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NORTH POLE — The testimony was especially personal Thursday night at the Air Force’s public meeting in North Pole, the community that has the most to lose if the Air Force follows through on plans to move an F-16 squadron and hundreds of jobs to Anchorage.
North Pole is the closet town to Eielson Air Force Base and hosted the last in a series of five Air Force meetings designed to collect public comments.
In North Pole, as at two Fairbanks meetings earlier in the week, the people who testified questioned how the move would affect national security and criticized the Air Force’s assumption it can reduce costs by transferring the aircraft and personnel.
In North Pole especially, many of the comments were from people who said they’d personally feel the departure of the 18th Aggressor Squadron.
“This is my home,” said Sandra Rice, a North Pole resident who described herself as a Vietnam veteran and part of a family of veterans.
The departure of the airmen and civilian employees would set off a domino effect that would hurt school enrollment and cripple North Pole’s economy, she said.
“Relocation at this stage in my life is not a very pleasant alternative. I would hate to have to move because of this domino effect.”
Ian Olson, who described himself as a 20-year Interior resident, said Eielson Air Force Base is important to the identity of Interior Alaskans.
“How much is the community of strong support worth to you?” he asked the Air Force leaders who were collecting testimony. “While some communities wish the military would pack up an leave and while others merely tolerate its presence, here in the Interior we celebrate it. I don’t know about you, but it’s really nice to be where you are wanted.”
An audience of more than 300 people gathered at the North Pole High School auditorium for the meeting, possibly the largest turnout of the three Interior meetings. It was a lively audience, quick to applaud or laugh.
Michael Lamb, chief financial officer for the Fairbanks North Star Borough had the group laughing about the borough’s bond rating and debt the borough had taken on to build larger schools.
He compared the Air Force’s plans to move to someone abruptly breaking off a long marriage.
“It’s as if the other party, the Air Force, says ‘Well, I’m not sure this relationship is working for me financially. I’ve decided that I’m moving out. I’ve decided that I’m moving down the street to where I think it will cost me less. Sorry about the debt and sorry about you building your house bigger to meet my needs,’” he said.
“But I do want to come back three months out of the year and still use your back yard,” he said, a reference to the Air Force’s plans to continue using Eielson Air Force Base and surrounding training areas for Red Flag exercises.
North Pole resident Les Williams got plenty of laughs when he suggested some other Air Force budget cuts.
“General, if this was really about saving money, couldn’t we just ground Air Force One for a couple of years,” he asked Brig. Gen. Patrick Malackowski.
He went on to propose closing more overseas bases as an alternative to downsizing Eielson.
“We have 234 golf courses that the Pentagon maintains,” he said. “My friend said the other day, ‘no Air Force base with a golf course gets closed.’ So could we just build one at Eielson?”
After Thursday’s presentation, the Air Force will began preparing a report on the environmental, including socioeconomic, consequences of moving the F-16 squadron.
A draft of the environmental impact statement is scheduled to come out this summer. After another round of meetings, the Air Force is scheduled to prepare a final document and reach a decision in the fall.