ESCANABA — Pressed by a series of regulatory deadlines, the Delta County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to offer the airport manager position to the second-ranked applicant and seek the assistance of a search company to hire an interim manager until the seat is permanently filled.

“We interviewed three candidates. One of them backed out for personal reasons — which was our number on choice — we have a very strong number two choice and we had a relatively strong number three choice, however, the number three choice did not meet the educational requirements,” said Brian Herioux, chair of the airport advisory committee and member of the airport’s hiring committee.

The Delta County Airport has been without formal leadership since Jan. 18, following the departure of Former Airport Manager Robert Ranstadler and the departure of Assistant Airport Manager Robin Morrison in early December of last year. Since then, the airport has been under the direction of County Administrator Ashleigh Young, who previously managed the airport for a short period between Ranstadler’s hire and the resignation of his predecessor Andrea Nummilien in June of 2023.

Young’s direction has allowed flights to continue at the airport without interruption, but by law, a licensed airport manager must be in place within 90 days of a manager’s departure. To meet the deadline, Young would need to take the licensing test by April 17.

Then, assuming Young passed, she would have to go through Part 139 federal regulatory training in May and be prepared for a Federal Aviation Administration inspection in June, which will require a significant amount of paperwork be submitted to the FAA in advance.

“Basically, long story short, I don’t believe Ashleigh, by herself, can get us through the inspections that are coming up in the coming months,” said Herioux.

Early in the process of finding a replacement for Ranstadler, the airport was in talks with ADK Consulting & Executive Search, a company that offers headhunting services for airports and places licensed interim managers in airports until a permanent hire can be made. A proposed agreement with the company was drafted and airport advisory committee members spoke strongly in support of using ADK to fill the opening at the airport, but the county board decided to continue the search using the county’s traditional hiring practices.

The announcement that the first-choice applicant — who had been offered the position — would not be filling the role forced the county to reexamine that stance Tuesday. Both the first- and second-choice candidates had indicated they would be available within 60 days of being offered the position, with the exact start date dictated by housing availability. However, 60 days would be well passed the deadline for a licensed manager to be on staff.

Herioux informed the board that ADK had two options for interim placements: either a $5,000 finders fee and the county negotiating directly with the interim manager or the county hiring ADK to staff the position. ADK did not indicate the cost of hiring staff through ADK in their initial draft agreement.

Regardless of which option the airport would choose, there is money available to use ADK’s services, largely because no salary has been paid to a manager or an assistant manager for some time. The airport also was awarded a grant that could be partially used for ADK’s services.

The county board ultimately directed the airport board to begin working with ADK to work out any of the specifics related to hiring an interim manager and passed a motion to offer the airport position to Kylie Tandy. No further information was presented during the meeting about Tandy, other than she had experience with Part 139 FAA regulations and had previously participated in one FAA inspection.