Sometimes, break even isn’t break even.
At a high level, the City of Tallahassee budget site (which is a wonderful service to residents, by the way) shows that the Tallahassee Airport is spending exactly what it is taking in.
But a deeper dive shows that is not the case.
For years, the airport – with the highest fares in America – has been making a profit of more than $1.3 million. That money has been shuttled off to the fire services fund up until this most recent year when $1.506 was sent to what was simply described on the web site as “other funds.”
What is “other funds?” We can’t find it on the site. But it begs the question, why is the City making its most-expensive-in-the-nation airport a profit center. Sure, $1.5 million is only about 7.5 percent of the total budget, but the airport is the butt of local jokes and is an albatross around the city’s neck, why not reinvest that money into … something.
Also, how about some local vendors in the airport?
The book selection in TLH is embarrassing – couldn’t a local bookstore be a better alternative? What about a Lucky Goat, Red Eye or Ground Ops coffee shop? Why does everything have to be some vanilla airport vendor?
And why is change always so off the table?
This August piece in the Tallahassee Democrat featured some excellent arguments from Sachs Media executive Ryan Cohn on an airport authority, but City Manager Reese Goad dismissed the idea for no other reason than it had already been talked about before.
That’s not good enough.
The Greater Tallahassee Chamber – which had at one time strongly advocated for an authority – seems to have backed off that position and sided with Goad.
We recently featured our own ideas on changing the dynamic at the airport, followed by some even better ones from local CEO Eddie Gonzalez Loumiet.
Another way the airport could do better at holding down costs is through salary control. The total salary line for airport employees has increased around 30 percent since the 2021-2022 budget, from $4.13 million to $5.35 million. The rate of inflation during that period was around 18 percent.
Dividing total FTEs (58) into total salary lines, gives an average salary of $92,313.
It should also be noted that the airport has allocated expenses back to the city for functions that are well represented by airport personnel. For example, the airport sends $157,000 back to the “home office” for accounting expense even though there are 3 full-time equivalents (FTEs) listed in “Admin-Finance.”
The bottom line: TLH airport — which isn’t growing, features the highest prices in the country and which isn’t exactly known for its stellar service — should be reinvesting every penny it makes into improvement.