A local, private company could be in the bidding to build and rent T-hangars at Vicksburg Municipal Airport, VKS board members said Thursday.

President Kimble Slaton told the other four members at their monthly meeting that he had been approached about allowing a company to build and operate the hangars that provide individual spaces for smaller private planes.

Having interior storage space to rent is seen as a plus for attracting plane-owners and as a revenue source.

If privately built, a cut of revenue from rentals would go to the coffers of the board, created last August to set the 56-year-old airport’s budget and oversee operations.

Slaton said he would send a letter to roughly 20 plane owners who have expressed interest in renting a T-hangar at VKS asking for commitments if the hangars are built. No rental rate was agreed upon or will be included in the letters, he said, though members did say $150 per month, at or just below rates of competing regional airports with T-hangars, was a likely price.

Any deal could also include a clause that would turn the hangars over to the board after a certain amount of time, possibly 10 or 15 years, said secretary Jay Kilroy.

&#8220Without that kind of clause I wouldn’t be interested in doing it,” he said.

Another option for funding the hangars would be getting city funding, perhaps through a $5 million bond issue expected to be passed by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen as part of the Fiscal Year 2006-07 budget in September, said City Attorney Nancy Thomas.

Earlier this week, the city approved the development of an urban renewal plan for the Oak Street corridor expected to be funded by the bond issue. A $2 million softball and recreational complex on Fisher Ferry Road has also been mentioned as a potential part of the bond.

The city still has roughly $12 million to pay on its last bond issue, used to fund an $18 million upgrade of about two dozen downtown properties finished earlier this year. Strategic Planner Paul Rogers has said the city will pay $2 million a year through 2011 against that debt.

Building single-plane T-hangars to generate revenue through rent-paying tenants has been a priority for the Airport Board, which was officially trimmed last month from seven members to five. Earlier this year, the board’s proposal for $435,000 through the Mississippi Department of Transportation to build the first 10 of 26 proposed hangars was rejected.

Forty-four airports submitted more than 60 requests for those grants, said Elton Jay, head of MDOT’s aeronautical division. Two other requests for T-hangar projects, one in Magee and one in Cleveland, were funded, though both asked for significantly less than VKS. The grants were awarded using an independent, subjective ranking system, Jay said, though committee members were not allowed to rank a site with which they were affiliated.

The board owns two communal hangars at the airport, the larger of which does not currently house any planes. The smaller hangar houses about 5 of the 18 small crafts regularly kept at the airport, said VKS manager Frank May. A third hangar on the site is owned by the Mississippi River Commission and is not in functional condition.

Unlike its counterpart in Louisiana, Vicksburg-Tallulah Regional Airport in Mound – owned jointly by the Warren County Board of Supervisors, the City of Vicksburg, the City of Tallulah and the Madison Parish Police Jury – the municipal airport has no regular subsidy. Its money comes from fuel sales on site and renting out the hangars.

That revenue totaled $29,379.41 in May and $15,649.19 last month, just enough to pay bills and insurance, buy fuel for resale to planes that stop in and to keep the terminal open.

&#8220We’re trying to not do it through debt,” Slaton said of the hangar quest last month. &#8220We’re trying to make it self-sufficient so we do not have a debt hanging over that airport.”

In official business, the board;