Burns Bottom Trees Are Coming Down & How Are GTRA TSA Agents Doing?

Progress has a sound, and sometimes it’s a chainsaw. We start in Burns Bottom, where a few dozen older trees are slated to come down as a new housing development prepares for infrastructure and dirt work. We talk through what’s actually happening on the ground and a plan to plant about 200 street trees. 

Next, we dig into Mississippi public school accountability ratings and the frustration of changing standards year after year. We question what those A through F labels really communicate when the scale keeps shifting.

After the break, Matt Dowell, executive director of Golden Triangle Regional Airport, joins us from the world of air travel. We cover TSA during the government shutdown and the community support that kept morale up, new airline connections heading both east and west, major terminal upgrades like a first jet bridge, and what drives airfare pricing as planes fill and algorithms adjust. If you care about local growth, jobs, and the everyday logistics of travel, this one ties it all together. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

I don't know what he has come up with today to talk about. I'm not asking you to hide anything. You know, no, put it out there. Let the people see it.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

I've never not worked in a hospital working department.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

You can't argue with anybody when they're putting facts in your face. Zach, that's a hard question. I have no answer for it. From the opinion page of the commercial dispatch. This is between the headlines.

Burns Bottom Trees Versus Housing

SPEAKER_03 0:29

It's a great day to be in the friendly city. That is, unless you are one of the trees in Burns Bottom. Ooh. We will be talking about that today, as well as the adjustments in the accountability rating system for the schools, but first. And also today, Mr. Matt Dowell, who is the executive director of GTR Airport. Retirement looks different for everyone, so your plan should be built around you. For over 40 years, Financial Concepts has helped people create retirement strategies that fit their lives. Our team in Columbus takes the time to understand your goals and build a plan that works for you. Wherever you are in your journey, we're ready to help. We plan retirement. Financial Concepts is a registered investment advisor. This episode of Between the Headlines is brought to you by Bank First, a bank headquartered right here in Columbus, Mississippi. That means your banking decisions aren't made hundreds of miles away by someone who doesn't know you. They're made here locally by bankers who know your name and care about the community. At Bank First, we're more than bankers. We're your neighbors. Whether we're cheering in the stands, catching up at a local pancake breakfast, or celebrating milestones across our community, we're part of the moments that matter most. Stop by your local Bank First branch or visit BankFirstFS.com to learn more. Bank First is a member FDIC and Equal Housing lender, Bank NMLS 454063. All right, Zach. So I uh stopped by Burns Bottom on the way here because I remember there being trees down there, but I don't particularly remember paying attention to them until today. And so we've got this story in the paper where, well, guess what? The trees have to come down because houses are going to be there. We knew that, but did we know that?

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Well, you know, emotional connections with things and all. The the background here is there's some, there's a few dozen trees out uh in that five-block area. Uh most of them are uh uh they were determined to have no timber value. Good many of them uh are just not good trees to have no timber value.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

Well, if you're building Dr. Seuss houses, they may be of excellent timber value. We'll get to that. Keep going.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Well, okay. So for that development to come in, for them to uh lay the infrastructure, get the dirt work in, they need to uh get rid of the trees, which and that work's gonna start around May 1st, from what I understand. So even the trees that they would save, according to uh Kevin Stafford, you know, Nick Parrish, others, bringing the dirt in there uh and the amount of dirt that they would have to bring in there, it probably gonna kill them anyway. That's that's a problem. So it's it might smother the roots. Yes. Okay. And then the other thing is the few trees that uh they would save, they're gonna be on private property. They're not gonna be where the right of right rights of way will be in the new development. They're gonna be in people's yards where people are gonna be trying to build houses. And there's not gonna be any way to tell them you can't cut your own tree down at that point. It's kind of a losing proposition for the trees all the way around. However, the new development will have they're gonna plant 200 street trees in the right-of-way.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

What's a street tree? Is that like a street taco? Is it it's like a scaled-down tree?

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Well, I don't know exactly what species they'll be, but they'll be lying the they'll be lying the streets and front of the houses and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Young, friendly looking, uniform, that type of thing. Well, I'll say this uniform tree, uh, that's gonna be better than what we've got now because those trees were um they were all over the place. Yeah. That they were um Bernie Ives was talking about there being some hackberry out there and some other undesirable trees. There were some trees I couldn't identify, looked obviously non-native. And so I think what you've got there is a hodgepodge of just misfit trees. Right. And there may be some of them that are nice, and and normally I'm a tree guy. Like I love trees. Oh, I love trees. And I've I've learned this about myself recently, but these things are probably just gonna have to go. What say you?

