But Slaybaugh said one disappointment during his tenure was losing a battle he waged against five rental car agencies, which have a 20-year, rent-free lease for the first floor of the airport’s parking garage.
The city has spent about $412,000 on legal fees fighting the rental car companies, and it still may be forced to pay their attorney fees of nearly $600,000, according to court documents and city data.
“Unfortunately, the rental companies have the use of the first floor of the garage for 15 more years,” Slaybaugh said. “I felt that was excessive, and I took the position that they don’t need the first floor, which has 700 parking spots.”
Slaybaugh, the director of the Dayton International Airport, has accepted a job as aviation director with the General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee.
He had applied for the open Dayton city manager position, a city administrator job in Florida and for an airport director in Augusta, Ga.
Slaybaugh was hired by the city of Dayton in early 2011. At the time, he was the senior vice president of a real estate and property management firm in Rochester, N.Y. Before that, he served for about a decade as director of aviation at Greater Rochester International Airport.
During his time as aviation director, Slaybaugh said there were significant upgrades to the Dayton airport to make it more attractive, competitive and easier to navigate and use.
The airport has a reputation for convenience, and new signage and way-finding systems have been added in the facility and along the roadways to enhance the passenger experience, Slaybaugh said. The parking system has been updated, and the airport bought new shuttle buses.
Slaybaugh said he made customer service a priority, and he worked on the airport’s sustainability master plan project. The airport now recycles about 33 percent of passenger waste.
The airport gained national attention for planting several hundred acres of prairie grass in the fields surrounding the runways. The project seeks to reduce bird strikes as well as lessen the airport’s environmental impact.
Other investments in recent years have included upgraded ticket counters, gate areas, restrooms, carpeting and operation spaces.
Virtually every area of the airport will be renovated under the facility’s capital-improvement plan, which was put in place under Slaybaugh.
Last year, passenger traffic at the airport declined by 9 percent. However, airport revenues were about $33.4 million, up from about $30.4 million in 2013, according to city and airport data.
Airlines are paying the airport more for every passenger. When Slaybaugh took over, the airlines were paying about $3 per passenger to operate at the airport, and this year they will pay about $6.80 per passenger.
“We are a viable market for the airlines,” Slaybaugh said. “They make a lot of money in this region, and I think that trend is going to continue.”
The airport’s future is looking up, partly because Dayton-based PSA Airlines has taken off, officials said.
The company, which is the only commercial airline headquarter in Ohio, is putting three new air crafts into service every month into 2016, said PSA President Dion Flannery earlier this month.
The carrier added 1,100 new employees last year, and it employs about 800 in the Dayton area. It is hiring 60 flight attendants and pilots each month.
PSA employed about 400 people in Dayton when Slaybaugh was hired, and he said the company is talking about growing local employment to more than 1,000 people.
Slaybaugh said he hopes the city can soon reach a memorandum of understanding with PSA for an aircraft maintenance hangar, which could create new jobs and bring more flights to the airport.
But Slaybaugh got the city embroiled in an expensive legal fight.
In 2008, the city’s previous Aviation Director Iftikhar Ahmad signed an agreement with the Avis, Budget, Enterprise, National and Alamo rental car companies, allowing them to use the entire first floor of a new three-story parking garage rent free for 20 years.
Slaybaugh said it was an unfair deal and contended the agreement with the city terminated when the companies’ general operating contract expired at the end of 2012.
Slaybaugh in 2012 notified the companies he wanted to implement a permit system that eliminated about half of the parking spaces available to them and charged rent for every space they used.
But the rental car companies sued, claiming the city’s actions constituted a breach of contract. A federal judge in 2013 ruled in the companies’ favor.
The city appealed, but the appeals court last year affirmed the lower court’s decision.
To date, the city has spent $411,890 on the lawsuit. The companies have asked the court to make the city pay their attorney fees and other costs, which are estimated at $597,000. The city has objected to this request.
“Of course we’re disappointed with the overall outcome,” said Lynn Donaldson, Dayton’s interim law director. “We made our best case.”
Slaybaugh said the first floor of the parking garage is an “asset” that the community should be able to use.
But he said legal fights are unavoidable when you are in charge of a large operation that has numerous partners and business interests.
“It wasn’t personal, it was a business arrangement I didn’t think should continue, and the court disagreed with us,” Slaybaugh said.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said Slaybaugh played an important role in helping the city develop the northern part of the county, and he had a good relationship with government and business partners, which bolstered job growth and economic development.
“We’re better off because of Terry,” she said.
She said the city believed it had a strong case in the dispute with the rental car companies, and Slaybaugh was a leader who took “calculated risks” to try to provide better service at the airport.
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