If you live in the North Country, you've probably flown out of one of the region's five airports at some point. All five of those airports are pretty small, and they're subsidized big time by the federal government. But that might be changing soon. President Donald Trump wants to cut that funding by 50 percent. What that could mean for the region and the arguments for and against taxpayer money funding North Country airports, that's today's story of the day.
Support for Story of the Day comes from Long Run Wealth, an SEC-registered investment advisor in Lake Placid, providing comprehensive wealth management, retirement, and financial planning solutions. LongRunWealth.com and the Devlin Inn and Suites, Lake Placid. welcoming families, athletes, and groups to the Olympic Village, offering Adirondack Mountain views and dog-friendly accommodations. Hi, I'm Amy Feireisel. It's Wednesday, May 28th, and I'm in for David Summerstein. First up.
It's no secret that the North Country is dealing with a housing crisis. Part of the problem is the rapid growth of short-term rentals. But it's also that there simply aren't enough homes available, and it's difficult and expensive to build new ones. Some recent initiatives in Clinton County aimed to tackle that piece of the puzzle. Kara Chapman reports.
Town of Plattsburgh officials are gathered in the living room of a brand new apartment. It's part of a new housing development on the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base. Approximately 1,000 housing units were lost during the closure of the Plattsburgh Air Force Base. That's town supervisor Michael Cashman. Housing is now returning to the very place where it once stood, a full circle moment for our community.
The development is called Emerson Place. Once completed, it'll bring 28 new market-rate apartments to the town. They'll be located within walking distance of a bank, pharmacy, grocery store, and other amenities. Developer Carrie Taylor says it wasn't an easy process. get here. It's time consuming, it's costly and it's a huge deterrent for a lot of developers.
So the town removed some of those obstacles. Its board recently passed a law titled Creating Housing Acceleration Measures for Plattsburgh, CHAMP for short. The CHAMP law expands where things like multifamily housing and duplexes are allowed. And it streamlines the site.
plan and permitting process for housing projects. Cashman says cutting through that red tape creates a lot of housing opportunities. These reforms position us to accommodate approximately 2,000 600 new housing units here in the town of Plattsburgh.
Jessica Kogut is one of the town's senior planners. She says the changes targeted neighborhoods that had restrictive zoning, but otherwise had key infrastructure to support more housing. Water and sewer infrastructure is absolutely critical for density, because the more dense a project can be, the better.
return on investment, which makes the project much more viable. The town's reforms match a county level focus on housing. The Clinton County Industrial Development Agency recently commissioned a housing study that found the county will need more than 1,100 new units over the next five years. It also found a big gap between costs and profitability for developers. Molly Ryan is the IDA's executive director.
I think the biggest takeaway is that we already knew that we needed housing. This puts it into dollars and cents and actual need. And now it gives us a path forward as to how we address that need. Part of that path forward was changing the IDA's policies. The agency recently added new incentives for affordable, market rate, senior and workforce housing projects. Ryan says it's also important for municipalities like Plattsburgh to chip in to make housing development easier.
Any barriers that we can remove to be able to have more housing is going to be critical. Town and county officials say they continue to push the state and federal governments for more funding and incentives for housing development. In the meantime, they're ready to work with developers and landowners to make it happen. Kara Chapman, North Country Public Radio, Plattsburgh.
Scientists will soon begin a three-year study of Adirondack lakes to better understand the impacts of climate change. The Adirondack Explorer reports the state has allocated the Survey of Climate Change in Adirondack Lake Systems, or scale, more than $6 million.
allow them to complete three years of fieldwork and data collection. Researchers expect to study more than 300 lakes in the Adirondacks. Ten of them will be intensively monitored. The team is waiting on final approval from the DEC to begin their fieldwork. They hope to start next week. See you next month.
The North Country's small rural airports get millions of dollars in federal funding each year. That's because they're part of the Essential Air Service, a government program to ensure rural regions have access to affordable air travel. President Donald Trump says he wants to cut the program's funding in half. Emily Russell reports on what that would mean for the North Country.
