It's no exaggeration to say that no one has followed first-hand the transitions over time at the Niagara Central Dorothy Rungeling Airport (NCDRA), located on River Road in south Pelham, than Adrian Verburg.
Remarkably, he is three years older than the 1947 Stinson monoplane he still pilots.
“I started flying in the 1960s, but ran out of time and money,” he said. “After my wife died in 1994, I decided to finish my license. I've been here at NCDRA for 25 years.”
Verburg remarried, and has logged 4000 hours on his Stinson, with his wife in the navigator’s seat, across North America.
“We've been up to Alaska, and above the Arctic Circle with that plane. Labrador. Florida. We have about a five-hour range on the Stinson, but after about three hours, my bladder tells me I need to be on the ground,” he laughed. “It’s been something that we’ve taken up as part of our retirement, and we enjoy it very much. Yes, it can be an expensive hobby. Is it more expensive than having a 30-foot cruiser down at Sugarloaf Marina in Port Colborne? Probably not.”
He flies year-round, conditions permitting, but admits that as he has aged, he has come to curse the cold weather.
Verburg retired in 1998 as the Supervisor of Plant Maintenance for the South Niagara Board of Education, which became the District School Board of Niagara.
“I looked after 75 buildings, from roof to foundation. [The school board] were really good people to work for.”
Hangar 4, built in 2002, is home to his plane and aircraft workshop. Verburg and four other pilots teamed up to lease a piece of land from the airport commission. They brought in stone and poured a concrete floor, and erected the structure, all at their own expense. The land lease is still in effect.
“Everything you see here we paid for,” said Verburg. “There was no infrastructure. We brought in our own hydro. We pay taxes on the land, which go to the Town of Pelham. Most of the other hangers at the airport have the same arrangement, I think, but I'm not party to all of the details. Some of the leases might have changed, since over the past 20 years, we’ve probably had five different airport commissions.”
Verburg is the Chair of the airport’s Advisory Panel, made up of NCDRA hangar owners and pilots with aviation expertise, aircraft maintenance and technical skills, business acumen, and strong advocacy skills. Most are Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) members. The Panel’s mandate is to advise and make recommendations to the Commission with respect to short and long term strategies, and to promote business growth initiatives, including infrastructure improvements and services. The Panel is expected to advise the Commission on technical aviation matters, and support opportunities towards financial self-sufficiency at the airport, including ways to increase revenue and decrease expenses.
It all sounds good at first blush, but the relationship between the Commission and the Advisory Panel has not always been hand-in-glove. In a letter to the Commission dated October 26 of last year, which is available on the NCDRA website but was never discussed in the Commission’s public meetings, the Panel laid out a list of concerns, stemming primarily from a lack of communication. Panel members were confused as to why their expertise was not being sought, and why decisions were being made without their input.
Advisory Panel chair Verburg cited in the letter an example of the disconnect between the Commission and the Advisory Panel, indicating that Panel members only learned of a $600,000 loan from the City of Welland to build ten new “T” hangars at the airport for rental purposes through news reports.
“The Advisory Panel was not asked to give input or be part of the deliberations,” he wrote. “We have seen no evidence of concept drawings, specifications, scope of work, tender documents, or even a call for an RFP [Request For Proposal]. We cannot understand how this has come about without some input from our group. There has been no reporting of the deliberations by the Commission in its minutes and agendas. While we and many of the airport users are extremely pleased with the hangar build announcement, many are concerned with the planning and direction this has taken and to the lack of transparency on the build and deliberations of the Commission.”
It is time for a change in the governance model, so as to be more aligned with other successful airports
The letter also described frustration on the part of Panel members that a previously-discussed ten-year strategic plan for the NCDRA has not been produced, and that an airport manager has not been hired following the departure of the previous manager. The Panel further underscored that, “It is time for a change in the governance model, so as to be more aligned with other successful airports. This new model would still contain municipal representation, but would include business, aviation, construction, and marketing expertise.”
Verburg proudly recited the attributes of fellow Advisory Panel members.
“Rich Lancaster is a former commercial airline pilot who flew with the Snowbirds during his years in the Canadian Armed Forces. Cornell Feenstra has significant flying experience, is a very smart businessman, and has done a lot of the electrical and the high voltage work around here. Al Kaminsky ran an electrical consulting business. Cathy Boyko is a member of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots, the same group that Dorothy Rungeling belonged to. Cathy has a hangar and a plane here as well. Roland Meisel is a computer whiz. Don Band is a current pilot who used to be an engineer with de Havilland out of the Toronto area. It's quite a group.”
