City of Wichita should help pay for KHP-Sedgwick County law enforcement hangar | Opinion
The Kansas Highway Patrol and the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Department have made a compelling case that they need a better place to base their aircraft, and the city of Wichita and its Airport Authority need to step up.
Last year, the KHP flew 306 missions in Sedgwick County, and 176 of them were directly supporting the Wichita Police Department. That alone argues that Wichita should be considerably more supportive than it’s been.
Last week, county commissioners approved a memorandum of understanding to advance the plan for an $8.5 million joint-use law enforcement hangar at Col. James Jabara Airport, to replace the current Highway Patrol air support facility at the small Cook Airfield near Derby.
Wichita had its own helicopter(s) from 1969 to 2016, but got rid of the air unit to save about a half a million dollars a year, according to the city budget.
Since then, the Highway Patrol has borne the responsibility for providing aerial coverage of crime scenes and chasing fleeing suspects. It’s a big deal, because without helicopter coverage, police cars have to engage in more high-speed chases that endanger the public.
The county operates a plane of its own, to retrieve suspects arrested in other states and bring them back for trial on crimes committed here, Sheriff Jeff Easter said.
Cook Airfield’s size limits the types of aircraft the KHP can use, said Col. Erik Smith, superintendent of the KHP. The county’s plane, formerly a KHP aircraft used to transport the governor, can’t operate there because the runway is too short, Easter said.
So the county pays $30,000 a year for space in a shared hangar at Jabara. That means the plane gets moved around constantly so other users can get in and out, which risks damage to the aircraft, Easter said.
Another issue is that the apron outside the KHP’s hangar at Cook is too close to a taxiway, creating a potential hazard for the agency helicopter, Smith said.
Most important, the small airport doesn’t have the instrument landing aids available at Jabara. “Visual flight is the only way to land, so in certain types of inclement weather, it makes it impossible to get into and out of,” Smith said.
Wichita has invested a considerable amount of money in aerial drones, including a new “drone hive” at the QuikTrip at Douglas and Washington.
But that’s not a substitute for helicopter coverage. While the drone hive will be useful for monitoring misconduct in Old Town on Friday and Saturday nights, the drones don’t have the necessary speed or range for high speed pursuits of dangerous criminals, Easter said.
A dedicated hangar for law enforcement makes operational sense. But it is more expensive.
The financial analysis attached to the plan shows an annual cost of $654,000 to the KHP and $102,000 to the county while the hangar debt is being paid off, based on their proportional usage of the hangar. They’re hoping grant funding can bring that down some, but there’s no guarantee.
Part of the cost is $22,600 a year to lease land for the hangar from the Wichita Airport Authority, which would continue for 50 years — 30 years beyond the time it would take to pay off the hangar.
It made me wonder why the KHP and county have to carry that burden alone, and if Wichita could chip in by making land available for the hangar at either no cost or a nominal cost.
After all, this is the city that gave WaterWalk developers 29 acres for a dollar a year for 99 years, and sold four acres for $4 to the former owners of the Wichita Wind Surge, for an as-yet-unbuilt “baseball village” next to Equity Bank Park.
But that kind of deal wouldn’t fly at the airport, according to Airport Director Jesse Romo.
“The airport is federally funded, which means it’s federally obligated,” Romo said. “We have federal rules to comply with. We are not allowed to give things away for free. One of our assurances that we have to make to the FAA . . . is to do things to make ourselves financially feasible.”
The city’s two airports, Eisenhower and Jabara, are owned and operated by the Airport Authority.
But the authority lies in a gray area between an independent agency and a subsidiary of City Hall.
The authority technically has its own board of directors. But the actual members are the same people who serve on the City Council, and airport workers are city employees.
So if the airport can’t just let the county and KHP use airport land for a law enforcement hangar, as Romo states, the council could switch hats and take $22,600 a year out of their city pocket and put it in their airport pocket.
Such a contribution would definitely incentivize the KHP to keep its aircraft in Wichita for decades to come, at minimal expense compared to the public safety benefits that the city, and its taxpayers, are getting.
Which is a lot more than we’ve ever gotten from the WaterWalk.
