what the weather is as they’re coming into the airfield, and the rotating beacon is particularly important for aircraft coming in at night,” Hume explains. “Those are two significant safety upgrades that are funded and will be installed later this year.” The reconstruction of Runway 5-23 represents a personal victory for Hume.“The runway was in really poor shape, and it took me five, almost six years to put together the funding to do this project,” he says. “Sometimes working in government takes a long time to get projects done, and this is one of those times, but I’m absolutely ecstatic that this project is getting done.” State Senator Bill Soules, a pilot himself, championed the state funding after the FAA declined to support the runway. Looking ahead, Hume identifies two overriding priorities. “Priority number one has got to be infrastructure expansion,” he states. “We’ve got to get more property available for hangar development. We’ve got to extend our water infrastructure, our power infrastructure, our taxi lanes. I have folks who want to build hangars, but we need to expand our infrastructure.” The second priority requires political will. “If we’re going to commit to doing commercial aviation, 9 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 12, ISSUE 07 LAS CRUCES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
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