Step towards resolving Salem's budget woes: Privatize the Airport

One of the costliest things we do -- make roads to serve our huge, low-density city. Image via Wikipedia

Salem is in a sad state, budget-wise, and there's no solution in sight. We've built up a permanent structural deficit by sprawling into such a large, low-density suburb around a tiny lightly-populated urban "downtown" core that we will struggle increasingly harder and harder just to remain in place in years to come, as our money keeps flowing out of town to line the pockets of the asphalt makers and the oil companies that we've made essential by creating a place where a car is not just helpful but absolutely required. We've let the bus system collapse, for example, eliminating weekend and late-night service, so people are trapped if they don't have access to a car.

One thing we can do, though, is to stop pretending that Salem needs a publicly-owned airport to call its own. Because it's publicly owned, the airport property pays no taxes; instead, it is a tax sink, and an opportunity for contracting boondoggles like the recent $5 million upgrade to the "passenger" terminal -- a sort of local "Bridge to Nowhere," since the airport had already lost its last subsidy queen airline at that point.

There's no reason that the folks who keep their planes and who want to fly in and out of Salem can't buy the airport and operate it as a private, taxpaying venture -- plenty of airports are privately owned. Then they can be efficient and not have to deal with the city government overhead and the vagaries of having hangar lease rates set at cit council meetings.