Wagoner questions religion aviation program

The Platte Valley Academy's new use as an aviation training facility instead of an alternative high school has Hall County Supervisor Dan Wagoner concerned.

 He wondered this week if the academy's new use by Kansas-based Adventist World Aviation could be a cover-up for a Sept. 11-type terrorist training.

The Seventh-day Adventists previously ran the high school, which operated a working farm. It was consolidated with a school in Kansas last year, prompting the religious organization to reuse the school facility for another educational purpose.

The surrounding agricultural land made it a good site for flight training, church officials said.

But Wagoner wants the county or Homeland Security to follow up and ensure proper activities are happening there.

"A Muslim extremist would have a hard time passing as a Seventh-day Adventist," Supervisor Scott Arnold responded with a laugh to Wagoner at Tuesday's county board meeting. "I don't think the Seventh-day Adventist denomination has any risk of training people for ulterior motives. They are what they say they are."

Arnold is also a Grand Island police officer.

According to their tax exemption paperwork, the Adventists say they will use the former academy grounds for a facility to be used "in training aircraft mechanics, pilots and preparing for dispatch to overseas mission service."

However, Supervisor Pam Lancaster said Wagoner's concerns aren't so far-fetched. It's often the quieter, more remote areas that end up in the news with an event happening that no one ever dreamed would occur there.

Sometimes rural areas are "less conspicuous," Lancaster said.

The matter before the board this week was to approve the property tax exemption on the school's campus building, 11 houses and nearly 60 acres of surrounding property that will be used for training ground. The property has an assessed value of $3.6 million.

Wagoner cast the lone no vote against the exemption.

Supervisors also voted to exempt the Iglesia Evangelica Pentecostes Redencion Eterna church at 318 W. Third, with an assessed value of $136,827, and Hope Harbor's homeless shelter and offices at 610 W. Division, assessed at $741,639.