by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Even if a bookkeeping decision shuts down the Mayport-based USS John F. Kennedy, the mayor’s office hopes strategic and security considerations keep the aircraft carrier’s home port off the Pentagon’s chopping block.
The revelation that the carrier could be headed for retirement as soon as 2006 may have caught City officials by surprise. But Mayor John Peyton has been preparing since the day he took office to defend Jacksonville’s military units from a round of Pentagon-ordered base closures scheduled for May of this year.
The Base Relocation and Closure process is designed to streamline the U.S. military. The last round of BRAC closed the Navy’s Cecil Field air base and the mayor’s office has prepared for this year’s round as if the remaining area bases could face the same fate.
The City’s strategy has been to sell Jacksonville to the Pentagon as the nation’s most military-friendly community. The mayor’s office is still cautiously confident that the strategy is working.
Following a Veterans Day military luncheon last year, Peyton said he’d heard from unofficial sources that “more was going right for Jacksonville than was going wrong.”
That confidence may have been rattled a bit by the Pentagon’s preliminary plans for the JFK. It was only eight months ago that the City received an explicit vote of confidence on the carrier’s stay in Jacksonville. Navy Secretary Gordon England said in April that the carrier would remain in Mayport until 2018.
The mayor’s director of military affairs, Dan McCarthy, said plans to retire the JFK appeared to be a bookkeeping decision. The DOD can save hundreds of millions on scheduled maintenance by shutting down the ship, he said. But when it comes time to consider the fate of Mayport Naval Station, McCarthy hopes that strategic considerations win out.
McCarthy is confident Mayport will continue as a carrier base with or without the JFK. Mayport is the only deepwater military port between Norfolk, Va. and the Panama Canal and closing Mayport would force the Navy to keep all its Atlantic carriers in Norfolk, a potential security risk, said McCarthy.
“That doesn’t learn the lesson of Pearl Harbor,” he said. “I believe the DOD will put a carrier here even if it’s not the JFK. Placing them all in the same location on the East Coast wouldn’t serve the security interests of the nation.”
Before news of the JFK leaked out, City officials pointed to Mayport as a symbol of reassurance as BRAC approached. The DOD’s decision to move the U.S. Naval Southern Command to the base from Puerto Rico was viewed as evidence of the State’s positive momentum.
The mayor’s office says that Mayport has also assumed several training missions and the Pentagon’s increased reliance on the base over the past year still bodes well, said McCarthy.
“It’s a unique deepwater port with immediate access to the ocean,” he said. “It’s surrounded by a great military community and it’s a top priority for local political leaders. That along with its geographic advantages continue to make Mayport relevant; there’s no reason to think that the Pentagon does not realize its strategic value.”
Mayport is also the most requested duty station for relocating Navy personnel. McCarthy said the local commitment to the military should serve all of the area bases well when the next round of base closures is announced.