HOLLIDAYSBURG — The Blair County commissioners heard a budget presentation from the Altoona-Blair County Airport during Tuesday morning’s budget work session.

Airport manager Tracy Plessinger showed the commissioners a breakdown of its budget, which showed a mix of funding from the county, state, federal government, airport improvement program entitlements and bipartisan infrastructure law entitlements from the airport infrastructure grant. Local costs totaled about $118,419.

The reconstruction of the airport’s terminal was broken down into two phases, with the first centered around design and the second around construction.

“We’re basically doing a facelift to the interior terminal, doing a little bit of construction,” Plessinger said.

He explained that one of their biggest complaints is the lack of restrooms in the “sterile area” once passengers go through TSA screening. To avoid passengers already screened having to leave the sterile area to use the restroom and then be re-screened, Plessinger said there’s a wall separating the screening area from the restrooms that will be repurposed.

“The plan is to cut a stall off the end of the restrooms and make it accessible from the TSA area,” Plessinger said.

The funding for the design portion of that reconstruction showed BIL entitlements of $125,000 and state and local contributions of $6,945 each for a total of $138,890, while the construction portion showed BIL entitlements of $1,006,015 and state and local contributions of $26,474 each for a total of $1,058,963.

The largest line item on the airport’s budget was for the removal of an obstruction, as dictated by the Federal Aviation Administration. The presentation showed that the total project would cost $3 million, with $2.7 million coming from federal discretionary funds, $150,000 from AIP grants and $75,000 from each the county and state.

While the obstruction removal is essentially “leveling dirt,” Plessinger said they were out last week doing test core drillings.

“They kind of gave us the worst case scenario because there are a lot of limestone outcroppings out there and they might have to actually blast to get it out,” Plessinger said.

So far, the core drillings have come back as “basically just clay” so “they’ll be able to push it away and haul it.”

The last item on the airport’s budget was the acquisition of snow removal equipment.

Commissioner Laura Burke told Plessinger she thought they just purchased snow removal equipment within the last few years.

Plessinger said two new snow plows were purchased in 2022 “and they’ve been delivered.”

“We used them the last half of last winter,” he said.

The equipment they’re requesting funding for in 2026 is a ramp plow, which have “extremely wide” buckets for clearing the 150-foot wide ramp.

“It’s a large area, so it takes a bigger plow,” Plessinger said. “We now have a John Deere tractor with a plow on it that does a fair job, but not great.”

Plessinger said the airport has a snow and ice control plan, which requires them to follow a procedure through the FAA to justify the need for items such as ramp plows.

“That would prevent an airport from just going out and saying, ‘yeah, let’s buy a bunch of stuff,'” Plessinger said. “Because (the FAA is) not going to fund it on their end.”

The snow removal equipment funding showed a total cost of $400,000, with $230,000 coming from federal discretionary funds, $150,000 from AIP entitlement and $10,000 each from state and local funds.

The next budget work session will be held in the commissioner’s meeting room in the Blair County Courthouse basement on Friday at 9 a.m.