THE AIRPORT IS A PUBLIC TREASURE

 

Editor, The Sun:

I was pleased to see the paper’s acknowledgement of the importance of the people’s airport (26 January, 2023). However, your statement that the airport is “really a grass strip for… Tarpine” is totally false and should be retracted. I was lucky to be in the vicinity of the people’s airport today, and I personally observed numerous operations – and not a single one of those operations involved aircraft based at Tarpine. Your coverage would better inform the public if you acknowledged that members of the Wakulla County community, who live at Tarpine, have donated nearly all of the volunteer manpower to maintain and support the county airport. Additionally, your coverage would be considerably closer to the mark if you advised the public that a large portion of the funding for supporting the county airport was until recently through a public-private partnership, and not from tax revenues at all.

This airport is a public treasure which was given to the people of Wakulla County over 60 years ago and has continued for the good of the whole community ever since. In addition to necessary public services performed there - including emergency air ambulance, disaster relief, and search and rescue - this essential infrastructure also brings people and dollars and opportunity to Wakulla County. Good leaders of healthy communities know how important it is to support their community infrastructure, and there is simply no other public infrastructure anywhere in the county which costs so little and provides so much.

The people know this too, which is why over 80% of Wakulla County respondents in a recent independent public opinion poll somewhat or very strongly supported keeping the airport.

The Commissioners made the right call, 5 to 0.

Karl Kuersteiner Ochlockonee Bay

Editor’s Note: Mr. Kuersteiner appears to have conflated a line in a news story last week that “The Wakulla Airport, which is a simple grass strip, is lumped in with larger airports in FAA requirements...” and a line from FJ Young’s Letter to the Editor that “I understand the Tarpiners, they want a free air strip.”