Anchorage residents will have two opportunities this week to speak out on potential job losses at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, as the Army mulls Alaska cuts opposed by local officials.
Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz has been working with local groups to prepare for possible JBER cuts.
The meetings will "provide information about the potential drawdown and provide opportunities for the public to comment on how their businesses, neighborhoods and schools could be affected," Berkowitz said in a written statement.
The meetings will be in multipurpose rooms at Anchorage schools, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Begich Middle School at 7440 Creekside Center Drive, and 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Gruening Middle School in Eagle River, 901 Lee St.
Alaska's congressional delegation and Berkowitz in July announced that the Army was planning to remove roughly 2,600 of the 4,000 soldiers in JBER's 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, also known as the 4-25, in a 40,000-soldier Army-wide force reduction. Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks was set to lose 73 soldiers.
Berkowitz soon formed a local working group in response, and the Defense Department subsequently awarded a $300,000 grant to help Anchorage prepare for direct and indirect job losses from the JBER cuts.
Since then, however, the Army said in October that the proposed cuts at JBER are on hold. That announcement followed efforts by U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan to stop the force reductions, and by the military to revise and expand its Arctic strategy from what Sullivan described as a 13-page document.
Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley weighed in during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., calling the 4-25's removal from JBER "contrary to U.S. national strategic control interests" and suggesting that the unit remain in place for at least another year.