A former town councilor in Stephenville is bemoaning the change in status at the local airport, which has been downgraded to a registered aerodrome as the privately-owned facility continues to struggle with significant financial woes.
The airport was sold to Carl Dymond in 2023 for $6.90, and an agreement to complete lighting upgrades at the facility at a cost of $1.7 million, under what he called the Dymond Group of Companies.
Dymond’s ambitions to develop the asset have not come to fruition, and the final insult to residents came last month with the town council’s decision to agree to a request to plow the runways at the facility.
Lenny Tiller had been a vocal critic of the deal to sell the airport to Carl Dymond and raised numerous questions about the process. He resigned from council last year citing a toxic environment. He says the airport is now in the same category as the airstrips on Bell Island and Clarenville and it should never have happened.
He believes some on council played on the hopes and dreams of future prosperity for the town to get re-elected, and Dymond was “used as a pawn” to that end.
Tiller says he intends to run for council in the fall.
Stephenville Mayor Tom Rose
Mayor fires back
Stephenville Mayor Tom Rose told VOCM Open Line that Tiller wouldn’t support the airport, neither as an operation subsidized by the town, nor as a sale to Dymond.
“As a municipality, we’re not allowed to own the airport” says Rose, “we’re allowed to give grants and up to 2023, we were still giving about $400,000 to $500,000 to the airport to keep the lights on, keep the payroll going. There was nobody coming in, there was no federal funding there was no provincial funding…the airlines weren’t coming in, so we were in really, really rough shape.”
