The Cortez-Montezuma County Airport will renew its contract with Great Lakes Aviation adding only a few minor changes to the wording, airport assistant manager Russ Machen told the city council Tuesday night.

The contract, which expires May 31, will be renewed for two years and seven months — beginning June 1, 2000 and ending December 31, 2002, the lease agreement states.

The seven-month addition to the standard two-year lease was done to align the lease with the calendar year and the Cortez budget cycle.

City Manager Hal Shepherd said however that under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) amendment, added to the Colorado Constitution in 1992, the contract will have to be reviewed and voted on by the city council every year.

Changes to the agreement include a small building rent increase, an increase in the amount of time allotted for payment and an increase of landing fees from 70 cents per 1000 pounds to 75 cents.

"This was a scheduled increase that was built into last year’s contract, so it won’t affect ticket prices," Machen said.

Machen said that the Great Lakes contract is the only alternative that Cortez has for local air service.

"We don’t go out to bid because (Great Lakes) are the ones that United has tabbed to be their United Express representative in this area — so we either deal with them or we go without," Machen said.

"If we were to go with some small fly-by-night outfit that was not connected to the United system, then people would have to carry their baggage from whatever concourse they landed in over to the United concourse in order to make their connections elsewhere," said Machen. "United has control, essentially, of Denver — they are the hub airport there."

Machen said that since the "big snafu" last fall when Great Lakes didn’t have enough pilots, reliability has returned to what it was in years past.

"In February we had 116 flights scheduled and eight of those were canceled; In March we had 124 flights scheduled and 11 were canceled and in April we had 84 flights scheduled and two were canceled," Machen said.

"During the winter months, those cancellations could be related to weather or something else beyond the control of the airline situation here in Cortez," Machen added.

Machen said that of the flights that did get off the ground, the airline has reported approximately 50 percent occupancy. This is considered about average for a small airport, he explained.

Machen told city council members that the airport is about 19 percent ahead on the number of boardings compared to last year.

If the airport can exceed 10,000 boardings — not including buddy passes, employee deals, etc. — then the airport would be entitled to $600,000 in funding from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

"The amount of money that is given out is determined by an equation using the number of boardings throughout the year," Machen said. "The money can be used at any time for a number of airport projects within the FAA guidelines."

Machen said that a rough projection using current figures shows that the Cortez-Montezuma County Airport should be near 9,240 boardings by December.

"This is a very rough-and-dirty estimate," said Machen. "You can’t really project what each month’s boarding is going to be."

Machen said that if the Cortez airport comes within a few hundred boardings of the FAA minimum, a low cost shuttle system could be set up to a nearby airport, such as Farmington, in order to reach the benchmark.