Reno Citizen Editor, Sam Dehne, and GRW "Study" Guru, Chris Basham
IT IS TIME TO DUMP THE BEYOND - BOGUS AIR GUARD RELOCATION "STUDY" by Sam Dehné
How sad! One result of a Reno-Casino Airport tax-payer financed "relocation study" indicates that nobody wants the Nevada Air Guard (NAG) in their backyard.
1. Not Nellis AFB (only fighter jets, please). 2. Not Las Vegas's McCarren Airport (no military at all!). 3. Not some folks at Stead who say "No Thank you", and 4. Rewana Farmers have made it more than clear that they oppose corporate welfare money being used to steal their homes.
Still, Reno-Casino government is hell-bent on forcing slippery meat on its citizens. They bury their heads in the slot machines, while the loons roam the streets.
Citizens' lives are being destroyed. Quality of life is being swept down the runway. Property values are being obliterated. All in the name of cancerous growth. Las Vegas is rolling in the aisles with laughter...
For those who have been living in a cave, the inmates are still running the asylum down at the Airport. And one of their silly schemes has them continuing to embezzle that $400,000 from airport tax funds while the Huff & Fluff (H&F) company conjures up questions to the answers they have already given them... to arrive at their plot to build a huge military complex in the middle of Reno. (If those folks over in Hidden Valley/Donner Springs think a road through their homes will be objectionable, just wait until they are stuck with the blight, noise, and danger of a huge military base across the way...) When is Reno going to stand up and say "No" to cancerous growth? "No" to stealing of land from innocent citizens? "No" to bureaucratic audacity and arrogance?
You can read more about this joke-"study" in previous Reno Citizen issues. But here are just a handful of the latest sad details about the illegally tax-financed H&F "study" that pawns-itself-off as trying to find out where to move the Nevada Air Guard:
1. The H&Fers came up with two bogus binding blundering "boner-rules" which are;
a. The NAG cannot be moved more than 25 miles from Reno (ostensibly because they would not be able to recruit manpower for those jobs that pay upwards of $60,000/year). Why? Consider just this fact... numerous Air Guard bases (in a document actually provided by the H&F, itself) are clearly depicted as exceptions to this "rule". For example, Otis Air Guard base in Mass. is "close" to a town of only 1,800 people!
b. The Reno-Casino Airport has to have "room to grow" by the year 2000. Why? Just think of this folks; top-notch Reno airline, Southwest Air (acknowledged as one of the smartest airlines in the business), says they are perfectly happy with their 4 gates into the future as far as they can see. Why all the lies? Why all the threats?
2. And what about this? Several Air Guard members own substantial property in the landgrab area and stand to make a fortune. One of them has even gotten himself assigned to this H&F committee that is making decisions on how to waste $$millions of your taxes! No conflicts there?? No violations??
3. Why does the NAG need huge amounts of ramp space to house all of its C-130s at once... when citizens were told that half of them would be off doing useful things around the world at a given moment? No viable business operation would set up operations this way. If periodically there were more airplanes at base, they could easily be parked elsewhere.
4. The existence of a huge military complex in the middle of Reno would act as a terrible blightful magnate to those fighter bombers that are flying around the nation on weekends looking for neat places to visit. (For more on this type of boondoggle, review last month's Reno Citizen's letter to the Air Force Chief of Staff... Click here.)
5. It is interesting to note that when the Las Vegas Airport was queried about putting the Air Guard on their field, they said that military aircraft are always told they are not welcome. (Why can't Reno's Casino Airport take that attitude? Is that one of the reasons that Las Vegas is kicking Reno's hiney in every realm of business? They know how to use common sense?)
6. Readers, you can take it to the bank that if the Airport czar was trying to snatch homes away from folks on Skyline Blvd, instead of "less-affluent" Rewana Farms, the Reno-Casino council would listen up. (By the way, not one council critter has ever attended any H&F meetings... nor have their appointed surrogate-critters ever officially reported to them on this... the number one preventable pernicious-perspicuous polluting problem in Reno.)
7. In just minutes, citizens who had only a few moments to read the bogus "study", were able to blow holes in this scheme... that you could fly one of those giant C-130 Hercules through.
The best solution is as simple as the toes on top of your head... move the entire airport to Stead... or anywhere else. Think big... like Las Vegas. Why not have a Disney theme scenario... instead of an airport that has no logical business being in the Washoe Valley?
Use those brains... not those hooters. Let the citizens decide. Not some surrogate-critters sitting on what basically constitutes an illegally constituted Airport Board.
Who wins? Who loses? Who pays? And what do the people think? These questions must be answered before the Reno-Casino Airport is allowed to take more draconian actions.
As an anecdote, one of several excellent, and far-more-logical-than-Reno sites (Douglas County Airport), was eliminated - out of hand because it also was too far away. Let's see... only 10 miles from the capital of Nevada and some 40 miles from Reno...
Shouldn't the NAG adamantly tell the Airport it is "perfectly happy to stay where it is"... before the Airport "bosses" cause even more embarrassment to this once proud organization... that is repidly becoming an unwanted orphan?
How do you spell "bizarre"? How do you spell "scheme"? How do you spell "Investigate the Reno-Casino Airport"?
Read an earlier report on this mess by clicking here...
Read a letter from Citizens Against the Airport Bosses, click here...
Comments? Click here.