CUT COSTS AT EDWARDS TO PREVENT CLOSURE, CONSULTANT SAYS.Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Daily News Staff Writer Antelope Valley This article is about the Los Angeles County region. For the census-designated place in Wyoming, see Antelope Valley-Crestview, Wyoming. The Antelope Valley leaders must help reduce Edwards Air Force Base's operating costs operating costs npl → gastos mpl operacionales and find ways to make the base indispensable to national security if they want to increase its chances of surviving the next round of military base closures, a state consultant said. The vast amounts the Air Force has spent on Edwards facilities is no safeguard if the Defense Department is authorized au·thor·ize tr.v. au·thor·ized, au·thor·iz·ing, au·thor·iz·es 1. To grant authority or power to. 2. To give permission for; sanction: next year to shut more bases to free up money for training, supplies, troops and new equipment, said John C. Murphy, a consultant to the California Office of Military Base Retention. ``They can't afford to keep everything they have. There is going to be a decision to get rid of things that once were valued,'' Murphy said. ``There is no intrinsic value Intrinsic Value 1. The value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of the value. 2. For call options, this is the difference between the underlying stock's price and the strike price. to what would have been needed in 1984. The fact that an installation could have done those things is not of any value, because we're not going back to 1984.'' Murphy spoke Tuesday at a luncheon meeting of the Antelope Valley Board of Trade, whose leaders fear a new round of base closures and are calling for efforts to protect Edwards and Air Force Plant 42. ``We need to take a proactive approach,'' said Pete Eskis, Board of Trade vice president and manager of the state Employment Development Department in Lancaster. Board of Trade leaders just returned two weeks ago from a gathering in Utah aimed at protecting and attracting defense jobs to the five Southwest states, including California. Organizers of the Southwest Defense Alliance see it as one way to protect the region from base closures, which Murphy said cost California 186,000 jobs from 1988 through 1995. ``If the Department of Defense is looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. more saving, and it is definitely doing that, it will be looking at California again,'' Murphy told the Board of Trade group. ``The status quo [Latin, The existing state of things at any given date.] Status quo ante bellum means the state of things before the war. The status quo to be preserved by a preliminary injunction is the last actual, peaceable, uncontested status which preceded the pending controversy. is not an option for the Department of Defense.'' If the costs of operating a base can be reduced, that reduces the Defense Department's savings in closing it, he said. If it costs more to move the units someplace some·place adv. & n. Somewhere: "I didn't care where I was from so long as it was someplace else" Garrison Keillor. See Usage Note at everyplace. else than is saved by closing a base, the installation will not be closed. Murphy counseled against relying on political pressure to save bases. Communities that engaged their congressional representatives in fighting 1995 base closures mostly failed, because they didn't provide the analytical information needed to defeat cost-benefit arguments for closing the bases, he said. ``Recommendations to close or realign re·a·lign tr.v. re·a·ligned, re·a·lign·ing, re·a·ligns 1. To put back into proper order or alignment. 2. To make new groupings of or working arrangements between. are based on that analytical work,'' Murphy said. |
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