The Carroll City Council voted at last night’s (Monday) meeting to move forward with the design work for an approximately $1.6 million new hangar at the Arthur N. Neu Municipal Airport. City Manager Aaron Kooiker says the Carroll Airport Commission has received a “go letter” from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), signaling the federal government’s commitment to the project.
Carroll’s municipal airport serves as one of the primary service hubs for private air traffic in western Iowa, and the commission is proposing the construction of the new 100’ x 100’ hangar to better accommodate modern corporate jets. The letter allocates $174,000 in federal funding to cover engineering fees. About a quarter of the project’s total cost, $390,000, will come from the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) Fund, and the remaining $1.2 million is covered by federal and state transportation grants. Several councilmembers question the airport’s flight volume, and Kooiker says the contracted management firm, Carroll Aviation, owned by Don and Amy Mensen, records around 700 landings per month, but it isn’t clear how many of those are jets. Ward 1 Councilwoman Deb Koster says that data should be easily accessible and is needed to justify the $400,000 expenditure to taxpayers.
The FAA has a rigid schedule and course of work for federally subsidized projects. In the Carroll hangar’s case, engineering agreements are to be submitted by April 1, grant applications by May 1, and the engineering report by Dec. 1. Bids are slated for opening on March 1, 2027, and grant applications for construction are due by April 1, 2027. While the “go letter” is not a guarantee of federal backing, projects that reach this point are historically funded as scheduled. The motion from Ward 4 Councilwoman Carolyn Siemann to allocate the necessary funding to the project passed on a 4-2 vote, with Koster and Ward 2 Councilman Jason Atherton voting “nay.”