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Okay, well, I mean, one of the big arguments is, you know, mm well, there's the oxygen argument, there's the you know, there's the argument that these are uh 50, 75 years old and you can't replace them in a day. And that's true. You can't be absolutist about something like this. And that that's what I think that uh uh you need to avoid. Like it it's you can't go concrete jungle and you can't go full Lorax on something like this. I want to give kudos to both Bernie Imes and Nick Parrish, uh, because it would have been easy for uh somebody on the tree board, somebody as uh passionate about trees as Bernie, to be, you know, to get out there, chain themselves to the biggest oldest tree out there and said, You've got to go through me if you want to tear these down. But it and even when I was talking to him originally, he um you know he was very sad about this when I was telling him about it the first time. And um had some very, you know, there's gotta be some way where we can save some, several, maybe something. Uh this needs to be better thought out. Well, he goes out there with an arborist, looks at all of it, and comes to the conclusions that you see, which are there's a lot of hackberries out here, a lot of these trees have to go. But I am talking to Nick about possibly is there are there any that can be saved? Because it would be nice if there could be. And Parrish, to his credit, had the same attitude. He's like, you know what, I'm gonna talk with Bernie. We're gonna see if we could come up with a strategy where we can save some of these trees, or maybe one of these trees, or or whatever. But that conversation is gonna be had in good faith by both parties, and neither one of them are being absolutist, and that's why a good conclusion's gonna come from it, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_03 6:58

At the end of the day, the story was it's gonna be up to the homeowner for some of those trees that were potentially salvageable. And someone made the statement that they'll probably end up coming down with it anyway. Well, and if if it doesn't survive, it's got to come down understand that. But I tell you something, when I get ready to buy my house out there, I want the light that has the tree in the backyard because it's hot. It is hot down there. I'm gonna feel like a frog sitting in my backyard. It it's muggy, and you know, it's funny how a lot of people say, Oh, it's so hot outside today, and and they're saying it while they're in the middle of a park and all the daggum trees is gone. You go, you know, go figure. Well, let me say this in closing, Zach. Uh I don't have so much of a problem about moving trees out of the way to build pretty houses. I think all in all, this is going to be a good thing. What I do have a problem with is go away out in the country, say, the Magbee bottom, and you go out there and it's decimation and it's hundreds of acres of trees just gone. Um for the sake of deer or whatever, nothing being built there. Um not a fan. Uh yeah, you go in town, actually the deer are in the neighborhoods that have all the trees for whatever reason. And north side. What there are trees, there are deer, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Right. But you know, we're talking about n, you know, Nick and Saunders were on here uh uh not too long ago talking about how they're modeling uh modeling this neighborhood on uh you know neighborhoods like Southside, and Southside's got a lot of old big trees that uh that are shading the houses. And so I mean, let me ask you, David, does cutting these trees and not trying to preserve some of them or most of them, does that believe the the for you, the strategy of trying to recreate Southside and Burns Bottom?

SPEAKER_03 9:07

It can. Uh here's what I mean by that. If you look at um, okay, across from where I live, there's a neighborhood. I know the original developer, he intentionally drew that out so that an old tree line going along a dirt road would preserve trees, and now all these old trees happen to be in the backyards of many nice homes. Sure. And so the plans are already written. I don't know which trees are going to be able capable being saved, but it it's worth a conversation uh both now and in the future. Am I missing your point there?

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Well, okay, so for me, I don't think it I I I don't think that it uh is contradictory at all. No, you can't replace a 50-year-old tree in one day with a new tree. However, they are replanting seven to one ratio for every tree they're taking out, they're planting seven new ones. And I I know that it's not going to be as tall originally as the ones that are out there now or as old or any of that, and that matters. It does matter. But so do the people who will be here 50 years from now. And the argument that, well, you know, you're taking this big tree out, um and and and a new tree isn't going to replace it, it eventually will. And and that neighborhood is going to grow. It's going to get a tree canopy. It's going to be beautiful if they do this right. And I have no doubt that they will do it right, because they're very I mean, they're passionate enough about it where one of the developers that's already got a master plan uh approved is still talking to Bernie about, okay, let's let's see what flexibility that we do have. So, I mean, that's that's good faith. So is replanting the 200 trees for the ones that you lose. And it is gonna matter. It may not shade uh the people who build the houses there for the first 10, 15 years they lived there, but it will eventually. And I think that that matters. I don't think that the only people that matter and the only time that matters are the people here right now at this time. 200 trees that are good trees, replacing 30 trees that are, I think long term, that's better, and I think that's going to create that vision of what you see in Southside over time a lot more effectively than trying to build houses around a gum tree or a bodog tree that's out there right now.

