Aviation View - Dec 2023

74 AVIATION VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 3, ISSUE 4 since. “I’ve always been interested in aviation since I first got bit by the flying bug,” he states. “I worked for a local wholesaler here in town for 24 years. They sold out and a job happened to be open here at the airport in the operations area. At the time, I was a member of the volunteer fire department and the fire chief said, ‘You need to apply for that job; you’re perfect for it.’ So I did and I’ve worked in operations for about 15 years. In 2020, we had some issues with our airport director and the board asked me to be the interim Airport Manager. In January of 2021, they offered me the position full- time. That’s how I ended up here.” Cruse says he loves his job but he does lament that chronic understaffing at the airport makes it hard to get everything done. He only has two operation workers on board, Joe Kraft and Russell Gerhardt, both of whom also double as aircraft rescue firefighters. “We’re understaffed by at least two people,” he states. “My workweek is Monday through Sunday without a doubt, and there have been very few weekends in the last two years that I have gotten even a day off. I call myself the fireman because every day, it’s putting out a fire and until I can get some people in here and get them trained, it’s a little crazy. Right now, we have two construction projects going on that keeps us busy – a terminal expansion project and finishing up a partial taxiway and apron reconstruction project. So, it’s been a real busy time.” AIRPORT PROJECTS AND THEIR BUDGETS And if the actual work at the airport wasn’t taxing enough, the intricacies of the funding processes to get all the work paid for is probably just as stressful. Cruse explains, starting with the promulgation of the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act, a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill signed into law in 2020, in response to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic: “Devils Lake is a small airport and we were supposed to get an extra $159,000 out of the CARES Act. But we ended up getting way more money -- $16.8 million.” The disparity caused a political kerfuffle in Washington and it took over a year for Congress and