Paulding County airport officials are moving forward with plans to issue bonds for taxiway work, while acknowledging the airport likely won’t be able to launch commercial airline service until next year.
The Paulding County Airport Authority on Wednesday approved terms for $3.6 million in bonds for the taxiway expansion aimed at helping the airport prepare for commercialization. The county board of commissioners must also approve the terms, and the county and airport are still awaiting resolution of a legal challenge to the bonds.
Paulding County residents filed the legal challenge, and the Georgia Supreme Court last month ruled in favor of the airport authority issuing the bonds. But residents represented by a legal team including one of Atlanta’s most powerful law firms, King & Spalding, have filed a petition asking the court to reconsider its decision.
Meanwhile, the airport authority also approved a grant from the Georgia Department of Transportation to pay for an environmental assessment. The environmental assessment must be completed before the airport’s commercial certification is approved, as a condition of the settlement of a separate legal challenge filed by residents.
Paulding airport director Blake Swafford said he now expects the environmental assessment will take at least nine months to complete — pushing the county’s hopes for airport commercialization into 2015.
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