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Airport and commissioners

EDITOR:

On Monday, January 16 I attended the Delta County Airport board meeting via Zoom where I heard the airport manager explain an ongoing problem. An FAA controlled weather reporting system has sensor issues causing it to be unreliable and the parts to fix it don’t even have a lead time from a manufacturer overseas. In the past, prior to these systems, airports were able to have staff attend training to become certified weather observers. The manager explained that the entities that offered the training in the past do not offer it anymore and the county would have to pay thousands of dollars for training from a private company to take a test with a low pass rate.

Both Commissioners Peterson and Viau at their first-ever airport board meeting, went on to talk about various certifications they were able to achieve on their own and said airport personnel should simply train themselves on this heavily regulated certification, despite the manager explaining that another airport manager, who has decades of experience, wasn’t comfortable conducting the training at their facility and was also looking for formal training.

The very next evening, Commissioners Peterson and Viau voted to spend $3,000 to have a lawyer give them advice on how to properly participate in meetings to make sure they were following correct procedure according to Roberts Rules. They need to spend thousands instead of attending training that costs a fraction of that, one being MAC. Why can’t they take their own advice and train themselves by buying a copy of Robert’s Rules or checking out thousands of websites and videos free online? And this comes on the heels of them suggesting airport personnel should train themselves for a certification that literally places liability on them for 53 people’s lives? It seems to me priorities are not straight. They will pay $3,000 to save themselves from embarrassment but shoot down the idea of spending money on training that helps our airplane passengers and keeps them safe.

Kelli Van Ginhoven

Escanaba

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