An updated master plan for Washington Regional Airport should be completed by next spring.Assistant City Administrator Brian Boehmer said the revised plan will map out the next phases of major improvement projects for the city’s airfield in southern Warren County.Boehmer said he anticipates that the city’s consultant, Crawford, Murphy & Tilly Inc. (CMT), will finish work on the plan by March 2017.The city awarded the contract to CMT in April 2014. The contract called for a total price not to exceed $254,000.CMT developed the original master plan for the airport in the mid-1980s, but that plan was not implemented due to strong opposition to airport expansion at that time.When the airport project was revived more than a decade later, CMT updated that original plan which led to expansion of the runway and other improvements earlier this decade.Ninety-five percent of the cost for the master plan and airport layout plan will be funded with state and federal grants. The city’s 5 percent match is $17,163.Ray Frankenberg II, president of Washington Aviation Inc., the airport manager, said this week the city put off finishing the master plan with the hope that the number of large aircraft using the field would increase.A greater number of large aircraft users would boost the chances of getting grants to build a longer runway, he noted.However, the numbers have not increased, so the city has decided to go with regional numbers in the plan and “get it done,” Frankenberg told members of the Washington Area Highway Transportation Committee.Boehmer said the city was caught in a Catch-22 situation — the city needs to get more large aircraft using the airstrip to get funds for a longer landing strip, but pilots of larger aircraft balk at using the shorter strip.“We weren’t getting the traffic counts like we thought,” Boehmer remarked. “So we decided to go with the regional numbers.”ProjectsHe said some of the major projects in the new 20-year plan are:• Extending and widening the landing strip from 5,000-by-75 feet to 5,500-by-100 feet:• Enlargeing the ramp area; and• Building a new terminal/main hangar.Widening and extending the runway would take the airport to the next higher classification, Boehmer said.Approving the revised master plan will put the city in position to obtain federal grants to finance improvements, he explained.Currently, the city has “access” to about $650,000 in grant funds to make immediate improvements at the airport, Boehmer said.He said he will be meeting soon with the mayor and city council to go over the proposed projects which will include:• Repainting the striping and lines on the airfield; and• Replacement of the remaining asphalt areas with concrete. Other pressing “needs” at the airport, Frankenberg told the committee, include pavement maintenance and acquiring easements to remove trees on approaches to the airstrip.Airplane