Can Any Trees Be Saved

SPEAKER_03 11:38

Poor old gum trees and bodoc trees. They get the worst. If you'd like to sound off about the trees, let's hear from you, tips at cdispatch.com. Okay, Zach. Starkville Octivihog gets an A. Lownds County gets an A. Uh Columbus Municipal gets uh a C, I guess it was. Um what is happening in the world of accountability ratings for our public schools?

SPEAKER_02 12:07

Well, I'm not gonna get terribly deep in the weeds about this. Uh the only thing that I'm gonna say about it on the on the background side is here we go again with changing the accountability standards. Here we go again with changing the accountability standards. Um that we have, I guess, a certain number or a certain percentage of schools that have reached a certain level, we now have to move the goalpost again from the state level from MDE and say, well, you know, if you want to have uh an A or you want to have a B or you want to have a C, then you're gonna have to get more points, and you're gonna have to do it in different ways to get more points, and uh we're shaking it up because we want to increase rigor and blah, blah, blah, and do all of this stuff. All those things. All the every year they change something or a whole lot of somethings.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

They do. They're they're trying to do this and that. Uh my question is this as I looked at it, I didn't see a lot of changes in the actual curriculum. They wanted to kind of do away with the history portion of it, this and that.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Well, I have problems with that.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

Yeah, for sure. But but but by and large, what what I saw was just a change in the scale, right? That is to say, um uh, for example, if if you got a ninety and you are in A school, you get a ninety next time, that's no longer an A school rating. Is that kind of how they're doing that? I mean, that's part of what they're doing, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Um for me, it's just uh d almost like changing for the sake of changing. You've got a success model that people are meeting, so now you've got to move the goalposts so maybe they won't meet it anymore. What what is that even for? I have a theory on that, and I'll put my tinfall hat on in a minute. But um it's made it to where they changed the test several years in a row. Oh, well, the test was too easy or the test was too hard, or now the test is just right, or well, now it's so just right that we need to change it again. And they've done all of these things over the years just over and over and over again, to where, frankly, these accountability ratings don't mean anything anymore in reality. However, even though they don't actually tell you anything, it sure does tell an industry wanting to come to your community something. It sure does want it sure does tell somebody wanting to come and live in your city something. There you go. And if they don't actually mean anything, then why would you do that? And then the consequence of that be harming communities and disproportionately harming poor communities.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

Here's my problem. You have right now a staircase system where it's an A or a B or a C or a D or an F, right? Right. Why? Why can that not be a curve or something linear? Well, let's say your school district uh gets an eighty-nine. The school next door makes a 91. Is the school that makes the 89 that much worse than the one that makes the 91, even though the one that gets the 89 is up east school? Yeah. And we don't want to move there.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Oh, that's yeah, that's and so why don't we make the system a little more intelligent and not so I think that Chapman, uh Craig Chapman with CMSD, and Sam Allison both made the same points in that in that story, which kind of the points that we were making is that this stuff needs to mean something and they need to quit th they need to start being consistent and having consistent goals that, you know, teachers and districts can kind of depend on. Yeah. And by not doing that, it harms communities, it harms co both of them are saying that. And I think that a lot of people would look unfairly, frankly, at Craig Chapman and say, well, likely story. You just don't want to go back down to a D. But I think I think that that's an unfair assessment of those comments from Chapman, but I think that it really punctuates the fact that those are valid because when Sam Allison is saying it, that is a that is a district that's have been an A for seven years in a row. They don't want to go back down to a B, but even they're going, what does would that even mean? It wouldn't mean that we're underperforming, it wouldn't mean that our teachers aren't doing a good job. It would just mean that they change they change cracking. That makes us look bad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

You know, I for these guys down in Jackson, these guys and gals to to sit down there and and put on a suit and a tie and continue to do these things, they are going to have to really remember things like Gardner's multiple intelligences and and understand that that cultures are different in different places, kids are different, schools are different, and we have to get out of this mentality of teaching to the test. Absolutely. Absolutely. Go try to pick up your kid from school during test week. The National Guard is out there to keep you from going in there and they've got black stuff over the windows.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Yeah, I'll do you one better, David. I'll bet you a dollar right now that if tomorrow they gave the eighth grade ELA test to every employee at MDE and every member of the State Board of Education, the pass rate from that would not be a hundred percent. So what are we even talking about?

