By Noah Johnson

njohnson@dailypress.net

ESCANABA — After the most recent Board of Commissioners meeting, the county is one step closer to hiring a new airport manager.

On Tuesday, the Delta County Board of Commissioners approved a request to extend an employment offer to Katelyn Biermann as the new airport manager.

“Katelyn comes to us with approximately 20 years of experience in the aviation industry.

She’s originally from Escanaba and looking to relocate here from Alaska,” said Commissioner Kelli van Ginhoven.

The starting pay for the position is $75,000.

The previous manager, Robert Ranstadler, resigned effective Jan. 17

He started at the airport in October 2023.

The board unanimously approved extending the offer for the airport manager to Biermann.

Commissioner Christine Williams said she appreciated being able to review the applications during the hiring process.

“I do appreciate having the opportunity to do that even though I didn’t serve on the airport advisory board, but I felt comfortable having reviewed the applications, and it just was, for me, it was a nice process,” Williams said.

In other business, the board reviewed a few Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeals, which led to a more extensive discussion about the current process.

The board was reviewing a FOIA appeal that required the review of almost 1,300 emails among five different county employee correspondence.

Ginhoven recused herself from the discussion, declaring a conflict of interest.

Williams asked County Administrator Ashleigh Young how the county defines burden regarding FOIA requests.

Young said it is based on the number of emails captured during the search results.

Williams suggested another employee be responsible for reviewing requests and redacting information when necessary.

“FOIA requires that the hourly rate that you charge is the lowest paid position that could do the work. And in my opinion, we have folks who could do that work that are paid a lot less than you’re paid to do that work,” Williams said.

She brought the idea up as she believes the county is charging too much for large FOIA requests.

“I’ve asked for FOIAs in the past where I’ve gotten similar information and similar amounts, similar volumes of email, and the cost was 50 percent of this,” Williams said.

She ultimately stated that she believes the labor cost per hour is too high.

After general public comment, the Board said it would like to continue looking into the county’s FOIA policy.

“If I’m reading this right, it looks like we’re kind of edging towards making a change to our FOIA policy. We seem to have some disagreements, and I think our FOIA policy is going to need to be looked at a little bit more,” said Commissioner Patrick Johnson.

Board members agreed with Johnson that members should continue to discuss the policy.

“I would enjoy doing that work,” Williams said.

The board meets again on Thursday at 1 p.m. for the Committee of the Whole meeting.