The North Slope Borough is backing out of a tentative deal to rent RavnAir Group’s Utqiagvik hangar and is reasserting its right to use Ravn’s assets to support air service to its communities during the coronavirus emergency.
On Monday, an agreement between Ravn and the North Slope Borough was filed in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware, spelling out that the borough would pay Ravn $100,000 a month in rent for use of Ravn’s hangar at the Barrow Airport in Utqiagvik. But in a press release on Wednesday evening, borough mayor Harry Brower wrote that negotiations on that agreement were “not fruitful.”
RELATED: North Slope Borough ‘commandeers’ Ravn’s North Slope assets
Earlier this month, the borough issued an emergency order saying that it was “commandeering” all of Ravn’s assets in the borough in order to provide vital air service to its communities, which are off of the road system, after Ravn announced it was stopping all operations and filed for bankruptcy. The company said the coronavirus pandemic had led to a 90 percent drop in ticket bookings.
RELATED: Ravn is $90 million in debt and could be forced to shut down for good, court docs say
In a new emergency order released Wednesday, Brower wrote that thanks to other air carriers who stepped in immediately after Ravn’s bankruptcy, the borough would not have to commandeer “all” of Ravn’s assets and was in the process of determining what assets would be needed in order to continue air service.
But the borough did reassert its right to seize assets under borough code and Alaska state statutes. The borough points to state statutes that say that in an emergency, local officials can enter public and private property when it’s “reasonably necessary to actually alleviate or prevent the disaster,” in order to “take them and to perform work and take measures that are appropriate without the consent of the owners of the land or buildings.”
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Last week, however, the state’s attorney general wrote that the borough’s emergency order commandeering Ravn’s property was “void” because the property belonged to the bankruptcy estate.
RavnAir Group could not be reached for comment.
Lex Treinen is covering the state Legislature for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at ltreinen@gmail.com.