SPEAKER_03 17:43

We're talking about a dollar I'm not gonna bet, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Well um here comes my tinfoil hat. And it's a very short story. I'll try to keep it short anyway. Some years ago, I was training our new education reporter, it was Mary Pilates for what it's worth. It was her second day on the job as an education reporter, and I was taking her around to introduce her to different uh people that was going to be on the beat, and we were going to meet the late great Lynn Wright, God rest him, uh, on that particular day. But as we were pulling up, there was a guy uh in a in a really beat-up sedan. He was wearing a uh button-down shirt with a tie and khakis. He looked pretty disheveled, hair looked disheveled. He looked one part traveling evangelist and uh one part Michael Bolton from Office Space. And as we were passing by, he was going into the trunk of his car, and he pulled out a briefcase from the trunk of his car, and he was getting all of that stuff together, right? So Mary and I go on in there and we're sitting there. Uh when he walks in, um, he goes up to Tina Younger, who's at the superintendent's office uh as the receptionist, and um asked to see Lynn. He said, Okay, well these people are waiting in front of you, but if you'll have a seat, he'll be right with you. So Lynn comes up a couple minutes later, looks at him, looks at us, and says, if you let me go ahead and take care of him, it's not going to take very long. Okay. So he goes back there and then Mary looks at me and says, What's that guy's story? And I said, Oh, he's selling curriculum. He's selling curriculum.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

Gross.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

I'm like, or he's selling some sort of magic beans solution for math English or what some of some supplemental.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

It's like the Nexium guy when you're waiting to see the doctor.

Replanting Plans And Future Canopy

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Lo and behold, five minutes later, Lynn comes out, tells that guy goodbye. We go back there and he's like, I just don't know why those curriculum salesmen just keep coming up here to the school. I'm not gonna buy any of this stuff. But that's a funny story, but the but the not funny part of this is that school districts do buy them, and they're not buying them necessarily from you know Billy Bob that's pulling up in his car. They're buying them from these companies that have this cadre of consultants that come up there, they don't have any classroom experience, or they've got very limited classroom experience, and they washed out, and now they work for a consulting firm where they can go up during uh professional development days and teach teachers how to do their job better. And they're getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for that contract. Like$150,000 a year, you can get that contract for a school district to where you can consult on the curriculum. MDE used their own consultants to change the standards for uh the standards that they're gonna use now for the accountability ratings. So okay, I won't put my tinfoil hat on and say that um this is the reason that this is happening, but this is what I will say. This kind of crap doesn't benefit the school districts. We've already established that it doesn't benefit communities and tax bases or the job market, it doesn't benefit students, it doesn't benefit teachers, but we can say with certainty that it benefits these cadre of consultants that will doubtless come into these schools in a year and say, Well, y'all were doing a good job, but now then you see your accountability rating has dropped. So I brought a briefcase full of our magic beans, and we're gonna teach you how to plant them. You've heard of the military industrial complex. That's the education uh uh industrial complex.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

Oh, it's big money and big business.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

And you know, I don't think that we should be building our accountability models for the for the sheer purpose of benefiting when the sole beneficiary of that crap is those people. But I guess it's a good job if you can get it. Yeah, and that's all I'll say about it. I'll take my tenfold hat off.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

I heard that. Well, I think the speaker of the house would put Probably agree with you on that stuff. But speaking of a suit and a tie, we have coming in after the break, Mr. Matt Dowell, who is the executive director of GTR Airport. But first. Since nineteen thirty-five, Lowndes Farm Supply has supported the Greater Columbus Trade Area with products and knowledge for the farm, ranch, and garden markets, along with lawn, hunting supplies, outdoor clothing, and boots. Go check them out at 69 Co-op Road in Columbus. So at this time we bring in someone who is coming to us from the unhappy world of air travel, and that is Mr. Matt Dowell, Executive Director of GTR Airport. Thank you for being in here today. Thanks for having me. What's going on over there at the airport? Where do we start today?

