The Jefferson Municipal Airport recently received notification about a grant that was submitted.

City Administrator Scott Peterson says a grant through the Iowa Department of Transportation was denied for funding to upgrade the aviation fuel at the airport. He points out how not getting this grant impacts what the overall project was looking to do.

“This was really going to be kind of a two phase project. One would be to upgrade our aviation gas, and you can think about that as regular gas, and then the second part of that being jet fuel. We’re able to have some federal funding to still do the jet fuel portion of it. But since we have had gas out there already the feds won’t fund something that you already have. So that’s what this other grant was for was to the state to redo our aviation fuel.”  

Peterson explains that within the next two years, the jet fuel portion will be installed at the airport. 

The other airport-related item was the Jefferson City Council approving a new farmland lease agreement for the 159 acres that surrounds the airport. Peterson says the agreement is with the tenant, Adam Ebersole, and the rental rate per acre is $275, and for cropland is $135 per acre. 

“Commend Adam for that. He brought that to our attention about increasing (the rates) and making sure that the number of acres was accurately represented. So yeah it generates significantly more money in rental rates and this will be helpful then to the airport. This is one of their main sources of funding.”

The agreement is for the 2025 and 2026 growing seasons and the new agreement would amount to $35,605.