Coalition kicks off Texas recruiting campaign
Officials give presentation promoting Dayton and Ohio as places to live at event at base that will close in 2011.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Col. Harry Kimberly speaks at a reception for the 'Meet the community' attendees in San Antonio, Texas, on Tuesday, Sept. 23. The Dayton Development Coalition organized the reception to persuade Brooks City-Base's civilian research to move to Wright-Patterson when their jobs are relocated.SAN ANTONIO — Community and Air Force leaders from the Dayton region got a warm reception at a social event with senior officials of Brooks City-Base, the Air Force installation that will close in 2011 and send hundreds of research jobs to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The Dayton Development Coalition organized the reception Tuesday, Sept. 23, at a San Antonio hotel.
About 100 people from both cities attended and viewed a 5-minute video tape narrated by Gov. Ted Strickland and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, promoting Dayton and Ohio as places to live and work.
Rick Perales, a Greene County Commissioner who is also a former Air Force officer at Wright-Patterson, said he was enthused by the broad turnout of people from the military, business, education and local government communities.
"I'm thoroughly impressed that so many people thought this was so important," said Perales, one of the speakers at Tuesday's event.
Joseph Renaud, aerospace defense advisor in the Ohio Department of Development, formerly was commander of a center at an Air Force base in Newark, Ohio, which the government closed in the 1990s, said it is critical to get useful information about career prospects quickly to employees whose military futures are at a crossroads.
The coalition worked with the Air Force officials for months to plan the reception and an all-day open house session on base Wednesday to provide Brooks employees and their families with information about the Dayton region's housing, job and education opportunities, child-care services, and other quality of life concerns.
The goal is to persuade as many of Brooks' civilian research employees as possible to move to Wright-Patterson when their jobs are relocated in 2010 and 2011. In the nation's prior base-closing rounds, only 10 to 15 percent of civilian employees who had a choice about moving opted to relocate when their jobs did.
The decision to close Brooks and relocate many of its employees was part of the 2005 base realignment and closure assessment, the latest round of the government's ongoing evaluation of which bases can be closed and programs can be merged.
Wright-Patterson will realize a net gain of about 1,100 jobs and will become home to research centers of excellence for aerospace medicine, human performance, and sensors and other electronic detecting devices.
