Jun 5, 2024 | By: Sammy Holladay
Brainerd, Crow Wing County Planning to Discuss Airport Ownership
The City of Brainerd recently requested a meeting with Crow Wing County to discuss the ownership of the Brainerd Lakes Regional Airport. The airport is jointly owned between Brainerd and Crow Wing County, but the meeting will explore whether the county should take full ownership of the airport.
One reason why the airport may be taken under full ownership by Crow Wing County is because of the tax levy that helps fund the airport. The levy is a little more than $300,000, which has historically been split down the middle between the city and the county. Concerns have risen over Brainerd residents getting taxed twice for the same service.
“There has been some concern from city council that, because the city makes up about 6% of the county tax base, if Brainerd citizens are getting levied on the Brainerd side, they might also be levied on the county side,” explained Brainerd City Administrator Nick Broyles.
To compensate for this, the Crow Wing County Board increased their amount of the levy last November by $9,420, while the City of Brainerd reduced it by the same amount. Now, the Brainerd City Council may be looking at taking the levy off their books entirely.
“There has also been some interest from one of the city council members to, ‘Hey, what if the county would take over full ownership and we could zero out the city levy,'” added Broyles.
The meeting between the city and the county will have representation from the County Board, the Brainerd City Council, the airport commission, and the airport director. Day-to-day operations for the airport are expected to remain the same, as this meeting is to explore just a piece of the airport’s funding.
“For the citizens, there shouldn’t be any change at all,” Broyles stated. “It should be transparent to them, it’s just how it’s going to be funded. And, you know, for all intents and purposes, the majority of the funding comes from the federal government.”
The goal, from the city’s point of view, is to find a solution that best serves the people of Brainerd.
“You know, anybody in government wants to operate whatever it is in the most efficient, responsible, and responsive way possible,” Broyles said. “So if there’s things that we can do to improve the end product for the consumer, for the citizens, we want to explore those. But I don’t have an agenda. I don’t think the county has an agenda. We just want to talk about different options. How can we be more responsive to the public and just, you know, we want to be responsible to the taxpayers.”
The meeting will take place on Wednesday, June 5.