Representatives from the Air Force, State department of Transportation, City of Galena and Louden Tribal Council met in Galena on Wednesday to discuss issues relating to the final departure of the Air Force from Galena. 

Air Force headquarters has ordered the Galena forward station to be closed no later than September 30, 2008. 

Governor Murkowski’s office initiated the meeting in an attempt to get all the parties on the same page, and asked the Pacific Air Force command in Hawaii to send a general to the meeting.  But Pacific Air Force officials delegated that task to Colonel Joe Skaja, commander of the 611^th Air Support Group at Elmendorf.  His unit has overseen Galena in its time as a Forward Operating Location.  

Skaja says that Wednesday’s meeting in Galena accomplished the basic task of getting all of the parties in a room together. 

[0719skaja1   “the meeting was designed to open the channels of communication…and I believe the purpose was well-met, the communication was frank, open, and led to future communications between the three parties, so I think it went well.”  ]

Marvin Yoder now serves as Special Assistant to the Mayor of Galena, but remains the City’s point-man on the post-BRAC redevelopment process.  The meeting confirmed for him and other representatives from Galena that the closure deadline is indeed September 30, 2008, and that the number of Air Force-supported jobs and services will gradually decline from now until then. 

[0719yoder1      “it is their intent to draw down slowly over the next two years to get to that point, and if there is opportunities to draw down more people and relieve them of responsibility out there, they will take it.” ] 

Colonel Skaja could not talk about possible changes to the contract with Chugach Support Services, due to legal restrictions.  The contract expires in 2008, but can be altered each October during a renewal period.    

Leading up to the July 19^th meeting, Yoder and the Galena Economic Development Committee debated two possible strategies for dealing with the Air Force now that a closure date has been set.  The first would attempt to get the closure deadline pushed back, arguing that Galena’s redevelopment plan cannot be implemented by the end of September, 2008.    

That strategy would have to win the support of high-level Air Force officers, who would be in a position to extend the existing closure timeline.  But Colonel Skaja doesn’t think he could do anything to get the closure deadline changed. 

[0719skaja2   “unfortunately, the Air Force does not have the ability to negotiate that.  That was directed down to the 611^th Air Support Group, through PACAF [Pacific Air Forces], and that is the date we are working on.  Now our goal is to work to minimize the impact to the City of Galena.  There are things we are can do over the next two years and two months to minimize the impact.”     ]

The other strategy, which Yoder says is more likely for the City to use, takes the September 2008 closure deadline and uses it to leverage more transition money, to fill the gap created when the Air Force is no longer an active tenant on base. 

Yoder explains that this transition funding would go mainly towards utilities and maintenance, and there is at least one precedent in BRAC history to back up that strategy. 

[0719yoder3    “what I did point out to them was that at another Air Force base closure in 1995 the Air Force actually contributed operations and maintenance costs for 5 years after they left…K.I. Sawyer Michigan.  That was a strategy used then, it was used for the same purposes, because of the cold climate, because the buildings would deteriorate if they left them unmanned.  And so the Air Force did, at that time, do that.  The other alternative is of course to seek a direct appropriation, through the BRAC process, saying that’ we are being impacted, we were not given enough to redevelop and get all of our things in order, we need some transition funding just to get us through this period.’”]

A lack of funds across the board at the Air Force, brought about due to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a popular explanation for why the Air Force is trying to move quickly with base closures in Galena and elsewhere. 

The Department of Defense guidance on base closures and realignments directs the military to expedite their actions wherever possible as a general rule, but Colonel Skaja denies that a system-wide budget crunch is the root cause for closing the Galena forward station by the fall of 2008.

[0719skaja3  “in my opinion, our duty as responsible Air Force officers is to save money in any way we can.  Of course right now we are spending quite a bit of money on the war on terrorism, and the mission here has been negated, has been ended.  And we are no longer going to support a mission here, so the last three years is just to soften the impact of the Air Force leaving.  So we didn’t feel any pressure to leave earlier due to the budget crunches, but the operational necessity to close the base set up that date basically.”  ]

The State Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is the landowner of the Galena Air Base, and the Air Force leased the land it used in Galena from them.  D-O-T was represented at the July 19 meeting by, among others, Frank Richards – a maintenance and operations engineer.  Richards was positive about what the meeting accomplished and is optimistic that the closure and transition process from here on out will go smoothly. 

[0719frankrichards2      “what this meeting today brought was the three entities together at the table, and the focus again was on communication, cooperation, and collaboration.  Those are the “three c’s” as we call them, to work this process together so we can have the best end result that we can for this facility and for this community.  It is going to take continued work and we have commitments from the three parties to meet on a regular basis so that we can meet on a regular basis to keep that dialogue going so that we know what the Air Force plan is, they will know what the State plan is, and we will have the City and their reuse plan.  And we will all be moving forward in a parallel track to achieve the end.”  ]

But speaking from the City of Galena’s perspective, Marvin Yoder sees a more adversarial and disjointed relationship existing between the Air Force and the City of Galena.  The prime example of that, Yoder says, was the absence of the Air Force from the redevelopment meetings so far, and the Air Force’s insistence that it must work directly with the State on the Galena BRAC process, since the State owns the land. 

Colonel Skaja defended that decision again at the July 19^th meeting.

[0719yoder4   “his reasoning was that we were in planning stages, and it was not up to them to plan for Galena’s future.  I thought that was a bit of a stretch, we felt like it was their input, whether it was…not on how to develop in the future, but how we can work together and what the criteria and what the parameters are for our working together.  And he did pledge that they would be back in the ballgame now, and working with us. I hope that is true.  We felt like the BRAC process had the promise of king of walking down the road, they would accommodate our needs, and we would try to accommodate their needs were, and together we would make this thing happen.  It now appears that funding-wise and operationally, we are on our own.  They have got their wings set for when they are out of Galena, and it is up to us to try and pick up the pieces and try to make them work.” ]

Another meeting between the major parties involved in the Galena BRAC process is scheduled tentatively for October.