Drum cuts hit services and jobs
FORT DRUM — Post maintenance, staffing levels, the annual air show and some aspects of garrison life for soldiers will be affected under the budget-cutting plan the Army post announced today.
No layoffs or furloughs of civilian workers are planned, but only critical vacancies will be filled.
In an editorial in this week's edition of the Mountaineer, Fort Drum's official newspaper, Garrison Commander Col. Kenneth H. Riddle provided a list of areas where the post is making cuts to accommodate an expected $36 million reduction in its operating budget in fiscal year 2010. That represents about a 30 percent reduction from fiscal 2009's $119 million, to $82.7 million in fiscal 2010, which began in October.
The cuts come as part of the military's effort to reduce non-war spending while escalating the fight in Afghanistan. Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported cuts of between 20 and 40 percent planned at other military bases.
According to Col. Riddle's Mountaineer piece, Fort Drum will cancel the annual summer air show this year and reduce travel, supply purchases, overtime work and the filling of vacancies to only those considered critical. A little-used on-post shuttle service will be dropped, except for service to dining facilities.
Maintenance activities like landscaping, lawn-mowing and trash collection will be less frequent, and staffing and services at the Central Issue Facility for field gear will be reduced, the result of a scaling-back in Fort Drum's contract with Jefferson Rehabilitation Center, which provides workers for several post facilities.
An existing requirement that soldiers must clean gear before returning it following training or a deployment will now be more strictly enforced. Soldiers may have to travel across post on weekends for meals with the consolidation of dining facilities.
Fort Drum has also discontinued services for handling stray animals on post, with the cancellation of a contract with the Jefferson County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to pick them up periodically.
Also canceled will be any new master planning studies that have helped facilitate construction on the older portion of Fort Drum by mapping out the location of utilities.
Fort Drum is also working on a plan to reduce its utilities usage through conservation, Col. Riddle wrote in the Mountaineer piece.
Post officials have been working for months on preparing the budget-cutting plan. Army requirements and Fort Drum priorities aimed to minimize the impact on services that most directly support soldiers' training, deployment and redeployment back to base, and support for Army families, health and safety.
All the cuts either have been or are currently being implemented, Fort Drum spokeswoman Julie A. Cupernall said Wednesday.
It's not clear whether more cuts are planned, or whether the $36 million reduction figure is set in stone yet. Ms. Cupernall declined to comment on the firmness of that figure. But, with the post already into its second quarter in the tighter fiscal year, "Those numbers are what the post is operating on," she said.
Ms. Cupernall declined to specify whether the budget-cutting plan laid out in Col. Riddle's op-ed piece is aimed at filling the entire expected $36 million budget gap.
Since new construction on post is funded separately from the operating budget, soldiers, employees and visitors to Fort Drum will likely continue to see new buildings going up, despite the cuts in other areas, she said.
