South Dakota received three-quarters of a billion dollars as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or the stimulus package. While the bulk of that money is serving its purpose by creating jobs for new infrastructure, some projects are leaving people questioning whether the funds are being put to good use.

On a frigid Friday morning, a medi-vac plane makes its descent onto a brand-new runway at the Martin Municipal airport. Its wheels are the first to touch the new pavement since going through four months of renovations.

"The runway's the same length and width but it's a total rebuild. This airport was first paved in 1980 and there's been several projects and improvements since then," manager Jack Audiss said. "They tore the runway up and put a total new reconstruction."

Audiss has been with this family-run General Aviation airport since it opened nearly thirty years ago. In that time, the business has received millions of dollars in Federal Funding: $2.09 million in just the past five years. Most of that money has been used for runway upkeep.

"It's just like a highway. You've got to keep the thing up to a certain standard. The pavement was starting to break up so you're going to end up with something that's not usable if you don't repair it. That's what it amounts to," Audiss said.

But according to records, it doesn't get much use. With no commercial flights, the Martin Municipal Airport lists zero passengers for the last five years and its national priority rating for improvements is just a 66 on a 100 point scale. Still, it received more than a million dollars in South Dakota stimulus funds this year.

"Well, I wasn't surprised because at that time they were looking for places to put the money, you know. Put some here, put some there. I wasn't surprised," Audiss said.

And he shouldn't be; other airports across the state received stimulus money as well.

Mitchell got the bulk of South Dakota's airport stimulus money, receiving $6.7 million to make improvements to the runway.

Pierre's airport, which only has a national priority rating of a 38, received close to a million dollars for a new terminal building.

And the community of Mission received more than $4 million to build a new airport, which will only have a national priority rating of 40.

Audiss says it's tough to count how many flights come in and out of Martin on average each day because some days it's very busy and other days, there are no flights at all. But he says no matter what, even if the airport is used just a few times each month, spending to make improvements is justified.

"The medical end of it, that's pretty important. And this is an agricultural community so we rely on it for our aerial spraying operations. Then we have a stockyard over here and sometimes cattle buyers will come in and go up. So, it's important to a small community to have an airport," Audiss said.

He says it's important those landing here have a smooth ride, though it's sparsely used.

"It was four months in construction and it was an inconvenience for us. You don't realize how much you need the airport until you tear it up and you don't have it available to use so we're happy to get it all done," Audiss said.

Even if it limited funding from other state projects, Audiss says the sky-high stimulus spending to improve South Dakota airports was worth every penny.

Audiss says the improvements did help create some jobs while construction was going on this summer, but none of those were permanent jobs.