Airport budget review highlights AWOS maintenance, CDOT reimbursements

Presenter (S4) opened a seven‑year retrospective of airport finances, laying out trends and data drawn from the spreadsheet the group provided and from CIC. S2 asked whether AWOS maintenance and the annual $10,000 chip/crack‑seal allowance were captured in the budget. S1 described the existing process: when the airport receives a CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation) payment, staff pays the vendor invoice and submits the invoice copy into WIMS to seek reimbursement.

"When they send us the bill, now, we pay it. Then I at the same time ... put a copy of the invoice in the WIMS so we can get reimbursed," said Staff member (S1). Participants agreed to verify how CDOT checks are coded so reimbursements post to the correct revenue or repairs and maintenance lines rather than being absorbed into a generic general‑fund account.

Why it matters: S4 told the group that the county-wide shortfall they began with has narrowed substantially through cuts and reprioritization, making small revenue and coding fixes important to the final budget balance. "When we first started, we were across all funds. We were about 1,300,000 in the hole; we've stretched, we've pulled, we've cut, and we're somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 500,000," S4 said. The group agreed to trace past CDOT checks, confirm how they were recorded, and add explicit revenue lines or project tracking as needed to ensure the airport receives reimbursements in the correct fiscal year.