SPEAKER_04 22:48

Well, so I'm an aviation geek, so I enjoy it going to the airport every day and just being around airplanes. So, you know, as far as the happiness, I'm always happy because I'm around airplanes all the time.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Well, how's TSA doing?

SPEAKER_04 23:00

But yes, there's some challenges, and it seems like every industry, but especially aviation, always has a challenge going on. We'll solve one and then another one pops up, right? So right now, currently one of those has been TSA. Uh there's been a government shutdown going on. So for 44 days, they didn't get paid. We were told today that they're actually starting to receive back pay. So kind of have some good news to report, which is great. Um doesn't have to be. Absolutely. Well, you know, I've been really impressed with them, you know, um, and I've been touched, really. So uh you've been touched. Tell a little bit of a TSA. Now look. I gotta watch it.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:38

Thank you. Uh so no, the uh the point is the communities have been really reaching out. So when they saw the headlines, they've seen the long TSA lines, they've been calling and reaching out. How are our TSA folks doing? How is the local community uh staff doing here? And we've been able to report they're all showing up for work. Our lines are operating normally. And that's because you know they're very dedicated. They carpool together, they work together to make sure they're all able to make the schedule work. So uh then the community members are, well, how can I help out? So they're bringing lunches, they're donating gift cards. And those are the things that touch me is the amount of outreach we've had from the local community to support them.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Aaron Powell Now with the pay through this executive order, for the the pay starting to show up again, and I know that uh there are bills going through Congress to try to get this thing going right the right way. Um are y'all going to I know that y'all did an all call out for community donations. Are y'all still taking those?

SPEAKER_04 24:34

So as of today, we're starting to tell everybody that they're not able to accept those. They've been told that now that they're starting to receive their back pay, they're no longer able to accept new donations. And so that's the new news is they're getting paid and donations are uh no new donations are are able to be received by them. So like I mentioned, we got all these calls, like how can we donate? So as soon as we got guidance, we started getting that out. And then shortly after it was like they ended up getting the executive order, and then money started to flow. So, like I say, good things to report, and I really appreciate everything that our community has done to support them. You can just tell that you know the morale is high when even they're not getting paid, but people are showing up and being thankful for the job that they're doing to support and protect our community members.

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Aaron Powell For those who don't know, all right, GTR offers a connection both east and west now. Is that correct? That's right. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

So our newest service is through American Airlines. We've had Delta service for a long time, but now you can go both directions, which was one of the complaints that we kind of heard is hey, we love Delta. We love the fact that we can use this local airport, but our direction of travel is west. So we have to fly to Atlanta, fly back over Mississippi. It just seemed counterintuitive. People would do it because it was the only uh option if you wanted to fly locally, but we're so glad to have multiple airlines flying in separate directions to the two largest hubs in the country.

SPEAKER_03 25:56

And your typical flyers, are they students, are they athletes, executive folks, or is it normal folks like me?

SPEAKER_04 26:04

I mean, yeah, it's a mixture, right? Um Mississippi State State University, the community college, we do see a lot of their students. We now see sports teams that are taking, especially the American flights going west. So if you're a smaller like tennis team or something like that, maybe you choose to take that commercial flight rather than getting a charter flight. Um and then we have a lot of industry around us. So we see those business travelers and they're buying tickets sometimes last minute to make those business meetings. Um it's been a mixture. I would say we're probably still about 60 percent business, and then 40 percent is leisure, you know, maybe student travel, things like that. Um, but Mississippi State's a big reason why we're able to uh offer those services. Um they recruit heavily and have a pretty big presence in Texas, especially.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Okay. Well, and I want to go back to the TSA thing and just to kind of explain to just the structure of how the airport works. Now, I mean TSA's federal employees, they don't work directly for the airport. Correct.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

Yeah, no, that's right. So uh but everybody thinks of the airport experience as being one experience, right? So so when uh we get calls from the communities, if it's about TSA, they're calling us. They're not calling TSA. So it's one experience when you get to the airport. From the time you get on the airport premises and you're parking and you're going and checking your bag and you're dealing with those uh TSA uh employees that are screening you, it's just one experience. So we get it all we call it one big airport family because we all reflect on each other.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

Well, talk about uh talk about the construction that has gone on out there in the last few years and what y'all are up to these days.

