Court Battle Pits Training Track Against Keystone Airport
After 25 Years, Federal Rules Finally Being Applied
Florida International Rally and Motorsports Park—FIRM for short—exists largely on public property administered by the Keystone Airport Authority and has done so for more than 25 years. The school trains a broad spectrum of drivers—teens getting their first license, rally racers, off-roaders and military special forces and police.
Now, the Airport Authority wants FIRM to get off its lawn. It wants to remove a racetrack built on the premises in 2006.
After all these years, according to FIRM, the authority is telling the school that the 285-acres in question are within a federally designated “runway protection zone” and that the property is not zoned for “non-aeronautical uses.”
In June, FIRM filed a lawsuit against the Airport Authority in Bradford County Circuit Court, alleging lease violations, constitutional rights issues and violations of Florida’s “government in the sunshine laws.”
(Recently, three members of the St. Johns County Airport Authority resigned in exchange for the state dropping criminal charges against them in connection with Sunshine Law violations.)
The suit references a 2014 email in which FAA informed the authority about the runway-protection-zone conflict “contrary to public claims by Keystone Aiport Authority Board members that they ‘didn't know about the RPZ’.”
Then, according to the lawsuit (which refers to the Keystone Airport Authority as KAA) the bureacratic warfare began:
After the FAA Notice, instead of seeking a mutual resolution, KAA and certain members of its Airport Authority Board have sought to undermine the lease by including but not limited to:
Unilaterally announcing the Lease was set to expire, when in fact FIRM had a 15 year renewal option;
Instructed airport manager to mislead FIRM about nature of appraisal process;
Failing to provide lease terms to full Airport Authority Board prior to an appraisal vote;
KAA and its legal counsel failing to clarify FIRM's renewal rights of the lease;
KAA and its Legal Counsel failing to provide KAA's FAA obligations and misleading the full Airport Authority Board to believe that FIRM, rather than KAA, was responsible for the error that the premises was within an RPZ,
And retaliating against FIRM for free speech by FIRM's representatives in public meetings.
Despite opposition from Airport Authority board members, FIRM exercised the first of two options to extend the lease, which together would continue its control of the property until 2029.
In March, the Federal Aviation Authority approved a plan to resolve the conflict. The runway in question would be redesignated “A/B-I Small Aircraft,” which would “shift the runway protection zone away from the racetrack” for 30-day periods until FIRM and the Airport Authority could find a common solution.
FIRM then agreed to a “reconfiguration” of the airport, as long as the Keystone Airport Authority paid for it. Naw, we won’t pay, the authority replied, demanding that FIRM remove alleged “hazards” or the Airport Authority would do it for them.
FIRM is asking the court to issue an injunction preventing the Airport Authority from “irreversible actions” or any attempt to evict the school while the matter is litigated. Judge George Wright has set a hearing for October 17.