Airport board can't get meeting off ground

The regular monthly meeting of the Saratoga Airport Board was canceled due to lack of a quorum, according to an email from Saratoga Town Hall.

A quorum, or minimum number of voting members of a governmental body, is required for any decisions coming out of a meeting to be legally binding.

The previous night, the Saratoga Town Council discussed a large number of grants and other funds available to municipalities across the state for improvements to airport facilities from state agencies such as the Wyoming Department of Transportation, or WYDOT.

At the town council meeting Tuesday, Saratoga Town Council Member Richard Raymer explained that many grants are available to the town to make improvements at the airfield, and suggested the council and airport boards work over the next several months to find grants for which the town can apply.

Saratoga Mayor Ed Glode explained the grants available offer a broad range of possibilities for Wyoming municipal airports. Across the state, the grants have funded new equipment and other improvements to airports, such as the new entryway at the airport in Rawlins.

Grants could also be used to build a terminal building, Glode said, adding that whatever grants the town applied for and improvements it made, the town should be careful not to add significantly to operating costs.

“We don’t want to get into something where they give us all this stuff and we have all these new expenses,” Glode said. “We were always doing paving jobs and stuff like that, never knowing that they (WYDOT) actually want to do more than just that.”

The next scheduled meeting of the Saratoga Airport Board is 1 p.m., Dec. 13 at Saratoga Town Hall.