Okaloosa County BOCC — May 19, 2015 — DRAFT Review of the proposed Scope of Work to be requested of the Institute of Senior Professionals

Staff Review of Proposed ISP Scope of Work Recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners County Administrator 5/8/2015 Review of the proposed Scope of Work to be requested of the Institute of Senior Professionals (ISP) of the Northwest Florida State College. The scope of work would require ISP to prepare and present findings at the Board’s Airports Strategic Competiveness Planning Workshop scheduled in September. The item was distributed at the May 2, 2015 Okaloosa County Board of County Commissioners Meeting, resulting in action for staff’s evaluation and recommendations to be brought back for the Board’s consideration for the next meeting on May 19, 2015. The Board is considering soliciting the assistance of the Institute of Senior Professionals (ISP) for the purpose of evaluating the local airspace in an effort to focus on ensuring that the Military Installations located in Okaloosa County and underpinning the economic foundations of the Northwest Florida Region are not adversely impacted by the next round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) proceedings anticipated to occur in 2017, resulting in the reference BRAC 2017. BRAC is a process of the United States Department of Defense (DOD) and consists of an independent nine-member panel appointed by the President. This panel evaluates a list of recommended installations provided by the Pentagon through the Secretary of Defense, and after taking testimony from interested parties, usually members of the House and Senate, and paying visits to affected bases undertakes a systematic evaluation of defense installations for the realignment, transfer and disposal of assets and facilities. The BRAC process is necessary to ensure the highest level of defense readiness within the budgetary levels established by the legislative and executive branches of the United States Government. The BRAC process was created in 1988 and has resulted in the closure of 350 installations through five rounds of the process in 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995 and 2005. Since 2005, the DOD has made two requests for additional rounds of BRAC, which have been rejected by Congressional committees and Congress has effectively blocked further rounds of BRAC with The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014: No future Base Realignment and Closure rounds for military installations within the United Sates, its commonwealths, territories, and possessions for realignment or closure shall be authorized until, at the very earliest, the Department of Defense has completed and submitted to Congress a formal review of the overseas military facility structure, which incorporates overseas basing consolidations, an assessment of the need for bases to support overseas contingency operations, and the Department of Defense's Strategic Choices and Management Review. Given the current geo-political situation, with wars on terrorism on multiple fronts, growing instability in the Middle-East, aggressive adventures by Russia in Ukraine’s Crimea, and China’s grab for disputed territory in the South China Sea as well as other parts of Asia, it appears unlikely that Congress will allow further rounds of BRAC in the near future. The Eglin Air Force Base reservation spans three counties and nearly 740 square miles making the challenge of understanding all of the competing activities for use of the Eglin complex land, water, and air ranges/airspace an extremely complex undertaking. The most recent undertaking of this scale was done for the Gulf Regional Airspace Strategic Initiative (GRASI). The purpose of the initiative was to develop a “first of its kind” regional airspace strategic plan. The GRASI process was designed to assess the direction, control and handling of the combined future civil and military flight operations and produce a plan embodied in a document to be implemented by diverse military a