School Ratings And Moving Goalposts

SPEAKER_04 27:40

Yeah, yeah. So taking it back a little bit, we've been around since 1971. So that's 54 years we've been around. So uh sometimes it feels like we're in the aging infrastructure business as much as we are right in the airport business. So we're I always think it was that old. Yeah, yeah. And we're one of the young ones. So uh we're we're not the oldest airport in the state. So um we we always have something to work on, right? So if we're not renovating something, we're trying to expand. So we mentioned air service growing. Well, anytime you grow air service, you then need to grow your amenities. So parking lots need to grow. We need to grow the terminal space, and that's part of what we're doing right now. So when I was uh leaving before I got here, we had a meeting about our parking lot expansion, because people more people means they need more parking spaces. So that's one of the areas we're growing. I mentioned the terminal is under construction right now. We're trying to add our very first jet bridge, which means normally you need to add on to the second floor. So that's been interesting. Um, but we want to have the same amenities at GTR as you see anywhere else, even at the bigger airports, just on a smaller scale. One that makes sense uh for our community. But we're investing heavily in the technology that other ones have, like jet bridges. We got our first escalators. There's two of them, one up, one down. You kind of need both. Uh and then and then uh uh another elevator. So a lot of uh technology is going in that as well as some additional square footage.

SPEAKER_03 29:06

Aaron Powell Let me ask you this. I know that the um airline safety has been in the news lately because of radio mishaps, this and that. How complex is traffic safety for that airport?

SPEAKER_04 29:20

Yeah, it's very complex. I mean, and it's so important, right? So uh every day we want to s it's uh all about safety, right? So at the end of the day, we want to be safe, and then everything else kind of comes secondary as far as priorities. Um but we have a lot of people and a lot of different jobs uh that keep the airport safe. So air traffic control is a big part of that. We do have a control tower, so we're very fortunate, not every airport has one, but we have a control tower with controllers who are that extra pair of eyes that are trying to separate traffic, right? So you don't just have pilots communicating with each other, you actually have a third party that's providing advisories, keeping everyone separated. Uh, but sometimes there there are holes or there are there are issues. One of the things is our air traffic control system in the U.S. Uh it's aging, right? So we talk about technology. It's one of those things that hasn't been broken for a long time or hasn't shown a lot of weakness, so there hasn't been a lot of investment. But that's starting to change. We're starting to see the FA announce billions of dollars and investing in newer technology. You know, some of the things they have is just uh still like printed uh pieces of paper that they're using up there. Instead of using digital screens and technology that's providing a lot of information back and forth from the airplanes to the controllers, a lot of that can be updated. And that's what we're starting to see. So uh it's an important thing to invest in. Obviously, when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong. Um thankfully we have not had some of the issues that you you've probably seen in the headlines, but it's always a concern. I mean, that's something we want to go above and beyond that is is safety.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

You guys haven't seen the uh airline prices or the the ticket prices hike up so much yet. But I mean uh y'all are kind of braced for that, I guess, a little bit based on the fuel price.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

How would that usually affect the we talk about uh you know challenges and stuff and things we can't control. So sometimes uh I've been asked, like, well, what are you worried about? Things I can't control. One of those things being fuel prices, right? Um so fuel prices are involved in everything, but especially air travel, right? So that makes up a pretty large portion of airlines' operating costs. Well, eventually they gotta be paid for their cost. And so uh eventually that's gonna trickle down into the price of tickets. So, like you mentioned, we hadn't seen a huge spike in that, but as those prices start to get absorbed by the airlines on all their flights going forward, we can imagine that that's gonna be at some point reflected in the price of their tickets.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Something that I've always wondered, and you may not want to answer this or may not can, I don't know. I've always wondered about the margins in in airline or airline ticket prices.

SPEAKER_04 31:59

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. Um so I've been told, I'm not a financial expert or a spokesman for the airlines, right? So uh but I've always been told it's somewhere around 10 to 15 percent as far as margins. So they're not working on huge margins. Now, obviously they're huge companies, so you spread that 10, 15 percent uh you know profit revenue across their entire platform, you're still talking about profitable businesses, but there's you know to your point, there's a small margin of profit there.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Well, but I mean I I guess how do you predict that when you're um I mean when you're looking for an airplane ticket, the day you fly, the time you're trying to buy that ticket, you know, the price of that ticket does not remain the same from stem to stern. It it it uh a a single airline ticket may have nine different prices by between the time that it is available to the time that it is bought.

