There will be one less owner present when the Baraboo-Wisconsin Dells Airport’s ownership group holds its next meeting, on Nov. 4 in Baraboo.

The Wisconsin Dells Common Council voted Monday evening to withdraw from the “inter-governmental agreement” and co-ownership of the airport that bears the city’s name but actually exists wholly in the Town of Delton and has been co-owned and co-operated by those two municipalities plus the city of Baraboo and the village of Lake Delton.

Delton, Lake Delton and Baraboo remain as the airport’s owners, and the representatives from each municipality will have to decide how best to proceed as a three-municipality ownership group, Delton Supervisor Larry Volz said Monday prior to the Dells Common Council vote.

“We’re going to have to discuss what we’re going to do,” Volz said. “We’ll have to have a new agreement. We’re going to have to thrash that out.”

The unanimous vote by the Dells Common Council was recommended last week by the city’s Finance Committee.

Wisconsin Dells’ departure from the group could serve to break a 2-2 deadlock among the owners during its September meeting, regarding a proposal to spend $800,000 to widen the runway. The city of Baraboo and village of Lake Delton voted to rebuild the runway and widen it 25 feet; the city of Wisconsin Dells and town of Delton voted to rebuild, but not widen, the runway.

Volz said Monday that he still believes the debt required for such an expenditure is not the best idea for a town with other pressing infrastructure issues. “We don’t have $200,000 just to do that (participate financially in the airport upgrade) when we have roads to fix,” he said.

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With the more expensive upgrades in the offing, Dells leaders decided that the city’s money would be better put to use elsewher, rather than for an airport that does not serve the community directly.

“The people flying in and out are not coming to Dells businesses,” said Wisconsin Dells Mayor Brian Landers following the monthly Common Council meeting at the Dells Municipal Building. “Most people flying in are conducting business with the large resorts in Lake Delton or conducting business with the factories in Baraboo. I understand the need for them to increase their runway, it (the airport) just doesn’t have an economic effect on the city.”

Neither Volz nor Village of Lake Delton Trustee Tom Diehl, who has served as an active and interested observer in the group’s efforts to both expand and lengthen the airport’s runway in concert with an upcoming Federal Aviation Administration-funded resurfacing project, indicated alarm or even concern about the city’s withdrawal from ownership and operation of the facility.

“They obviously feel they have a better utilization of their excess resources working on their downtown rather than worrying about the airport,” Diehl said Monday. “They’ve taken the high road, and I think it’s going to work out very well.”

Landers agreed.

“It shouldn’t have any negative effect,” the mayor said. “They understand wher we’re coming from, and whenever there are less people at the table, things can be done more efficiently. That’s what this allows them to do.”