AIRPORT TOWER IS A PLUS, WHETHER FUNDED BY CITY OR OTHERS

Since the Federal Aviation Administration eliminated funding for the control tower at Cape Girardeau Regional Airport, the city of Cape Girardeau has paid the cost of staffing it with controllers who work for the city.

Cape Girardeau, which took over the tower in December 1995, has managed to keep the tower open during the airport's busiest times of day, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

State Rep. Joe Heckemeyer of Sikeston introduced legislation last February that would have allocated $200,000 to operate the tower. That amount was cut to $77,000, which passed the House and went to the Senate Appropriations Committee. There it died.

From all indications, the city will operate the tower again next year without outside funding. The federal government has drastically cut the amount of money available to airports in Missouri: from $14 million in 1991 to just under $5 million this year. And not much state money is available for aviation. There was only slightly more than $1 million in the Missouri Aviation Trust Fund and general revenue in 1996.

Short of some financial godsend, it will cost the city in excess of $162,000 to keep the tower in operation through 1997.

Although the FAA has threatened for years to close the tower here and others like it at airports that aren't very busy, the threat became real when the FAA applied a benefit-cost formula to decide which towers should remain funded. The formula, designed to determine if the benefits outweigh the costs, compared air traffic to the tower's budget. Cape Girardeau Regional Airport needed a benefit-cost ratio of 1.0 or greater, and the FAA put it at only 0.4. The city was faced with two options: close the tower or pick up the tab.

The city has spent a lot of money to keep the airport operating. That includes a renovation of the terminal building, runway extensions and hangar improvements. More importantly, safety is and should be the top priority to the city in determining whether to continue to man the tower. The airport has an exceptional safety record.

Cape Girardeau's decision to pick up the tab for the tower a year ago was the right one, and it should continue to do so. At the same time the city should continue every effort to find outside revenue to offset the costs.