by Michael Bush,

managing editor

A taxpayer demand letter has been submitted to City Attorney Catherine Coke over the sale of an airplane hangar to Southwest Technology Center in February.

The letter, signed by 15 residents, says the sale of the 40,000 square-foot hanger at Altus/Quartz Mountain Regional Airport was "unlawfully sold" to SWTC for $1 million. The letter states that the hangar was appraised at $1 million in 2001, and the replacement cost is nearly three times that, and they want the City to take action to recover the value of the property.

"This clearly constitutes a misappropriation of public property," the letter reads.

The letter, submitted through the law firm of Durbin, Larimore & Bialick of Oklahoma City, wants the City to fix the misappropriation by either reclaiming the hangar, vacating the sale, or collecting more money to match the current appraisal value of the hangar.

SWTC has been leasing half the hangar since 2003, but wanted to purchase the entire facility so the school could expand its training and certification program for Altus Air Force Base.

Some city officials have taken issue with the sale asking if the hangar should have been declared as surplus in order make the sale.

"Surplus means the city has no further use of the property, but all 40,000 square-feet of the hangar was in use from one end to the other," said City Councilman Jack Smiley. "One half was being used by the vo-tech, and the other half was full of planes - there was also a 13-plane waiting list when we declared it as surplus."

Smiley also added that hangar was the City's newest and nicest building and does not understand why it would be considered surplus.

"The whole situation has been handled wrong from the beginning,” Smiley said. “The Municipal Trust Authority decided to sell the hangar at a special-called afternoon meeting, but when they found out the hangar wasn't under the Municipal Trust, they had to take it before the City Council anway," Smiley continued. "Councilman David Brown was the only one who voted against the sale, even after Mayor Gramling stood up against the sale telling the council they should not do it."

Although a full list of names were not made available to the Altus Times, there are three airport board members on the list, as well as several local business people.

The demand letter issue will be an executive session discussion item on the July 7 agenda of the City Council.