Habersham Approved $59,225 Airport Tug, but Its Arrival Remains Unclear

Habersham County commissioners unanimously approved the purchase of a 2024 Lektro aircraft tug for Habersham County Airport on April 15, 2024, authorizing a $59,225 budget adjustment and a loan from the county’s general fund to the airport fund. More than two years later, the public minutes establish that authorization but do not say whether the replacement tug arrived, was paid for or entered service.

The decision reaches beyond a routine equipment order because airport officials had described the tug as necessary to move aircraft that cannot leave the runway under their own power, including towing them to the terminal area. It also puts countywide taxpayer money into the transaction: commissioners directed the airport fund to repay the general fund over three years, leaving residents without a public record here of whether the equipment was received or how that repayment proceeded.

The purchase moved through the airport’s procurement process before reaching the Board of Commissioners. At the Airport Commission’s March 12, 2024 meeting, officials said the request for proposals was out and bids were expected the following week. By April 9, the commission had reviewed one $59,225 bid; the bidder offered no lease option, and staff planned to ask about lease-purchase financing. Six days later, the county commission approved the Lektro purchase and budget adjustment.

Airport officials’ position, as reflected in the commission records, was that replacement equipment was needed after the old tug became mechanically unusable and was sold for scrap. The Airport Commission considered the bid and possible financing, while the Board of Commissioners made the binding county action: a unanimous 5-0 approval of the purchase, the budget adjustment and the planned general-fund loan. The April 15 agenda had framed the item as one for consideration, not as a completed purchase.

The approval and financing direction are completed governmental acts, not pending recommendations. The tug’s acquisition is a different question. The cited minutes contain no purchase order, payment record, delivery confirmation, airport inventory entry or date the equipment began operating, so they cannot establish whether or when the airport received and used the Lektro tug. Nor do they show how the three-year repayment arrangement was carried out.

The next meaningful public development would be a later county or airport record documenting what followed the April 15 vote, such as a purchase order, payment record, delivery notice, inventory entry or another budget action. Until one appears, it remains undecided in the public record whether the approved tug was delivered and placed in service, when that might have happened, and whether the airport fund repaid the general fund as directed.