ESCANABA — Following an update on the Delta County Airport and the reading of an email sent to county commissioners by Escanaba resident Kelli van Ginhoven, who is challenging Board Chair Dave Moyle in the upcoming May election, Delta County Airport Manager Robert Ranstadler issued a statement Saturday. Below is that statement in its entirety:

If I were asked to sum up the last four months of my time as the new manager of the Delta County Airport in a single word, I would use “surreal.” On the one hand, the outpouring of support and praise from my colleagues and the community has been humbling. On the other hand, the attacks leveled against me by some more factious figures of the community, including recent calls for my termination, seem confounding. Although I would obviously like to focus on the former, I am writing this letter to address the latter.

First and foremost, I want to assure the people of the Delta County that the airport is no longer in any danger of closing, nor do there exist any conditions at the airport that would pose safety or security threats to the traveling public. All the problems the airport staff and I recently corrected over the past few months were of an administrative nature. We have met all our state and federal obligations and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

With that said, the “administrative crisis” that we recently overcame was not something that I manufactured, nor was I being an alarmist when I labeled the situation as such during my initial department head update to the county board back in December. The airport avoided potentially being the subject of litigation, fines, and possible closure by only the slimmest of margins, all of which was, in my opinion, precipitated by the time and manner in which former Airport Manager Andrea Nummilien vacated her position.

It would be unfair and inaccurate, however, to exclusively lay the blame for all the airport’s problems at Nummilien’s feet. As Commissioner Steven Viau observed during a June 7 TV6 interview, following an emergency meeting of the Airport Board, “[I] saw this resignation coming as Nummilien seemed to be overwhelmed.” With the benefit of hindsight and my newfound knowledge of how things operate at the airport, I tend to agree with Mr. Viau.

The condition in which I discovered the Airport Manger’s office my first day on the job was shocking – hundreds of mismatched records either strewn across the room or haphazardly jammed into the bottom of file cabinets; electronic documents filed and arranged with little or no consistency; and multiple half-done tasks were, in my opinion, indicative of a manager in distress. The second-hand accounts of Nummilien’s conduct while on the job, which I received from her former coworkers and colleagues, seemed to reinforce the image of a person on the brink of apathetic collapse.

Adequately managing the airport is a multifaceted obligation that cannot be handled by a single person, regardless of qualifications or experience. Even with the help of Assistant Manager Robyn Morrison, I find that most days at the airport end without me having sufficient time and resources to complete all my desired tasks. I am unsure of how vocal Nummilien was in seeking help but permitting her to run the airport unaided and unsupervised undoubtedly contributed to the dilemma that manifested itself in the months preceding and following her departure.

All the above observations, along with the suggestions of several subject-matter experts, are what recently inclined me to ask county leadership for the hiring of a part-time, temporary clerk. In addition to helping Assistant Manager Morrison and I to get caught up with a backlog of administrative tasks, the new clerk will free up time for us to address complex issues of long-term concern, such as preparing for our next FAA inspection.

Although hiring part-time, temporary help seems the most logical move in getting things accomplished at the airport, not everyone agrees. As Commissioner Robert Petersen shared in an email from the last County Board of Commissioners meeting, Kelli Van Ginhoven instead thinks that I am someway trying to shirk my duties. Despite having pulled the airport back from the brink of crisis and working on a strategic vision for the airport’s future, Ms. Van Ginhoven feels that I am so unqualified for my current position that my woeful incompetence merits termination.

Ms. Van Ginhoven and her more ardent supporters sit at a comfortable distance from the airport “fact finding” through airport documents and emails until they feel they have obtained enough second-hand and circumstantial “evidence” to support their presuppositions. Although I have offered to sit down with Ms. Van Ginhoven and personally answer her questions, she prefers instead to form her own assumptions, which she then broadcasts at times and in places of her choosing, without having to endure the burden of rebuttal or discourse.

The great irony of the entire situation is that Van Ginhoven, who to my knowledge possesses no airport management experience, makes it habit to criticize my credentials, which include twenty years of aviation management experience as well as graduate-level college coursework and other work history that are directly applicable to my current position. Although I admit I was not an ideal first choice for the airport manager position, I was actively working within the aviation industry (while simultaneously serving our county in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan) before either Kelli Van Ginhoven or Andrea Nummilien had graduated from high school.

With all the above said, I do not harbor any ill will toward Ms. Van Ginhoven, nor do I take her attacks on my professional credibility personally. On the contrary, I do admire her tenacity and dedication to a cause that I imagine she feels is in the best interest of our community. I also stand by my previous offer to meet with Ms. Van Ginhoven to discuss the details of our daily operations at the airport. It is up to her, however, to take advantage of it.