We're gonna start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

For which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all.

All right.

We have I guess two things on the agenda, kind of the same thing.

So uh first off is an approval of special ordinance S 265 to amend the FY 2026 budget for the purchase of a new HVAC system for the air traffic control tower at Frederick Municipal Airport.

Good evening, Council members.

Andrew Moore, Airport Manager.

Thank you very much for having this special meeting.

Um I'm gonna go ahead and just go over the whole executive summary, which I think counts for both items if you're okay with it, and just give the whole story.

Um we'll vote on them separately, but you can present once.

Okay, that's fine.

I'll just go ahead and explain everything else.

So um the air traffic control tower at the Frederick Airport was built in 2012, uh primarily funded from an FAA grant.

It's a contract tower setup, so that means that we own and operate the building and almost all of the equipment inside, and the FA pays for the air traffic control or staffing in there.

That's kind of how that works.

Um we've been working on this for almost a year, this HVAC system.

The industry wide is going through a refrigerant switchover, which further complicated this.

It's a six-story building with a greenhouse at the top and only two doors in the building.

So that makes it very complicated to do air conditioning.

Um we have repaired it as much as we could and pursued a um an IFB, and that's where we're at now.

Um to address something the way I have it word in the executive summary, um, it is using our fund balance.

We currently have applications out for two FA uh bipartisan infrastructure law grants and that are competitive, and I don't know the answer to that yet.

And also um as a backup with the state, we have the approvals in place um that we can pursue that on a reimbursement basis later to help fund this at about 75% for the state and a hundred percent for the FA if we get it.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Any questions from the council members?

No, Andrew, I think you answered.

I was gonna ask about the FAA MAA whether or not it was reimbursable.

Um I appreciate the information on that.

Thanks.

Yeah.

So just to elaborate, a lot of these things are really good uh to not have to follow the grant rules to be able to do them.

They're very time sensitive, and then get them on a reimbursement basis.

So that's how we're pursuing this.

And Andrew, previously in the past we have received FAA grants, correct?

Correct.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Can you I know it's many, but can you go through what they what they are and what they were for?

Um so the typical form of a of a grant is is a lot of these big ol bigger capital projects, right?

Um primarily it's 90 to 95 percent FAA funded.

And these are runways, taxiways, pay big pavement projects.

Um and and really what we do is we we kind of we kind of play that game with all the different grant sources and pursue which one works best for different projects, like a fence project.

We've used a state grant because it just went faster.

Um we'll have a project coming up for some additional pavement um that we will probably pursue a state grant because we've exhausted all of our federal grants and we're adding on more pavement.

So we kind of just have our avenues and try to use them, but largely it's 90 percent federally funded, five percent state funded, and the rest locally.

Any other questions?

Uh just too.

What's the current state of the HVAC system?

Is it working at all?

Just a little bit.

We uh that's a great question.

So um timeline sometime in the winter it was running at half capacity, and we were gonna run through that and put it in our fiscal year 27 budget.

And then at some point in the winter, we'll say February maybe, uh, that other half died.

And then we were it's actually easier to heat that building, because keep in mind, six stories, greenhouse at the top.

There's no openings in the building except for the bottom and a half door up top.

Um so it's easy to heat the building, sort of, really hard to cool it.

So that's why we're putting we're putting this through so quickly.