Contacted by the Voice, Commission Chair John Maclellan said that an advertisement for the airport manager position will be coming out soon, although the job title has been changed to “facilitator” rather than “manager.” Maclellan said that it is really a part-time position, and is remunerated as such. He said that the facilitator will hopefully be in place for the summer.
With regard to a long-awaited master plan for the NCDRA, Maclellan referenced a “master plan that was a study done by the Region” which he says was a January 2020 draft plan, with a final report never officially released.
However, the document, entitled “Feasibility Study and Business Case, Niagara District Airport and Niagara Central Dorothy Rungeling Airport,” prepared by HM Aero Aviation Consulting of Ottawa, is available as a final report on the Region’s website, and has been for some time.
When the Voice noted that Brock University offers a business consulting service, staffed by professors and MBA students, which could prepare a professional strategic plan for the airport at a reasonable cost, Maclellan discounted the idea.
“The Region paid a lot of money for that [Aero] report, and I’m not one for wasting money,” he said. “These MBAs might be great guys. I deal with MBAs…they're all about the bottom line…none have one iota of airport experience.”
I deal with MBAs…they're all about the bottom line…none have one iota of airport experience
Maclellan said that he previously spoke with faculty members in the aviation management program at Western University, in London, about doing some work on a master plan, but that it didn’t work out due to the work commitments of the professors, and the significant consulting fees they would charge.
Like former Commission Chair Leo Van Vliet, Maclellan indicated an affinity for the Municipal Services Corporation (MSC) concept, which under government of Ontario regulations, allows for broader membership extending beyond elected officials. Conceivably, current Advisory Panel members, who arguable have a greater stake in the success of NCDRA than do municipal politicians, would be included on the airport’s MSC board.
Verburg and the Advisory Panel like the MSC framework too. So what’s the slowdown to getting it implemented?
“We have set up a meeting with the four CEOs [of Welland, Port Colborne, Wainfleet, and Pelham] to come out to the airport,” said Maclellan. “I think they at least need to know what each municipality owns a piece of, and I'm not sure that any of them have ever stepped foot on the airport site. If three of the four can agree on [the MSC], then it will get done.”
Maclellan said that lawyers are currently investigating the intricacies of moving to the new model.
“I've been involved in enough stuff to know that you make sure the lawyers tell you it’s a go,” he said. “Rome wasn't built in a day, and you can't change what's written into contracts without doing some negotiating. It takes time, and there is a process.”
The document which binds the airport’s governance is the Welland-Port Colborne Airport Act of 1976, which dictates that only elected officials from the four funding municipalities can be appointed to the Commission. The problem is that every four years there is an election, and new members are often appointed, facing the same ground-up learning curve as their predecessors. Continuity is disrupted. Airport governance is a complex business, and the newbies, though well-intentioned, typically have little appreciation of the implications of their decisions because they have no aviation experience on which to draw, say MSC proponents.
Pelham Town Council’s representative on the Commission, Councillor Lisa Haun, did not acknowledge a Voice request for comment for this story.
The NCDRA is an old facility, with roots as a Second World War pilot training facility, and like all airports requires maintenance, none of which is cheap. One of the most glaring deteriorating assets is the runways, which an infrastructure assessment concluded required multi-million dollar rehabilitation.
Maclellan disputes that appraisal.
“The drainage under the runways is good. We can probably put down three inches of asphalt, and it’ll be good for another 25 years of service. The repairs can always be done in phases. I’ve actually got a number I'm not going to share with you, but it's not in the millions.”
To fill the absence of a manager, plane owners have pitched in to perform and organize necessary repairs.
“Aside from the municipal contributions, most of the revenue generated at the airport comes from these hangar leases, all private money,” said Verburg, “plus the rental groups, like the Niagara Skydive Centre and Accipter Radar. Taxpayers pay about $1.65 each, the cost of a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee.”
He hasn’t given up on NCDRA, but admits that his final flight plan isn’t too far over the horizon.
“This airport has huge potential,” said Verburg. “Most commissions have tried to reinvent the wheel every four years, and of course, there have been studies coming out the wahzoo. I'm not sure they even get completely read before they go in the bottom drawer. Given the amount of involvement I've had with the airport and all the different commissions, I’m probably the last depository of information on this airport that's left. But as I said, I’m three years older than my Stinson. And when I'm gone, I'm gone.”
