AMA News: Flying Site Assistance-2012/11

Bruce Ream, Spectrum
chair of the Jefco
Aeromod’lers Long
Range Planning
Committee, shared
with us the club’s
history.
Jefco
Aeromod’lers, founded in 1959, is a
large chartered AMA club located in
the Denver area. With more than 250
members, we have enjoyed flying in
Chatfield State Park, which is located
in the southwest corner of the Denver
area.
Beginning in 1978, with an
agreement to share the cost of putting
in a blacktop runway, club and park
officials have worked together without
any formal agreement to make this an
outstanding flying field and to promote
safe flying at the facility.
As the club grew and the flying field
was expanded and improved, more
fliers came to the Jefco field to fly
their airplanes. Most of the fliers, upon
learning about our club’s safety rules,
complied and weren’t a problem.
Many of these fliers joined the
club and continue to fly at the field,
however there is always one or two
who cause problems. They told the
club members and fellow fliers that
they could do and fly any way they
wanted to because they were on state
park land. Jefco had no enforcement
authority, but could call the park
rangers if they felt someone was
causing a safety issue.
Beginning approximately three
years ago, the Jefco Board of Directors
asked the club’s Long Range Planning
Committee to look into the possibility
of creating a formal agreement with
park officials to put the club in charge
of the flying field and require that
fliers at the field be AMA members.
This appeared to be a simple task, but
we knew little about all of the players
who would be involved and what it
would take to make the agreement
with park officials a reality.
For years, park officials have
provided many services to the club
that the members and the public have
taken for granted. The park employees
maintain our toilets, our road and
parking area, empty the trash, and
maintain our shelter. We, in turn,
mow the grass, maintain the runways
($65,000 to repave the runways in
2010), police the area, and several
other tasks that all flying fields have to
do to make it a fun and safe place to
fly.
Many of the people who come to
the field are unaware that the club
pays for, and through donated labor
maintains, this great flying facility
because it is in the state park.
After a few meetings with park
officials, it was agreed that all of the
things that both the park employees
and Jefco were doing should be put in
writing and become part of a formal
agreement. Additionally, Jefco pushed
for the requirement that fliers be AMA
members and that the club would be in
charge of the field.
Park officials agreed to draft the
agreement and work with the club
to get a formal contract between the
two parties. Several months passed
and park officials submitted the first
draft of the agreement to Jefco, thus
initiating the negotiation process.
From the beginning, the requirement
to be an AMA member was included
in the agreement, which park officials
recognized as giving AMA members
addition liability insurance.
One of their concerns from the start
of the process was the flier who comes
to the field, who is not a member of
AMA, and wants to learn to fly, or the
kid who comes out with a parent and
wants to fly the new airplane they just
bought at the hobby shop.
With the club and park officials
signing the lease agreement, it then
proceeded up the ladder on the chain
of approvals to the regional, and finally
the state level of the state park system.
The agreement between Jefco and
the State of Colorado, Department of
Natural Resources, Colorado Parks and
Wildlife, and Chatfield State Park, was
signed March 12, 2012.
The one-year agreement took effect
on July 1, 2012. It has the option of
a 10-year renewal. Both parties agree
that if parts of the contract are not
working, or if parts of the agreement
needed to be changed, we will do this
at the end of the year and then renew
the agreement for 10 years.
New signs at the field inform the
public and the members that AMA
membership is now a requirement and
that proof of this or a visitor’s pass
must be displayed by all RC fliers.
Many clubs fly on public land. Many
have formal agreements, but some
do not. Some have a lease that gives
them certain rights to the land, but
many do not. Jefco now has in writing
something that we feel will give us a
better working relationship with our
landlord and provide the public and
club members a safer and more fun
place to fly.