SPEAKER_04 32:49

That's a really good point. Yeah. So so I mean And and I'll try to explain some of the factors that I know that go into this wizardry, right? Because there is uh a lot of computer programs that actually are deciding this. You got I'm sure some human intervention, but from my understanding, there's a lot of computer programs that the airlines have. But basically, as that plane fills up, all the cheap seats go first, and then they see demand for that flight. Prices continue to increase all the way up to the day it flies, and depending on how full that flight gets. So as it fills up, um, we can expect that prices are going to increase over time. And then competition is another thing. So they look at, okay, now that we have Delta and American, they're considering their prices based on well, what is the other airline charging? So competition is a good thing when it comes to pricing because then they have to not just consider how much demand they have, but what you know their competition may be doing. And then now people have choices on where they could go and where they could spend their dollar.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

Now, does that computer raise the price for us southern folk who eat a lot and potentially burn more gas going through the air?

SPEAKER_04 33:58

Not that I know of, but you know, once again, I don't know how to do that.

SPEAKER_03 34:04

Some airlines are charging two tickets for certain folk.

SPEAKER_04 34:08

Well, yeah, and I think that's on an airline-by-airline basis, right? Um but at the same time, there's a lot that goes into that computer programming. Um that then I then this is just pieces of those factors that are being considered, right? So but I gotta watch what I say around David. I I see I'll get you in trouble. Yeah, right. Turn this way a little bit, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Getting you out of the weeds a little bit. Uh so I know that there was some uh the the airport was working with the the member cities and counties uh to purchase a little bit of adjacent property. Was that ever executed? It was okay.

SPEAKER_04 34:47

Uh so we we finished purchasing that in December of last year, so of 25. Um and yeah, it took a lot of effort, right? So we uh had some federal grant money, but then we needed to purchase that land quite quickly. Um, and so we went to all the communities. As uh, you know, we talked about the structure of the airport, we're owned by all three cities and all three counties. And so we went um in coordination and help really from the Golden Triangle Link, they were a big part of that. Um there was some opportunity for land adjacent to the airport um so that we could have development sites. So uh one of the neat things were you know, everybody focuses on the airline service, but the airport is very unique in the fact that we also have tenants and land that we're managing.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

So we have over a thousand acres of the chunk of the industrial uh park is that's right.

SPEAKER_04 35:34

Airport or was airport land. It was airport land, yeah. And we were one of the very first ones out there. So nothing but cropland, then we build an airport, and now you can, if you've been out there, you know, it this landscape has changed. There's all kinds of development happening out there. But um, you know, we have Airbus helicopters out there, you have Stark Aerospace, you have Aurora, which is now a Boeing company out there, and so at they've continued to grow. So they've come, built one facility, expanded multiple times, and so we started to see, uh especially after the aluminum plant got uh on the other side of the airport, still plant on one side, uh, the other side aluminum plant now. We're starting to feel the squeeze of where are we gonna have land for expansion of existing aviation companies? And then when there's recruitment of a new aviation or aerospace jobs, where will they go? Um and and how can they access the airport infrastructure, which is why a lot of these aviation companies locate out an airport? They want to be have access to our ramps, our taxiways, our runways. So they want to be really close. Um and so as we started seeing all this development happening around us, there was some opportunity for about 109 acres of land. Um and so we tried to get some federal funds, some local funds to help support that, and we were able to close on that land mainly to have for aviation aerospace development.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

Aaron Powell Now, from what I understood at the time, there wasn't or there weren't any immediate plans for that. Is that still the case?

SPEAKER_04 36:57

That's right. It's kind of going into our master plan plans for that, uh working with the link so that those can be included on future proposals when they're going after businesses uh or recruiting businesses to our area. So that that was the uh the goal was to have those spaces.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

And it gives you a lot more flexibility owning the land than rather if somebody else had bought it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_04 37:16

That's right, because then obviously we couldn't control how that would be utilized, how that would tie into the airport. So uh having a bigger footprint specifically set aside for aviation and aerospace use, like you said, uh, is very advantageous.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Okay. Now one more silly question for you. I don't know. From me, yeah. I'm silly sometimes. So one time I saw a a preacher in Starble corner Joe Max Higgins after a rotary meeting and beg him, said, There's so much good deer hunting in that land around the airport. Can is there any way to lease it? Can I lease it? Can I lease it? And he kept it, no, no, no, no, no. But he did acknowledge that there were some big deer at the airport. So let me ask you a question. Has uh can you shoot a boon and crockett deer out of the air control tower at the airport? And has that ever been done?

