Yesterday the Renton Mayor released an Airport statement explaining that council felt compelled to evict The Landing Gear Works (TLGW). He put sole blame on TLGW for falling behind in rent without mentioning the serious billing errors by his administration that plunged TLGW into rent arrears.  I’m describing these errors here for the first time.  (The Mayor also didn’t mention the failure of the airport manager to extend a long enough lease to make building repairs, per airport lease policy, and I’ve covered that here.)

In November 2022 the Renton Airport Business Manager realized he had a serious problem. He had been underbilling The Landing Gear Works (TLGW) for months for their hangars, workshops and offices on Renton airport.  The lease rate had increased and the new amount was NOT reflected in the bills. The accounting error added up to five months of lease payments.  The Airport’s error would be bad news for TLGW and would negatively impact their business, especially on the heels of the pandemic.  It would have been courteous to call or visit TLGW to break the news, apologize for the mistake, and work out a plan.  But instead, the Airport Manager just directed his accountant to send a bill for the corrected amounts.

His efforts to downplay the error resulted in predictable confusion in the offices of Landing Gear Works and Renton City Accounting.

When the bill for the error showed up in the accountant’s office at Landing Gear Works, she wrote back to the City “Is there a way to fix this statement to reflect the actual balance of $14709.22? In the meantime I will get another payment asap.”   When she received a response from the city, she immediately forwarded it to President Tom Anderson with this email message: “I asked for a current statement from the City of Renton for the rent. This is what she sent.”

Tom Anderson’s shock is apparent in his email reply:   ” This says we owe 50K !!!!!!!!! ”

The Airport Manager and his boss, the Public Works Administrator, obviously knew it looked bad.  Whenever they told this story, they referred to it, unfairly, as the Landing Gear Works falling behind on rent, never mentioning the city’s own accounting mistakes that contributed to it.  To this day I have not seen them publicly explain it to City Council or the Renton Community.

As Mr. Anderson was working to catch up from the city’s billing error, his roof began to leak. That is where I picked up the story in my first post on The Landing Gear Works.

Here is the statement from the city that started it all.  The text in the first image reads as follows:

———- Forwarded message ———
From: <City of Renton Accounting>
Date: Thu, Nov 17, 2022 at 12:16 PM
Subject: RE: Airport Invoice
To: Accounting TLGW <accounting@thelandinggearworks.com>

Hello,

Please see attached statement. The statement was inadvertently generated from 2019-current. I’ve highlighted the outstanding balances on the statement, and below is a screenshot of your open items for ease of reading. It was brought to my attention under addendum 6 to LAG-13-005 there was a rent increase that was to take affect in March 2022. I have issued an invoice for the difference from March-December (attached), and your billing amount will reflect this increase on your monthly invoices moving forward. Invoices issued for September-November are due in full ASAP, but we can work out a payment plan for the back billing invoice. Please feel free to email or call with any questions or concerns. Thanks!

Mr. Anderson met with the Airport staff and they agreed on a plan.  TLGW would pay the previously unbilled amounts over time. But the airport’s normal bills do not contain a lot of information, and the catch-up accounting proved confusing and time-consuming.  The City made more errors along the way. Accountants at Landing Gear Works and the City struggled to coordinate how to apply payments to current rent vs back rent.  The Airport Leadership, not TLGW, had created the billing confusion and abundance of overdue rent.

Typical bill received by Landing Gear Works. The Company paid these bills throughout 2022, only to be told they had fallen behind. This bill from February 2024 does not give any clue as to past due amounts.

The remainder of this article is a tiny sample of the actual back and forth emails between their offices. I’ve removed the names and email addresses of personnel.

READ MORE »