Candidates vie for seats on airport board

CHAPEL HILL -- The jockeying has begun to get seats on the new airport authority being formed to replace UNC-Chapel Hill's Horace Williams Airport.

The first potential candidates for the 15-member board include an ex-Town Council member, an ex-Town Council candidate, and an almost-pilot with 10 years of airport ground services experience.

The authority will be formed by UNC-CH and the UNC Health Care System. Together they will have eight members. The General Assembly will have two members; the Orange County Board of Commissioners, three members, the town of Chapel Hill, one member; and the towns of Carrboro and Hillsborough will rotate the last member.

Three people who've put their names up for consideration by local governments would bring very different perspectives.

Ex-Chapel Hill Town Council member Joe Capowski says he is concerned about the authority's "too great authority," which includes the power of eminent domain, the acquisition of of private property for public use.

"Though I spent 21 years on the faculty of the med school, I do not believe that a UNC airport is the all-important need for the med school, the UNC hospitals and health care in North Carolina," Capowski wrote in an e-mail to the Town Council. "Rather, an airport must be viewed in the context of the county and towns."

Will Raymond, a former candidate for Town Council, says the decision to form an airport authority was "a terrible mistake by our legislature."

"Setting this precedent, for reasons good or bad, will probably make policy interactions with UNC-CH more difficult in days to come," he said in a letter to the Orange County commissioners. "Essentially, the legislature has issued UNC a huge hammer, with the power of eminent domain, that I believe should be reserved exclusively to elective government."

Russell Day, who is seeking the Carrboro seat, said he sees the airport as a potential economic engine for the broader community.

"The university uses it as a private airport. It's not," said Day, who currently works as a carpenter but says he worked at different airports for 10 years, fueling, moving and cleaning planes. "It's an asset to all the citizens of the state."

"It's a part of the transportation infrastructure," Day explained. "This is a landlocked area, If you don't have the airport in the mix, you pretty much hobble yourself."

Day said he completed 85 flight training hours and passed a written test toward his pilot's license but not the flight exam.

University officials have said they do not yet have a timetable for appointing the authority. They have said they need to close the airport by the time they open the first building on the future Carolina North campus. The board of trustees approved a design for that building, the Innovation Center, last week.