MOULTRIE, Ga. — The Moultrie Airport Authority is looking to the city and county to restructure it, giving both governments a stake in its operations. In its new form, the authority would be able to levy taxes like the Development Authority and Parks and Recreation Authority can.

Moultrie City Council approved the proposal Tuesday, and the Colquitt County Board of Commissioners will consider it, presumably at its January meeting. Once all three entities— the city council, county commission and Airport Authority — agree on the wording, local legislators will propose the restructuring as local legislation in the General Assembly, which would have the final say.

The Airport Authority has accomplished $3 million worth of improvements at the Moultrie Municipal Airport, Authority Chairman Mike Boyd told the city council Tuesday, but the projects left total up to another $4 million, money it doesn’t have.

Right now, Boyd said, the airport needs a $1.5 million terminal building and a $2.8 million south-end runway safety area that is required since the municipal airport is now Class 4, which allows them to serve unscheduled operations of large air carrier aircraft.

The State of Georgia is obligated to give the authority 75 percent of the funding, but that leaves local governments paying the remaining 25 percent.

“All that said we’ve got $1.25 million of added expenses that has come up and we’re asking the governments — the city and the county — to split that and loan us the money,” Boyd said.

This loan would be $625,000 each from the city and the county. Neither has approved the loan, but the city did make headway in creating a resolution to amend the authority’s functions. They had to be first, Boyd said.

“The city needs to make the first resolution because [the authority] was set up under them to begin with,” he said.

City Clerk Tina Coleman said she’s already sent the city’s resolution to the Airport Authority. Now the county must follow suit.

These resolutions give both entities representatives on the board — the city currently appoints all members — and would give the authority the ability to potentially levy up to one mill of property tax. Boyd thinks the authority would actually levy much less than the full mill, which city officials said would be about a million dollars.

“In all reality, there’s no way in the world the airport would use one mill of tax,” Boyd said. “That’s an extremely large amount.”

Boyd said the authority may look at 0.266 mills to put a lighter burden on taxpayers, paying essentially $250,000 in revenue. It’s just a “tool in the toolbox.”

“Before we talk about taxes, we need to get the resolution,” Boyd said. “Depending on if we need to borrow money or whatever we need to do to make sure that we have enough money to support the airport, then we’ll approach that problem when the time comes.”

The resolution still needs to be finalized and discussed between the three entities in order for them to write an agreeable legislation to send off. There’s no set date for this to happen, but County Administrator Chas Cannon said it must happen before the 2020 General Assembly convenes Jan. 13.

“The key thing [though] is that all parties agree to it,” he said. “Our state legislators are not going to approve something that one side’s in favor of and the other side’s opposed.”

The question that came in after the resolution was whether it’s even legal for the city to loan money. City Manager Pete Dillard said the city attorney doesn’t think so.

Even if it were legal, the money would come from the city’s general fund balance — its “rainy day fund,” essentially — which Dillard thinks isn’t the best idea.

“It would put us a little tight to do it, but I’m not sure it’s looking like we can do it,” Dillard said. “One thing I will not do is go against legal counsel.”

The county’s loan would come from Gov. Brian Kemp’s rural airport bill, which “allows the state to draw down federal funds for use in improved infrastructure and maintenance in Georgia’s rural airports,” according to a February press release.

Cannon said it’s highly likely that the loan will be approved.

“The commissioners see the airport as a pretty good asset with everything moving toward logistics,” he said. “There’s been a good bit of increase in traffic out there, so I think they’re going to see the improvements out there are warranted, especially given that the state is paying for most of it.”

In other action Tuesday, the Moultrie City Council:

• Approved a $262,419 bid by Doors of Arkansas for improvements to the downtown parking lot in the area of South Main Street and Second Avenue.

• Approved a $839,128.42 bid for the Southwest Memorial Pool Renovation Project by JCI General Contractors.

• Removed discussion of the sign moratorium from the agenda. City Attorney Mickey Waller said the only reason it was on there was due to a misunderstanding with the public. “I think I clarified enough for the folks that were asking so we don’t have to [discuss it],” he said.

This concludes the city council’s meetings for the year. The next meeting will be Jan. 7, 2020.