Written by Paul Dail
On Monday, Jan. 12, The Spectrum published an article titled “Ready to fight” addressing a recent fee increase proposed by the Cedar City Council for Upper Limit Aviation, the helicopter and fixed-wing flight training school located at the Cedar City Regional Airport.
Upper Limit Aviation’s chief pilot and director of operations, Mike Mower, was quoted as saying, “[W]e’re going to take a stand here. We’re going to die on this hill.” Since then, Mower has admitted that tempers had flared on both sides, but they are willing to step back and work cooperatively to come up with fees that will work for everyone involved.
While Upper Limit Aviation has only been in operation in Cedar City since 2013, the flight training school was founded in 2003. In addition to Cedar City, they also have a school in Salt Lake City and Memphis, Tenn.
According to their website, “Historically, Upper Limit Aviation has developed unique partnerships with institutions of higher learning providing aspiring student pilots an opportunity to attend flight school while earning either an Associate’s and/or Bachelor’s Degree with an emphasis in flight training.”
Mower says this may have been part of the problem when it came to communication with the city.
“We’re doing our absolute best to make our partner, SUU, happy with enrollments and students coming into the program,” Mower said, “so we’re working as a business to support our client, if you will … We never had an opportunity to develop the partnership [with the city] that we had with SUU because we were immediately at odds … The negotiations never had a chance to take place. It just immediately went into a fighting match, which is bad for business and relations.”
The cause of the strife was a proposed fee increase to Upper Limit Aviation from paying equal to or less than $1,750 per month since they opened their doors to a suggested $5,000 per month. The most recent Cedar City Council proposal lowered that fee to $3,750. The Council said these increased fees were meant to cover costs of overhead and maintenance, citing exponential growth of the company over the past 18 months.
Mower said he agreed that growth was definitely part of the issue. The first semester Upper Limit Aviation started with three helicopters and forty students. The most recent count puts them at 225 students with approximately 30 aircraft flying or in maintenance. This means roughly 75 additional flights a day taking off from the airport.
“We’re used to international airports with staff and money abounding,” Mower said. “We expected certain things that the city didn’t know they were going to provide.”
Mower said much of this information came to light when he recently ran into Cedar City Council member Don Marchant, who was quoted in The Spectrum article as being in favor of the fee increase. Mower said given time to step back, the two men were able to talk about the issue civilly.
“Don basically told me, ‘We didn’t anticipate what you were going to grow into, and it scared us a little to suddenly go from a quiet little airport to a very busy airport.’”
Mower continued to say that Marchant told him the City Council was struggling with how to wrap their head around continuing to support Upper Limit Aviation given the fact the city was incurring fees with no structure to offset these expenses. Mower said he was willing to admit there was fault on their side as well.
“What we did very naively was to apply the Salt Lake and Memphis model to Cedar City,” he said. “That was our fault, expecting that from a little airport. However, the city didn’t seek to understand what this was going to turn into and look at the fees when we were still small.”
When it came to the newly proposed fees, the City Council had then-airport manager Russ Volk determine what the impact was of having Upper Limit Aviation at the airport, including costs of overhead and maintenance. While Mower said he recognizes that they have the biggest impact on the airport, he called these figures by Volk “a best guess.”
“[Volk] was given a very difficult task by the city to figure out what the fees are from an impact standpoint,” Mower said. “He had an idea of what his time cost. I think he made the best guess he was able to make. We just felt it could be assessed in a fair and more accurate way … We’re not used to getting ‘best guesses.’”
Mower says now that everyone has had a chance to step back, he believes negotiations can move forward in a more productive manner.
“We have agreed to really work in a cooperative fashion,” he said. “We were both jerks. I admit that publicly. We were going down the wrong path. Don Marchant agreed. The airport needs to be operated. It needs to function, and we are the largest tenant … We need to come to a mutually agreed-upon fee, and we will agree to pay that.”
Mower said that he believes both sides will move forward in good faith with negotiations and that they shouldn’t reach the impasse that seemed inevitable two weeks ago.
“I think that we can come to an agreement,” Mower said. “The city needs to have fees that can support the airport. We would like to assist in determining what those fees are going to be for us and everyone else across the board so the airport can sustain itself … If there are disagreements—which happens when it comes to money and fees—I believe the city and Upper Limit will be able to move forward.”
Cedar City Council member Don Marchant was unavailable for comment.
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