For years the Sedona-Oak Creek Airport Authority has been involved in a vicious legal battle against one of the tour operators that regularly flies above Sedona skies and used to rent space at the airport.
We’ve covered the perpetual lawsuit when big rulings went against one party or the other, but this forever-suit looks like it will continue until one gives up, but neither party appears close to doing so.
One litigant, Dakota Territory Tours dba Sedona Air Tours, is litigating on behalf of its livelihood. It the meantime, it runs operations out of the Cottonwood Municipal Airport. Annoying, but not life-threatening from a business standpoint. The other is the SOCAA, which is funded in part by our tax dollars via the Arizona Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration.
It’s time for the SOCAA to bite the bullet and end this destructive conflict and bring order to the airport, rather than continue to waste our federal tax dollars which benefits no one — except the lawyers who are swimming in cash like Scrooge McDuck.
You can read the details on the lawsuit in reporter Scott Shumaker’s story on today’s front page here.
In sum, the airport is collecting parking fees from those of us who enjoy going to the Airport Overlook, collecting fees from pilots, collecting rent from hangar owners and using federal tax dollars that should be going to facilities and improvements to wage a hopeless and lost cause against the tour operator who — and I’m serious — hopes to win a lawsuit so that he can then pay the airport money for space and money for fuel for his aircraft. He is also spending loads of his company’s money to fight the case.
It’s one thing to sue a tenant or former business partner, it’s quite another to sue someone who wants to become a business partner.
The two sides could continue this fight indefinitely because they clearly both have merits in earning points in the case. Normally most people don’t really care if two litigants go to court for years on end, but the difference here is that one of these litigants is using our tax dollars to wage a fight it simply cannot win, otherwise it would have won in 2017 or 2019, or in the dozens of motions put forth in the interim.
The board and the lawyers are not protecting our tax dollars. Lawyers are raking in nearly a million dollars a year that could have gone to pave more tarmac for planes. That $3.1 million could have gone toward improving the airport overlook parking lot, which is the goal of that outrageous $3 per car parking fee — which provides absolutely no benefits other than a spot on gravel in the hot sun, to walk over to an asphalt slab to a handful of stone seats.
The only victory in this entire litigation has been that a judge forced the Sedona-Oak Creek Airport Authority to admit in court that it is a public body and thus subject to Arizona open records laws. For years, various civic-minded board members suggested it was public while more nefarious members alleged it was a private club or 501(c)(3) board so as to deny public records requests from residents and this newspaper. At least we have that victory in the mess, but the rest has been an absolute waste.
The pilots and hangar owners don’t benefit by keeping one tenant out. The fees the tour company would pay to store aircraft instead get paid to the Cottonwood Municipal Airport.
The $3.1 million could install a larger fuel depot to better serve the planes, pilots and hangar owners currently at the airport. With $3.1 million, SOCAA could improve water capacity and firefighting services for wildfire control not just at the airport but all throughout the region as Sikorsky, Chinook, Cobra and Bell helicopters use the airport in fire season. Even a fraction of that $3.1 million could have helped these craft fight wildfires including or any blazes that may start at the airport, but instead, SOCAA wants to give our federal dollars to private lawyers. Remember that when a future wildfire scars the slopes of the mesa.
It’s pretty easy to tell if the lawsuit was on the airport’s side completely, because it would have won by now, but it hasn’t because it isn’t. And SOCAA dumps more of its our tax money into the bank accounts of lawyers who tell them they can win.
If your lawyer hasn’t decisively won your case after four years, you either have a bad case or bad lawyer. Perhaps both.
The lawyers certainly have a fool for a client.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
