Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 13, 1991 TAG: 9104130111
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FORT ORD, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
"It would be economic disaster in this town. We've lived together for 50 years," Mayor Edith Johnsen said in Marina, which has had this Army base next door since World War II. "It's sort of like the death of a spouse."
She spoke in anticipation of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's announcement that the Pentagon plans to close Fort Ord along with 30 other major domestic military bases and 12 minor installations. Pledges to fight the closings rang out from military towns and state capitals around the country.
The pleas invariably invoked the prospects of widespread layoffs and business failures.
Closure of Fort Ord would cost Monterey Peninsula governments and residents some $2 billion a year, local officials said.
"The money we get from the military is about one-third of our support" behind agriculture and tourism, County Commission Chairman Sam Karas said. "I'm very dismayed because I don't think the military has really thought about the impact on communities and on defense. The cost of moving Fort Ord will be tremendous and we'll suffer."
Johnsen predicted Marina would be hardest hit with her city's 26,000 population dropping by more than half, four of eight schools closing and at least one bank folding along with more than 50 percent of the businesses.
Isolated communities with no independent means of support will be hit hardest by closings. An example is Oak Harbor, Wash., a town of 17,000 people on an island about 40 miles north of Seattle.
"We aren't a farm community, we aren't an industrial community, we're a military community," Mayor Al Koetje said.
Whidbey Island Naval Air Station's annual payroll and contracts total $288 million a year, base spokesman Howard Thomas said.
by CNB