Amarillo Invests In Bell Plant

The city of Amarillo, TX, believes in the new presidential helicopter VH-71A so much that lawmakers are willing to invest $27 million in taxpayer money.

"What we will see is potentially 19 Marine One helicopters," Bell plant leader Roger Williams said at a special city council meeting Thurdsay. "These are literally the President's Oval Office in the sky," Roger Williams, site leader for Bell's Amarillo plant, said during an afternoon special meeting of the city commission.

The requested money would go toward building a new ramp, and assembly/flight operations building at Bell's facility in Amarillo. Because of security requirements surrounding the project, the facilities will be built away from the main Bell plant in Amarillo.

"This is another step. It's so much further beyond what was initially envisioned in 1998," Commissioner (Robert) Keys told the commission. He was on the City Commission when the tilt-rotor plant was initially approved for city economic development money.

But not everyone in Amarillo is on board with the project.

"I have a question to whether or not this is a wise policy to put so much resources of the Amarillo Economic Development Corp. into one company," Amarillo resident Allen Finegold said, quoted by the Amarillo Globe-News. "What we will have is a situation in which essentially all efforts of economic development funded by the city will rise and fall with one corporation."

FMI: www.ci.amarillo.tx.us