Issues of representation on the Guthrie County Regional Airport Authority Board were discussed at this week’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

The Supervisors formally accepted Chris Brault’s resignation from the airport board and appointed Lance Levis to serve as its treasurer. Airport Board President Marshall Burgess said he’s had trouble finding an appointee to replace Bill Labath, who has represented Yale but recently moved to Jefferson. Without Labath, the board has only four directors and no one to break a tie.

Burgess also told the Board that in the next month he will be requesting funding from the county, cities and the Supervisors for a project to pave a new runway. Burgess says the airport has to pay $300,000, or 10% of the project, “Quite frankly, it’s a pretty good opportunity to get a new runway, the feds are coming up with 90% of $3 million. It’s unfortunate [that] our runway, I think I told you before that it’s not uncommon to have runways break up, and I hope that they’ve got better engineering these days so that they’ll last longer, they say they do so.”

Burgess says the life expectancy of current runways are 35-40 years. A consulting engineer will discuss the project with the Supervisors at an upcoming meeting.