93.9 The Eagle – The News and Talk of Columbia, MO
The Columbia City Council decides not to charge you to park at Columbia Regional Airport.
Members voted against a fee of $3 per day during budget talks on Tuesday night.
Mayor Brian Treece was one of the votes against it.
“I think we do have to have a plan for mass transit. But I think we have to have that plan first before we start reallocating funds, because all this amendment does is reallocate funds to a system that nobody likes.”
Councilman Ian Thomas pushed charging the fee, and putting that money toward the city’s public transit system.
“I just can’t rationalize a city with an equity focus being comfortable putting $3 million a year of sales tax funding to subsidize airport operations in the long term,” Thomas said. “I think we need to look at our values and look at how we invest money and come up with a long-range plan to change that status quo.”
Thomas and Karl Skala cast the only votes in favor of the idea.
The city does plan to charge five bucks a day for airport parking in the near future, to raise money for the new terminal set to open in 2022.
The airport that already goes nowhere for higher prices wants to charge for parking now….what are they thinking. One of the main marketing points has always been to compare the saving of not paying long term parking in STL or MCI, and now they want to take that perk away.
I firmly hold, and can prove, it costs far too much for a family to fly to anywhere, even Dallas or Chicago, than it’s worth in convenience. Until you get the ticket prices within $50 of flying from STL or MCI the airport will never be viable for the normal family to fly from COU airport.
Flights aren’t direct, no all-weather covered concourse to planes,about the only think COU has going for it is the free parking, so don’t mess with that.