FORT RUCKER, Ala. (February 27, 2015) -- The Army sent a team to Fort Rucker Feb. 23 to hear from the local communities on what the impact would be if the service implemented planned reorganization of its force structure to meet the requirements set by the Budget Control Act of 2011. The Wiregrass responded in force.
More than 1,600 political, business and civic leaders, along with citizens from the local communities flooded Fort Rucker to show their collective support for what many throughout the night deemed the "pulse" of the Wiregrass.
Before it makes a final decision on how it will meet the cuts required, the Army is sending a team to a total of 30 installations to get input from the various communities on how planned cuts might affect the areas.
Team member Col. Karl Konzelman said, in a worst-case scenario, Fort Rucker could lose about 2,500 personnel -- a mixture of military and civilian positions -- and take a budget hit of $600 million, which officials estimate would reduce the number of Aviators trained at the post from 900 to 600.
"The Pentagon is a long way from Fort Rucker. We've got the facts -- we know how many buildings there are and how many ranges there are," said Brig. Gen. Roger Cloutier, the Army's team leader. "What we want is context -- we want to get the story from the community."
More than a hundred people stepped up to the microphones in the theater over the next three hours to tell the team what Fort Rucker means to the area, including local businessman Charles Nailen.
"I'm all in ... all in, in a lot of ways," he said to the panel. "Fort Rucker touches my business ... but businesses are made up of people and it will be people that lose jobs. I would say to you as you take comments back to your leadership, if you remember nothing else about Fort Rucker, remember it is unique … unique in a lot of respects.
"We have a unique workforce that would be difficult, no, probably impossible to replicate anywhere else," he continued. "Many jobs are highly skilled jobs and those jobs migrate to where the work is. If this unique workforce is laid off, in whole or part, they'll go somewhere else, making it difficult to find this special labor later. We have unique airspace. You've been here since last week, you've gotten the tour of the airspace, associated ground space, all of the stage fields would be difficult to replicate. We've got unique political leaders. We've got unique congressional delegations," Nailen added
"But more than anything else, Fort Rucker has a unique community support. Folks in southeast Alabama are patriots. They love Fort Rucker and Army Aviation all the time," he said.
Nailen's sentiments were continued throughout the three-plus hour event by speaker after speaker after speaker.
Some speakers were elderly, some were in their 20s, two were junior ROTC at Carroll High School (both recently accepted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, which led to standing ovations for both) and one was a pre-teen.
Some spoke emotionally, some spoke in a businesslike manner, some were nervous, one person rhymed and a couple sounded like they were preaching from the pulpit.
But one common theme among almost all of the comments was passion -- passion for the Wiregrass, and passion for having Fort Rucker and Soldiers as a part of the community.
Most also expressed their appreciation to the Army for listening to their concerns, and implored the panel to be their voice in Washington, D.C.
The team will continue on to visit 12 more installations, and then compile all they heard and send it up the chain of command. The Army expects to have its final recommendation completed this summer, officials said.
NOTE: If you missed the listening session, you can see it in its entirety on the Fort Rucker website, just click on the listening session button.
Related Links:
USAACE and Fort Rucker on Twitter
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