How is it that Denver International Airport’s out-of-its-depth airport management, admittedly lacking even a competent COO (chief operating officer), entered into a so-called “public-private partnership” with foreign entities in direct violation of the Colorado Constitution’s absolute prohibition (ARTICLE XI, Section 2) of “…joint ownership…”?

Shouldn’t management have prioritized the necessary improvements and repairs needed by the concourses, ramps and runways, so sorely lacking now, rather than ordering three-quarters of a billion dollars in cosmetic terminal hall alterations?

Doesn’t it reek of pervasive incompetence that:

• Runways that were partially repaved a mere six years ago are now being completely torn up for repaving due to resultant cracking from surface discontinuities?
• Concourse expansions, for needed additional gates, have been relegated to flimsy structures with the ambience of temporary school classrooms (or a trashed trailer park)?
• Replacement aircraft de-icing pads for B-Concourse have yet to be paved?
• A-Concourse aircraft, in need of de-icing, must make seven frequency changes to arrive at de-icing pads N of Concourse-C?
• Many moving walkways in the concourses no longer function and show no evidence of attempted repairs?

Rather than heaping praise on a management team for extricating itself from its self-created swamp, is it not time to replace it entirely, from the top down, with one which is friendly, outwardly and economically, to passengers, airlines, and airport employees?

Does not the current terminal’s fiasco vindicate the wisdom of our 1876 Constitution drafters’ prohibitions?

Russell W. Haas

Golden

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