David Austin

Todd Pownall

IN a letter dated January 28 to Paulding County Airport Director Blake Swafford, Silver Comet Terminal Partners LLC notified the airport authority that it would not make the next scheduled bond payment due this week, on February 1st, in the amount of $401,140, or continue to make future payments. The potential net result will cost Paulding taxpayers millions over the next several years.
According to the letter, signed by Propeller Investments CEO Brett Smith, “...until the County ceases its blatant interference with efforts to obtain Part 139 certification and publicly joins the PCAA and SCTPs’ efforts to obtain the above from the FAA, we will not assist in any way with the bond interest or principal payments.” The Part 139 certificate application is needed in connection with offering commercial service at Paulding’s airport.
Further, the letter urges the Paulding County Airport Authority (PCAA) to seek to be reimbursed for principal and interest payments made in February and August of 2015 totaling $441,756.50, since those payments were and remain the “absolute and unconditional” obligation of Paulding County. According to Commission Chairman David Austin as long as the county was supportive in the endeavor to obtain the Part 139, Silver Comet would make the bond payments, but without that support and their decision to stop, the obligation falls back on the county. The bond payments are in connection with the $3,600,000 Revenue Bonds, Paulding Northwest Atlanta Airport Project series 2013.
The letter specifically cites the actions of three commissioners, Pownall, Crowe and Collette over the past year to stop and/or delay the ‘139’ approval including correspondence to the FAA, attempts at removing members of the airport board who support commercial air service and replacing them, attempting to revise the Intergovernmental Agreement making the multi-year agreement contingent on the PCAA no longer pursuing commercial service, filing a lawsuit against the PCAA claiming that it lacks authority to move forward with commercial service or the Part 139. And last week Paulding Commissioners voted in favor of resolution 16-02, which states the support of the board for a response letter to the FAA, as sent by Attorney Sidley Austin LLC on January 11 expressing concerns regarding the recently completed second Environmental Assessment done at the airport site.
Airport Director Blake Swafford said the move by SCTP was prompted by the defiance of the current board to live by the decisions of the 2013 regime. “Since then the current board has done a 180-degree turn, and has now filed a lawsuit against the PCAA to try to get this stopped,” Swafford explained. The most recent lawsuit against the airport authority is asking a Paulding Superior Court judge to declare an application for federal approval of commercial service invalid because it "was never validly approved or submitted, and is contrary to the expressed will of the Board of Commissioners and a majority of the citizens," said Sue Wilkins, one of the six who filed the lawsuit.

The Paulding County Commission did not vote to authorize airport director Blake Swafford to submit the application for commercial service before he did so in September 2013, the suit states, and the commission also did not authorize the airport authority to act on its behalf in submitting the application.
In 2013 Swafford was a county government employee, but is now an employee of the airport authority and industrial building authority.
County Chairman David Austin, a member of both the commission and airport authority, has said he authorized Swafford to submit the application with tacit approval from other county commissioners.

Commissioner Pownall, reached by phone, said that he was not surprised at the decision, but that regardless of what the Intergovernmental Agreement terms were, the county put itself in the position to back the bonds anyway. “That was a poor decision by that [previous] board, but that’s the decision we have to live with. We’re not going to let our bond rating go down by not paying it, so we have to pay it,” he said.
Pownall said that the agreement to establish the Part 139 was part of a contract SCTP established with the airport authority and was never put before the BOC to consider.
“If they would have brought this whole issue before the Board of Commissioners back in 2012 and the board had voted on leasing that out to SCTP, leasing those agreements, we wouldn’t be talking about this today; they never brought it before the BOC and therefore this is where we’re at.” Pownall said that another $500,000 to be placed in escrow by the company as part of the contract was waved by Swafford because of litigation expenses. “And that would have covered this payment; that’s what it was for. There was no vote by the board on that decision either.”
Commissioner Tony Crowe, also reached by phone, echoed Pownall and said that the announcement “...comes as no surprise to me.” Silver Comet has spent more than $1 million for both 2015 bond payments, engineering work, terminal renovations and promotion of the airport, Swafford said.

Blake Swafford

“[SCTP] have spent maybe close to $2 million up to now and have gotten nothing in return at this point,” he said. Swafford said the money lost to litigation and lost revenues over the last two years alone is significant.
“So all these three guy’s actions trying to support Delta and the City of Atlanta, from being able to have commercialization is now causing county tax payers to have to pay this bond,” Chairman Austin said. “The sad part of that to me is that the three of them campaigned on the notion that if the commercial venture failed, the obligation for the bonds would rest with Paulding taxpayers, but now through their efforts to stop the 139, they’ve actually made that happen, Swafford said. And payments will likely continue into the next decade, Swafford said. “We’re only in the second year of these bond payments. So, for eight and half more years either Propeller can pay them or the county can pay them. But if the county continues to sue the airport authority and throw up all the road blocks to commercial service, it’s guaranteed the county will pay them,” Swafford said.