It will take a bit longer for the municipality to finalize a lease for an operator at its heliport after council rejected a 25-year term in favour of a 10-year one this week.
The debate was lengthy and not unanimous, but in the end politicians voted to postpone signing the lease with Alpine Helicopters until administration renegotiates a 10-year term that would also see a depreciation for capital assets added to the property by the company since the late 1990s.
“The notion of a 25-year lease at that location for that type of business feels a little awkward,” said Councillor John Borrowman, who made the motion to postpone.
Mayor Ron Casey also expressed reluctance to sign such a long-term contract, but at the same time recognized the importance of having Alpine Helicopters operate in the community.
A recent presentation by Slave Lake at the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, he said, showed the importance of helicopters as emergency equipment and not just for sightseeing.
“You understand the value of having the equipment close at hand in case of an emergency,” said the mayor. “It comes at a cost to the community, but at the same time the risk of not having a heliport operator close is one I do not think you can begin to calculate.”
The postponement also delays direction for administration to craft a terms of reference document for a heliport monitoring committee.
The future committee is expected to have membership from council, Alpine, administration and the public and would monitor operations at the heliport and report to council annually.
Deputy chief administrative officer Lisa de Soto said the committee could build education and awareness concerning the value of the heliport’s operations.
“It would ensure a level of accountability in reporting that is not there currently,” de Soto said.
Council has received concerns from members of the public regarding noise from helicopters flying in and out of the community.
Alpine Helicopters’ Jim Reid said the company recently learned about a tail rotor designed to reduce noise by 40 per cent and has bought two at a cost of $10,000 to evaluate.
He said if they work, Alpine is committed to putting them on all eight helicopters that fly in and out of Canmore.
Alpine’s 12-year lease of the facility ended in March this year and prior to that administration began negotiating changes to several terms.
For the most part, the lease remains unchanged, said de Soto, but several areas have been addressed.
For the last 10 years the company has been paying $84,245 annually for rent, but an appraisal of the land showed a market rent would be $126,500, a significant increase.
A new rental rate recognizing consumer price index increases since 1999 of 30.5 per cent would set the rent at $109,940 and was agreeable to Alpine, according to de Soto, and it includes future annual increases set at inflation.
The buildings and infrastructure on the land were built by Alpine and de Soto said the old lease terms would see the municipality reimburse the company for those structures if the lease is terminated by either party.
She said that was felt to be too much of a liability and Alpine agreed to schedule depreciation of the $600,500 value over 25 years. With council’s motion to postpone and sign a 10-year lease, that schedule of depreciation will also have to be renegotiated.
The lease included a section which sets out that the conduct of the business cannot cause a nuisance and de Soto said administration felt that was not adequately defined.
As a result, an addition of a schedule D to the lease entitled Conduct of a Helicopter Business was created and defines Alpine’s operations in three areas and sets flight paths. Coun. Jim Ridley amended the schedule to have Alpine research and implement quieter equipment parts where possible.
Alpine’s operations include sightseeing and those operations are limited to three tour flight durations (12, 25 and 30 minutes) and a maximum of 60 flights per day for sightseeing between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. only. These tours for the most part are provided between April and October and use four of Alpine’s eight aircraft.
While it limits the number of flights per day, de Soto said Alpine could not provide data except on the number of passengers it flies per year.
The 10-year average is 12,414 passengers, with 13,000 predicted for 2011 and 10,406 in 2010. It was 1996, she said, that had the highest volume with 21,401 passengers.
Commercial operations and charters are defined along with emergency services.
While schedule D forms part of the lease, de Soto told council Alpine is amenable to it being reviewed and amended annually with input from the Heliport Monitoring Committee.
Coun. Hans Helder, however, felt the nuisance clause could be strengthened. He proposed a defeated amendment to require Alpine to hire a contractor to review flight paths, patterns and frequency.
While unsuccessful, Helder said the only source of information for the committee is Alpine itself and he would prefer the group begin its work with reliable, independent baseline data.
Coun. Joanna McCallum put forward a failed motion to postpone all lease negotiations until after a committee is formed and spent a year observing operations.
She said establishing the committee after signing a 25-year lease is window dressing on the concerns of the community and backwards.
“It gives (the committee) the opportunity to address the concerns of the community,” she said, adding the group can bring back best practices and recommendations to drive the terms of the lease.
The heliport was constructed by the province for the 1988 Olympics and the Town established a commission to operate it with three different companies running flights out of it.
By 1991, the province and the Town approved the Canmore Airport Vicinity Protection Area, which established rules and regulations regarding development near the airport.
It was, said de Soto, the first of its kind in Canada and has since been used as a model across the country.
However, in 1994 the province sold the land to the municipality and a condition of that sale was the land must remain a heliport.
The heliport belongs to the Town of Canmore which also holds the licence for it to operate.
Because it is a public facility, that means private helicopters may land and fuel in Canmore.
