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What's New on savethebrains.org

Several hundred people attended the BRAC Town Hall Meeting on June 21 with Senator John Warner, Congressmen Moran & Davis and Arlington Chairman Jay Fisette to give feedback on DoD’s BRAC recommendations.
The final report of the Northern Virginia Base Realignment and Closure Working Group, appointed by Governor Mark Warner to address the recommendations issued in August by the federal 2005 BRAC Commission, was issued on December 1, 2005. The report offers critical planning and policy recommendations organized around two top priorities:
  • transportation improvements for those parts of Northern Virginia where sudden new job relocation will occur; and
  • economic development assistance for those parts of Northern Virginia impacted by the sudden loss of jobs.
Group Chairman Robert G. Templin, Jr., President of Northern Virginia Community College has identified two recommendations that are immediate and urgent. One relates to the $258 million in transportation improvements that must be addressed at once to deal BRAC-related impacts. The other relates to the Commonwealth formalizing its commitment of $10 million to assist the region in retaining federal research agencies, specifically the headquarters of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington County.


Arlington Saved the Brains!! BRAC Committee Unanimously Voted to Remove the Extramural Research Activities from the LIST - Item 178 in Chapter 10. About 1,700 Jobs Kept in Arlington.
The proposal removed said "Close the Office of Naval Research facility, Arlington, VA; the Air Force Office of Scientific Research facility, Arlington, VA; the Army Research Office facilities, Durham, N.C. and Arlington, VA; and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency facility, Arlington, VA."

THE THREAT OF THE BRAC RECOMMENDATIONS

The recommendations made on May 13, 2005 by the Department of Defense (DoD) to the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) Commission, are detrimental to Arlington, to the Washington, D.C. region and to the DoD agencies themselves. These recommendations include the dislocation of nearly 23,000 employees from leased office space in Northern Virginia and will effect both mission effectiveness and cost.

Click here for a map showing how jobs will be redistributed away from Arlington.

Arlington and Virginia expressed their concerns at the BRAC's Capital Area regional hearing on July 7, 2005. A five-minute highlights video from the hearing is available (12.5 mb; Windows Media).

Transcripts of the complete testimony submitted to the Commission follows (in order of presentation):

A copy of Arlington's complete proposal is available for download (Adobe Acrobat; 3.4 MB; 65 pages). An HTML version without graphics is also available.

A good overview of how Arlington is impacted by the BRAC Commission's recommendations and how Arlington is responding, can be found in AED's BRAC Briefing Update for Brokers, Developers and Real Estate Community (Powerpoint; 2.6 mb).

THE PURPOSE OF THIS SITE is to present Arlington's alternative recommendations to the BRAC Commission, and to show how you, as residents, can support Arlington's efforts to "savethebrains".

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