Lewiston city officials are pushing north central Idaho’s only commercial passenger airport to help pay for the firefighting services it receives from the municipality.
Lewiston City Manager Alan Nygaard raised the issue at a Wednesday hearing on the $902,000 operations budget for Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
The city is prepared to give the airport $290,000 for the coming fiscal year, compared with $180,000 for this year. Of that amount, $150,000 would be for operations and another $140,000 would be for projects such as improving security, hiring a consultant to help recruit more airlines and repairing cracks on a taxiway.
But the city, which owns the airport with Nez Perce County, will reduce that amount if the airport doesn’t give it $60,000 to cover half of the costs for firefighting services, Nygaard said.