 |
|
|
|
|
City Council cuts support for Moffett Field disaster center plan
By Sam Scott
Last Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to hop off what it sees as a lame horse, and remove the proposed Western Disaster Center as a priority issue. As a result, the placement of the center in Moffett Federal Airfield will no longer be actively supported by the City Council.
According to Dan Rich, assistant to the city manager, support for the plan had been on hold since January and the decision was merely "closing the loop."
The council had imagined a nerve center of disaster information serving the Western United States, which would have used the equipment and skills of the personnel at Onizuka Air Force Base to deal with earthquakes, forest fires and other natural or man-made cataclysms.
City Council supported the idea as a means of helping NASA/Ames with its fiscal difficulties, which began when the military left in 1994. Since the Navy's withdrawal, NASA/Ames has taken on the expense of running the Moffett complex.
Fearing that the organization may succumb to the tempation of running cargo
or commercial flights out of the former air base, the city supported the disaster center as an alternative. That idea still maintained the property as a federal site--the council's primary objective--and also put the complex's capabilities to positive use.
"We do not want it to become a commercial airfield," said Vice Mayor Pat Vorreiter.
The WDC, however, did not appear to be the way.
First of all, the non-profit organization that conceived the idea went belly-up. The Defense/Space Consortium--which had formed in 1993 to provide defense conversion services--closed its doors in February.
Prior to that, a bill providing state money to fund the WDC's installation died on the Governor's desk last September.
But even if the money and the conversion support were in place, officials at Onizuka never embraced the plan.
Despite the apparent disintigration of the disaster center plan, Rich Davies, head of the West Disaster Center Inc., says he intends to go forward with plans.
"We regret that the city had decided not to support our program," Davies says.
Vorreiter says she does not feel that the demise of the WDC plan should be too much of a disappointment to the city--especially following the federal government's decision to build a new hangar at Moffett to be used by the Air National Guard.
The hangar project is expected to break ground next summer and be completed two years hence. Vorreiter emphasized the government's $14 million investment in the hangar as indication that the federal complex will not close.
The council also voted to halt attempts at annexing Moffett.
Henry McDonald, NASA/Ames director, sent a letter to the city September 8 promising advance notification if NASA chose to vacate any of the land in the future. The letter also said NASA/Ames would support the city's annexation of the land at that time. In previous attempts and discussion, NASA has refused to allow the land to be annexed prior to such a time.
Vorreiter says that despite the shift in emphasis as concerns this specific plan for a disaster center, Sunnyvale is still interested in disaster preparation.
"Disaster mitigation is not off our radar screen," she says.
|
|
|
|
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