I had to book a flight down to D.C. earlier this spring. I figured I'd need to drive a few hours from the Adirondacks to Burlington or an hour and a half to Albany. I also figured it would cost at least a few hundred dollars. Instead, I found a direct flight from Platts. to Dulles. Roundtrip cost was $158. Hi there. Hi. Welcome aboard. Thank you. I boarded the flight to D.C. in mid-May. I was one of just 12 passengers on a 30-seater plane.
On behalf of Contour Airlines welcome aboard flight 3903 service to Washington Dulles The fact that this flight exists and at this price point dates back to the 1970s. At the time, the federal government was deregulating the airline industry. Some lawmakers worried that rural regions would be left without any service at all.
So Congress created what would later become the Essential Air Service. The goal was to serve rural regions like the North Country, where people regularly drive hours to get to larger hubs like Syracuse, Albany, or Burlington. Anytime I travel, it saves me four hours at least. Two hours one direction, two hours another direction. That's Andre Dauphin. He's from the town of Ausable, about 20 minutes south of Plattsburgh. He travels a lot for work.
Rather than doing the commute and the traveling and dropping off a car at a rental place, I don't have to do all that. So it saves me a lot of time and money. And it saves my company a lot of time and money. Plattsburgh is able to provide nonstop affordable flights to a handful of bigger hubs because of EAS funding. That money goes directly to the airlines that provide the service. So when President Donald Trump proposed a 50% cut to EAS funding,
some lawmakers like Senator Chuck Schumer raised the alarm. That would devastate North Country airports and hurt places or smaller airports. Watertown, Ogdensburg, Plattsburgh, Messina, Adirondack Regional Airports. Those five North Country airports got more than $31 million last year. That's more than double what they got five years ago.
EAS funding nationwide has also more than doubled since then. And Trump's proposed budget points that out, saying, quote, Ray Mundy agrees. He's a retired college professor who focused on transportation. issues. He also published a cost-benefit analysis of the Essential Air Service a decade ago. Even though intentions of the program were good, the politicians that arranged for them are good, the local people that want an airport are good, it's just a waste of money.
Last year, Plattsburgh Airport got $6.8 million in EAS funding. According to federal data, it served about 93,000 passengers. That's a $74 subsidy per person. For even smaller North Country airports, the subsidy is a lot higher. About 6,100 people boarded flights out of Ogdensburg Airport last year, which got $8.8 million.
That's a $1,400 subsidy per passenger. Last fall, an NCPR intern was one of just 13 passengers on an Airbus that can seat nearly 140. He spoke with flight attendant Lee Isaacs. The smallest flight that I've had was when we did this first trip two days ago. We only had two people on our plane. I've never had a crew that outnumbered the passengers.
Since then, ticket sales have gone up from Augdensburg, but flights are still only about 30% full. Airport manager Charlie Geralts says despite the data, he sees EAS airports as a vital link to larger cities. Residents in rural areas, a lot of them are depending on air service to travel for specialized medical care or higher education opportunities.
Gerald says another big percentage of passengers is Canadians. Canadians actually have their choice of airports subsidized by the American taxpayers, from Watertown to Ogdensburg, Messina, and over to Plattsburgh. waiting for another 20 minutes. As I wait to board my flight from D.C. back to Plattsburgh, I meet David Ravinsky. He's from Burlington, where he was originally meant to fly back to, but air traffic control issues in Newark upended his travel plan.
Ravinsky says it's difficult to really weigh the costs and benefits of federally subsidizing rural airports, since some things are just hard to quantify. There's an element of public good here. This is important to maintain communities, and even if the airport doesn't completely pay for itself, it provides other social benefits that in turn justify making up that difference with government.
money. Just how much government money will keep flowing to rural airports in the North Country is now up to Congress. Emily Russell, North Country Public Radio, Plattsburgh. You can find more news all the time at ncpr.org. Music today came from Tim Elifritz in Johnsburg and Dan Duggan in Lake Clear. I'm Mimi Feireisel, North Country Public Radio.