By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

Oberlin once again will move ahead with the slow task of expanding its airport runway.

By a 485-282 vote, Oberlin residents agreed to let the city move ahead with plans for an extended runway. The decision, tallied late Tuesday, culminates a mail election that was prompted with Oberlin council members were petitioned to halt work on the airport project.

In tandem with the Oberlin election, Norcatur residents agreed, by a 50-31 vote, to let people living outside the city limits work for the city.

The city clerk and treasurer would have been affected by the vote had it gone the other way.

While the Oberlin vote allows the city to move ahead with its efforts to build a new runway, it's a long way from becoming reality.

"That's good news to us," Connie Grafel, marketing director for the Oberlin-Decatur Area Economic Development Corp., said Wednesday.

Grafel has been a key player in the fight to extend the city's runway, and a strong proponent of the effort.

Not all of the money is there to accomplish the task, but Grafel said the city had received assurances of grant money from the Federal Aviation Administration for a new, longer runway. State money promised to extend the runway beyond 5,000 feet.

Grafel said the city had hoped to build a 7,000-foot-long runway, allowing for larger corporate jets to land. Before that can be done, however, the city must show the need for the longer runway.

With the backing of Oberlin residents, Grafel said she'll be heading to the city council Thursday to see what will be done next.

The first step will be the rehabilitation of Oberlin's existing runway, a north-south aligned facility.

The FAA, she said, agreed to pay for rehabilitation, but the city has to clean up some air space issues that will mean the loss of about 600 feet of runway on the south. The city hopes to add about 300 feet back onto the runway on its north end, but topography will limit the expansion beyond that.

"We've got one of the shortest runways in the northwest part of the state," Grafel said.

And that sometimes means people who want to fly in to the city often must land at McCook, Neb., and then drive in. People doing that often stay and eat in McCook, rather than in Oberlin.

Because plenty of work still remains to be done, Grafel said it's likely it could be at least three years before any work on the new runway could begin.

"We're working with federal money and working with state money," she said. "And that's drying up."

But the vote shows support for the effort.

"We're very happy the community is behind us," she said.