Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
City Manager John Sheedy gave an update on several ongoing city projects during the Feb. 28 city council meeting.
“Our main update is in regards to our airline recruitment service that we got a contract for, which we took to council at the last meeting. We held our kickoff meeting with Volaire (the contractor) this past Thursday morning. Volaire is going to be speaking with multiple airlines regarding the Del Rio market. They explained to us that right now, most carriers are very risk-averse, simply because of the pilot shortage. It’s likely that risk-mitigation will need to be offered to gain a carrier commitment,” Sheedy told the council.
“We’re also talking about the fact that the retention of our existing airport infrastructure is critical, so that of course is our TSA (Transportation Security Administration) and our ARFF (airport rescue and fire fighting) equipment. Our ARFF equipment is owned by the city, so there’s no risk there. TSA is a different story, so we’re going to try and reach out to TSA. The goal is for us just to keep our TSA equipment in position as long as it’s possible, so it gives us a chance to get another airline,” Sheedy said.
The city manager said Volaire will begin working immediately on the application for a Small Community Air Service Development grant from the federal government.
“The grant proposal submissions will likely be due to the Department of Transportation in April. The timeline for the grant is unknown, hopefully August or September 2023, but it could be later. Given the loss of American’s services and that we have a carrier that’s already committed to a support letter for our grant, it appears that we’re going to have an excellent chance of being awarded a grant,” Sheedy said.
The city manager said if commercial air service is to be restored at the airport, it won’t be until the last quarter of this year or the first two quarters of next year at the earliest.
Sheedy also told council members he would be meeting with the Amtrak management team to discuss the shelter for passengers arriving and leaving from the Del Rio train station.
“Plaza Brown, we’re actually still right on schedule. I believe we had gained about five days and then unfortunately, we lost those days because we had a couple other change orders that we needed to work through.
“We’ve worked through those change orders. They’re fairly minimal, but they were very important, so I think that’s about finished and the change orders are being reviewed. The main thing with these change orders is we were concerned about some of the trees, the oak trees, being planted so close to concrete, so what we’ve asked to do is remove some of the concrete and put in pave stones so that way in the event the roots on the oak trees start rising, they can be adjusted, and we won’t have cracked concrete,” Sheedy told the council.
“Plaza Brown is on schedule at this time,” Sheedy added.
He also spoke about a meeting between city administrators and the city’s consultants on a possible second international bridge.
“It was a very, very encouraging meeting. I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves other than to say that the work that we saw today was very encouraging. They’re doing some really good work out there, again, considering that our main priority, our main objective, is to limit impact to any homes or property that’s been developed out there.
“But anyway, it looks really good, as far as what we’ve seen, the preliminary alternate route, so all that needs to happen now is that he needs to meet with a couple more property owners, and then they’ll finalize the alternate route or routes and then we’ll be ready for our second public hearing,” Sheedy said.
Finally, he spoke about the downtown tax increment reinvestment zone being eyed for the city’s downtown area.
“Council, you of course approved the contract for the TIRZ study at our last council meeting. We’re thrilled that we took it to our EDC, our first meeting of our new EDC Type B board, and they absolutely approved our TIRZ project, so they’ve approved funding that contract, so again, we’re just super, super excited about the downtown TIRZ, so we’re about to get that going and hopefully, we’ll really see our downtown start transforming,” Sheedy said.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com.