SPEAKER_04 38:10

Never been done, to my knowledge. And and in fact, now that things are are getting so developed out there, I think it would be uh probably less and less likely that you're gonna see that big bug out there, right? You don't want deer on the tarmac. No, and in fact, we we have fence lines we maintain, we try to keep wildlife. You talk about challenges again. Uh we put up fences, game fences to keep out the wildlife because they don't mix well with aviation, but you still have birds that fly over, so we're having to manage those. So I mean, there's a lot of things that we get to do on a tour.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

Well, we can take care of the birds too around here.

SPEAKER_04 38:40

Right, right. And there's becoming less and less of those, I can say, because of all that development. You used to have all these trees, those are getting taken down. You have now plants, and they're managing wildlife around those areas. So uh wildlife used to be, especially when we were the only one out there, a lot more of a factor than it is.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Yeah, I imagine so. Okay, so I also know that uh I saw the press release on TSA Precheck. So tell us about that a little bit.

The Education Consulting Money Machine

SPEAKER_04 39:02

Yeah, so uh TSA PreCheck is still happening. I know we got a lot of questions like, hey, are you still gonna have TSA Precheck with uh shutdown? It's a separate company that they've contracted out, so they are still showing up. The best thing about TSA Pre-Check is the um swiftness and the convenience of being able to get through security. So you get to leave your jacket on, your belt on, your electronics in your bag. So once you get it, like like I've got it, and my wife's got it, you don't want to go back to the regular TSA screening. I knew you were highfalutin. Yeah, well, this is proof. It's it it is worth, it's like for five years,$85. So, you know, yeah, a high roll sometimes, right? Uh but it is well worth those extra dollars for the convenience factor of not basically having to go and take off all of this and take everything out of your bag while you're going through security. Highly recommend it. And everyone I've recommended it to, they've really enjoyed having it. So just passing it on. Anything else you want to add today? Um you know, you guys have asked some uh great questions. I'd encourage everybody to come out to the airport for TSA Pre-Check to see what we have going on. You know, we we want to be a local airport that's convenient for everybody. Um, so fly local, please. And uh that's what we're here to do is to help support that.

SPEAKER_03 40:22

Well, thank you for coming. Yeah, thanks for having me. Enjoyed it. All right, that was Matt Dowell, Executive Director of GTR Airport. Before we leave today, Zach, three things to note.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

Three things to know. Number one, the Lowndes County Foundation task forces are back up and running. After a two-year hiatus, task forces reconvene this week at Rita Felton's office on 7th Street North to start brainstorming new projects focused on areas uh such as education, crime and addiction, poverty, community outreach, and leadership vision. Number two, short-term rental owners countywide will have to get a permit and start charging the two percent hotel motel tax soon after Lowndes supervisors approved an ordinance to that effect this week. The city passed a similar ordinance late last year. Number three, Firehawk Aerospace cut the ribbon on its new rocket integration facility in Crawford. The facility hopes to employ about a hundred workers at salaries starting at eighty-five thousand, reaching into the six figures we're told, in hopes of producing a hundred and twenty thousand rockets a year by twenty twenty-eight.

SPEAKER_03 41:28

Well, we thank you for joining us today. Find that one friend of yours that needs to know what's happening here locally so they can listen in, and together we can make our hometown a better place. Reach out to us, tips at cdispatch.com. You can also follow me on Facebook or ex at d Chisholm double zero and leave a public comment. Keeping it real here in Catfish Alley Studio and Historic Downtown Columbus, your host has been Zach Player, and I am David Chisholm. Y'all stay friendly out there.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

I'm just a simple old country boy, but um, I I think that makes sense. I've stepped out and I've said what I had to say.

SPEAKER_03 42:04

You've been listening to Between the Headlines with Zach and David. That's what old people do.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

That is Peter Rimes, publisher of The Dispatch. One of our hosts of Between the Headlines is the managing editor of our newsroom. Typically, we try to keep news and opinion separate, but reporters have a unique insight into the workings of local government, and their analysis can be helpful for readers and listeners. The dispatch remains committed to journalistic integrity, and our reporting will always reflect that.