A new cellphone plan will save the state's largest airport $24,000 a year.
Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field now has 41 cellphones and 15 data plans through AT&T for which it pays $4,548 monthly under a state contract, or $54,576 a year.
A new plan that will be in place in the next two to three months using the same number of cellphones and data plans through Verizon Wireless will cost the airport $2,542 per month, or $30,504 annually, according to a summary of the new plan provided to the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission's lease committee.
The difference between the two plans is $24,072.
Elwin Jones, the airport's procurement director, said recent changes in the state contract "resulted in new plans ... offering additional configurations which will result in substantial savings for the airport."
He said the cellphones are essential for the operation of a modern airport.
"Over the past decade the use of cell phones and data plans have grown from a convenience to an operational necessity required for management to stay in contact with a dynamic 24/7 airport operation," he wrote in the summary.
Top airport executives all have cellphones because they are required to be available 24 hours a day, Ron Mathieu, the airport's executive director, told the committee. Some of their senior personnel also have cellphones, he said.
Other staff members are assigned cellphones through their jobs, Mathieu said. For instance, airport operation managers share the same cellphone, as do the airport electricians, he said.
The airport employs about 160 people.
Also Wednesday, airport officials said a deal with the airport's lobbying firm has been extended.
Witt Associates, founded by James Lee Witt -- who led the Federal Emergency Management Agency under former President Bill Clinton -- provides state and national lobbying services through a monthly retainer of $9,166.66, or about $110,000 a year.
Witt Associates is in the third and final year of an agreement reached with the airport in 2012. The contract extension reviewed Wednesday is the first of three one-year optional extensions available to the airport under the original agreement.
The lease committee also accepted a staff recommendation to approve a one-year renewal of an agreement with the airport's real-estate brokers Sage Partners, a local commercial firm, and Jones Lang LaSalle, an international firm. The firms' initial one-year agreement with the airport expires June 30.
The two firms have joined forces to market the former Hawker Beechcraft complex on the airport property and the former Southwest Airlines reservation center, which is near the airport.
The firms landed one tenant, Fly Arkansas, an aviation services company based in Mountain Home, to lease part of the Hawker Beechcraft complex. Executives from the firms told the committee Wednesday that they have one prospect for the reservation center.
The firms aren't paid until the airport has signed leases in hand, said Bryan Malinowski, the airport's deputy executive director.
Metro on 05/14/2015