It’s easy to get lost in zeros so let’s put the plight of the 911^th in terms we can all understand.

“A Tale of Two Houses”

Let’s say that you’ve been transferred to a new city.  You sit down with a realtor and make a long list of all the things you want in a house.  Good curb appeal, granite counters, open concept, low crime rate, great school district, and a nice backyard.  She goes back to her office, checks the listings, and comes back to you with two houses that fit all of your needs.  As it turns out, the houses are only blocks apart and, since they’re in the same plan, they are identical.  Not just similar, but exactly the same, even down to the room colors.  The only difference is that they are in different townships.   Which one do you pick?

You realize that the only thing you haven’t looked into is the tax rates so you call the township offices.  Township #1 tells you that it’s a great place to live.  The people are friendly, the schools are great, and the property taxes are identical to all of the other townships in the area.  There’s only one small issue.  They’ve experienced some cost overruns in maintaining the roads and street lights.  Their firefighting costs and ambulance fees have skyrocketed over the last few years so they’ve found it necessary to levy an additional fee on every household that probably won’t go away in the foreseeable future.  Now you’re worried.  So, you ask, how much is it going to cost me?  Sadly, they say, it’s going to be $20 per year for at least 20 years.  Well, $20 a year, you figure you could probably forgo 1 pizza a year, but 20 bucks is 20 bucks.  So now you call the second township.  They go through the same diatribe about schools and taxes and they come to the same sad story about additional costs and a necessary levy.  Here’s where the pacemaker kicks in.  They tell you that the levy is $6,000 per year and that it will probably go up every year from here to eternity.

Do we even have to ask which house you pick?  The 20 year cost on house #1 is $400, the 20 year cost on house #2 is $120,000.

Now let’s add the zeros in and change the houses to Air Force Reserve facilities.  House # 1 is Pittsburgh Air Reserve Station.  Its’ fixed costs for keeping the runways and taxiways in good repair and providing Fire/EMS coverage for the facility and aircraft is $20,000/year.  A fixed cost guaranteed for at least 20 years!  For the sake of comparison, house #2 is Dobbins Air Reserve Base.  Both bases provide the exact same capability to the new National Defense Objectives.  Both bases have the same number of aircraft.  The difference is the cost to maintain the airport infrastructure.  The Air Force must maintain the runways and taxiways.  The Air Force must provide a fire department and the personnel to man it.  The Air Force must purchase and maintain firefighting equipment.  All of these costs add up to over $6,000,000 per year and those costs will go up every year with inflation.

Pittsburgh 20 year fixed costs, $400,000.  Dobbins 20 year costs (unadjusted for inflation) $120,000,000.