Plan for Marine Air Station Closure Opens Door to Reader Reactions

The proposed closure of the Marine Corps Air Station at Tustin is indeed a cruel hoax on the taxpayers as Congressman Christopher Cox suggests (“Decisions on Tustin Base Must Be Sound,” July 2). Savings due to the closure of this base are impossible to find.

But before discussing the costs in this fiscal scam on taxpayers, one needs to ask this question: Why close an air station that has either new or rehabilitated facilities that were built or restored during the Reagan presidency?

Tustin has a huge new concrete parking area for aircraft, new hangars, new barracks, a new supply building, new intermediate maintenance building and a new armory, in addition to the rehabilitation of virtually every old building on the air station. The taxpayers paid millions of dollars to bring the facilities up to a decent standard during the ‘80s. Why leave now?

The Tustin air station has proper helicopter ingress and egress routes laid down in exchange for the Jamboree Road extension through the facility. Its viability as a support facility for the Marine Corps’ amphibious mission was therefore assured well into the next century.

To walk away from an upgraded and perfectly good air station is fiscal folly. The cost to build comparable facilities will exceed the Marine Corps’ entire military construction budgets in its four best years of military construction budgets (Fiscal Years ‘86, ‘87, ‘88, ‘89). By the time construction is complete, the total tab for new construction will approach $1 billion. That does not include the costs to taxpayers on the state or local level for the impact on schools and other community facilities and operations. As far as I know, these costs are yet to be determined.

I suggest Congressman Cox is on the right track. As a taxpayer, I take strong exception to any scheme that doesn’t make fiscal sense. The closure of Tustin needs another hard look at the fine print, particularly the bottom line.

R.M. COOKE, Major General USMC Retired Former Commander, Marine Corps Bases Western Area