(Fremont County, WY) – Local officials will be looking for alternative revenue sources to help maintain commercial air service at Central Wyoming Regional Airport in the coming years now that Fremont County voters have decided not to renew the optional half percent sales tax for economic development.
The tax option failed this week in a 9,342-7,087 vote, according to unofficial election results.
Minimum revenue guarantee
Since it was initially passed in 2020, a portion of the half percent sales tax – about $800,000 per year – has been used to help cover part of the minimum revenue guarantee that keeps SkyWest Airlines operating at CWRA, Riverton City Administrator Kyle Butterfield said this week.
The State of Wyoming pays 60 percent of that minimum revenue guarantee, he noted, leaving the local community to cover 40 percent – or about $1.7 million this fiscal year, based on projections.
“Losing the optional half percent tax is definitely a blow when it comes to having resources to cover (that) obligation,” Butterfield said. “The optional half percent tax was a very important component of paying for our community share of the revenue guarantee.”
The rest of the local match comes out of the city’s air service reserve account, which currently contains a little more than $2 million, Butterfield added.
He anticipates that the city will use that reserve account to cover the local portion of the minimum revenue guarantee after the money from the half percent sales tax stops coming in next year, too.
“(That’s) the way that we’re going to be able to continue flying in the foreseeable future … until we can figure out an alternative funding option,” he said. “We can draw on (that reserve) for the next year, maybe year and a half at most, to maintain commercial air service.”
Alternatives
In the meantime, Butterfield said there are several alternative funding options to explore – beginning with the half percent sales tax revenues that local governments have yet to receive for the last few months of 2024.
Butterfield said the Fremont Air Service Team “will work with the governing bodies to see how they’re going to allocate the very last portion of their discretionary (funding),” and “if they have unobligated funds … I think we’d like to make a request to receive a portion of that to continue flying and supporting commercial air service.”
After that, he said FAST could ask local governments to allocate some of their own funding to help cover the minimum revenue guarantee – “like they used to before the passage of the optional tax.”
Another idea is to pursue a more targeted sales tax option on a future ballot, Butterfield said, pointing out that many people who voted against the half percent sales tax this year mainly opposed the distribution of revenues to local governments for discretionary economic development spending.
“Some folks … couldn’t necessarily support the optional half percent, (but) they still support commercial air service,” he said. “We may call on these folks in a year or two to help us bring forward another ballot initiative for the community to consider that would maybe be more restricted to just transportation. … We would definitely explore that as an alternative solution.”
‘Optimistic’
If none of those revenue options pan out, Butterfield said, “at some point we will run out of money, (and we’ll) lose commercial air service” – but he’s “optimistic” that the community will support the funding effort, especially given the recent increase in ridership at CWRA, which has recorded more than 17,000 enplanements so far this year.
“Since the return of the second daily flight, we’ve had monthly enplanements of over 2,000 every month, and that’s just performance that we’ve never seen,” he said. “Those are record numbers. So I see that we have a market. I see that there’s a need to connect to the national transportation network. It’s a value to our community and to our residents, and for that reason I remain optimistic (that) our community prioritizes commercial air service.”
For more information call the City of Riverton at 856-2227.