there were passes for advisory board members and elected and staff government officials but didn’t know they’d also been issued to people in the business community.

They took opposite sides on getting rid of the passes.

Koster said it made sense for board members to have passes when meetings were held in the terminal, but now the meetings are held at a separate administration building with its own free parking lot.

He said he supported getting rid of all the passes as “a matter of public perception.”

Ward said he never used his pass, but he didn’t see a problem with other unpaid board members having free parking at the airport.

“When you’re going to contribute your time for something like this, why shouldn’t there be a few perks?” Ward said. “When I started, we got two things: We got a T-shirt, and we got a parking pass. Now we get nothing.”

The only exception to the no-free-parking rule will be state-qualified disabled veterans, who are entitled to free parking at all public facilities as a matter of Kansas law, White said.

This story was originally published November 2, 2015 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Airport board recommends ending VIP parking passes."