BIDDEFORD — The City Council voted 7-2 Tuesday to move forward with a $962,500 project to address safety concerns at Biddeford Municipal Airport.

Councilors Bradley Cote and Clement Fleurent voted against the project, and the decision even prompted Cote to resign from his seat.

“I’ve argued the risks (of the airport) for three years,” he said, before leaving his seat. “I don’t think we should be making major financial commitments without any sort of data.”

Cote said that he feels the city is, unfortunately, falling into a trend of spending large sums of money without doing the proper research and gathering all of the pertinent data beforehand.

“I can’t keep doing it,”

he said.

Cote had successfully convinced the council to table the project at its meeting on Feb. 3, suggesting the city pursue a comprehensive study of the airport’s economic value before accepting federal and state grants in the amounts of $866,250 and $48,125, respectively, as well as contributing $48,125 of its own money to bring it up to Federal Aviation Administration standards.

The council voted 5-4 against that study Tuesday, which would have cost the city $27,000, before voting to remove the project from the table and ultimately approving it. Since the study would have been paid for through contingency funds, as opposed to the city’s regular budget, it would have needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

Councilors Bob Mills and Michael Swanton voiced their opposition to the study prior to the vote.

“I’d sooner put the money in a pile and burn it,” said Swanton, while Mills simply called it a “waste of $27,000.”

The council’s decision to move forward with the project marks the end of nearly a decade of impasse concerning the airport. In the council chambers, which were filled with a few dozen people Tuesday night, the occasion was met with vivacity on the part of the several pilots and airport proponents in attendance.

“We were successful tonight,” said Gerry Bernier, chairman of the Friends of Biddeford Airport and a pilot. “We’re all very happy.”

The project was proposed last year and championed by the FAA, the Maine Department of Transportation and Gale Associations, an engineering and planning firm.

Trees close to the airport’s runway have grown taller than the height considered safe by the FAA, forcing pilots to depart and land there at an unusually steep angle, and the main goal of the project will be to remove or shorten those trees.

Because many of the trees are on land currently owned by the New England Electric Railway, which has refused to accept easements for the work, the city will first have to purchase the 42-acre parcel for roughly $125,000 ”“ a cost built into the total project cost of $962,500. From there, Gale Associates will begin clearing trees.

As many as six properties owned by Biddeford residents will also be affected by the work, Gale Associates’ aviation director Armand Dufresne said Tuesday.

And unlike what project proponents have claimed in the past, many of the trees will likely end up being completely removed rather than just trimmed or “topped,” Dufresne said, because otherwise, they end up looking odd or “ugly.”

Furthermore, he added, a tree that is cut will eventually die and years later become a safety hazard that the property owner must deal with; therefore, Dufresne predicted many landowners will opt to have any problematic trees completely removed to begin with.

At past City Council meetings, residents who live close to the airport raised concerns over the possibly intrusive and destructive nature of the tree-clearing work on their properties.

But Tuesday Dufresne assured anyone who may be concerned that Gale Associates will approach the work carefully and appropriately, adding that any damage done to private property will be swiftly remedied and paid for.

“People are very sensitive about losing trees,” he said. “We never go on a property without advising a landowner. ”¦ We don’t just cut them willy-nilly.”

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or averzoni@journaltribune.com.