Posted on 08/25/2005 7:14:00 AM PDT by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
BRAC’s ultimatum comes with big price tag
By KERRY DOUGHERTY, The Virginian-Pilot © August 25, 2005
You’ve got to hand it to members of the Virginia Beach City Council. Their timing is exquisite.
On the night before we learned that their canoodling with developers had led to the almost inevitable realignment of Oceana, six members of that embarrassing body voted themselves big fat pay raises.
We always knew they were shameless. Now it looks like they’ve gone mad.
Frankly, no council in Virginia was ever less deserving of a pay hike.
I don’t care what shade of lipstick Beach officials try to put on this pig or how many misleading press releases they fire off gleefully insisting that “BRAC Votes to Keep NAS Oceana Open,” the fact is, the Beach got whacked by BRAC on Wednesday.
And it smarts.
All because the Resort City’s myopic leaders have not demonstrated smarts – when it came to the Navy, anyway – for the past 20 years.
Beyond that, the BRAC commissioners were not fooled by the frenzy of last-minute efforts to save Oceana.
Retired Air Force Gen. Lloyd Newton remarked that the city of Virginia Beach had done virtually nothing to stop encroachment around the base until a couple of weeks ago, when panicked city officials took actions to “stall this process.”
Smart man.
True, the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission did not vote Wednesday to close Oceana . It didn’t exactly vote to realign the base either. It didn’t have to. The Beach (Chesapeake, too, to a lesser extent) and the commonwealth of Virginia will simply not be able to comply with the excruciating and costly demands of the commission.
No doubt an army of attorneys – bankrolled by Virginia taxpayers – will try to mount a legal challenge to the BRAC ultimatum. But that won’t change the fact that Virginia Beach witlessly allowed the military value of Oceana to diminish over the past several decades through civilian encroachment.
In other words, it’s over.
To keep Oceana’s master jet base status, the commonwealth and the cities need to pass a number of laws within the next six months halting – not slowing – encroachment around the base. They have to buy up development rights. They also have to reverse the damage of the past – and that’s a killer. This means massive condemnations in Virginia Beach and the taking of private property within high accident-potential zones.
Early estimates place the number of affected homes at 1,800. These properties are reportedly assessed at about $268 million, which means they’re worth a lot more.
The cost of these condemnations would be astronomical.
The human toll would be horrible.
To comply with BRAC, the area around Oceana could turn into Virginia’s version of the Gaza Strip with almost 2,000 families being forced from their homes.
Eminent domain lawyers, start your engines.
Worse, even if local and state government could comply with BRAC’s demands, the commissioners made it clear that the future of naval aviation does not belong in Virginia Beach. They talked about a life span of 10 to 15 years for the master jet base.
When one BRAC member asked that side-by-side shots of Cecil Field and Oceana be displayed on C-SPAN, you could see the mayor of Virginia Beach wince.
Pictures don’t lie.
Ignore those Pollyannas saying we dodged a bullet from BRAC on Wednesday. We didn’t dodge a bullet. We took a bullet. To the head.
A part of the body Beach officials have been reluctant to use.
*sigh* A template, for ALL politicians...no matter, what matter, they claim to be...
*Fort Worthless Jim Wright's voice* "We, We, We...Only want to help YOUuuu (ourselves)" */voice* :/
Oceana needs to close. A nice set of runways with, bitchy neighbors, poor weather, poor range space, poor access to bombing ranges, and an unusable OLF.
Same type people who move to a rural area from the city then complain about the farm noises at all hours, the smells and flies, and the lack of amenities and street lighting.
Idiots.
Mayor Myra is greedy, greedy, greedy.
The whole town is grredy. Our Kids just sold their litte starter hone for almost a quater of a million.
You've got to be kidding! I grew up outside gate 10 of NAS Norfolk and then lived on E. Ocean View when I moved out. If you live anywhere around there you KNOW the noise you're in for, or should (I used to complain about A10s coming in at 2 am with that annoying up and down engine noise, but not officially!) I've been gone over 20 years, have they really been complaining (officially) about the noise?
Correction, A6s, not a10s.
I remember until the late nineties Oceana was only serviced by two two-lane roads....and it is the largest employer in Va Beach.
The "abeam" position (downwind abeam the landing position on the runway) for the main runway is over a large shopping mall. The outlying field used for field carrier landing practice is now unusable due to noise complaints. Efforts to pick another landing field in N.C. have been sidelined by environmentalists and a federal judge. The main bombing range in Dare County is very restricted and is also surrounded by environmentally sensitive areas. It only has one small instrumented "TACTS" range, very little airspace for air to air training, and the weather sucks.
Any substantial training required for the interdeployment training cycle (IDTC) or Fleet Replacement Squadrons (FRS) is conducted away from Oceana, at either Key West, El Centro CA, or Fallon NV, at greater expense to the taxpayers.
Where is Cecil Field, and why were they comparing it to Oceana?
Oceana pulled some fast ones during the last BRAC. They claimed a unique capability to support some super secret spec ops deployment capability. They also claimed more VFR weather days than Miramar. More days better than 1000 and 3 doesn't mean better training weather.
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