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Saturday, Nov. 21, 2009

Funding short for G-RAMP environmental report

Multiple officials involved with the Georgia-Robins Aerospace Maintenance Partnership say that they have not yet finalized funding, estimated at about $200,000, necessary to complete an environmental assessment of the area.

The assessment will determine if the land, just north of Robins Air Force Base, is suitable for an expansion of the installation’s airfield. Several companies have been identified to conduct the assessment, but no contract has been issued.

To finish G-RAMP, local government officials will need to raise between $45 and $90 million, according to various estimates. Despite the current lack of funding, officials hope to complete the project by October 2011 — the standing goal according to Scott Dotson, the Robins Air Force Base official charged with coordinating the project.

G-RAMP supporters are campaigning around Middle Georgia, looking for support both to complete the assessment and to finish the project once the assessment is complete.

“We’ve requested that those surrounding communities participate proportionate to what they receive from (Robins Air Force Base),” Warner Robins City Councilman John Williams said.

Williams added that several local municipalities have made “pretty firm commitments” to help pay for the assessment without identifying the potential donors.

Bob Wilbanks, another Warner Robins city councilman, said “I don’t think there are any doubts” about finding the funding for the assessment, but he too declined to identify who has pledged donations and how much will be donated.

Warner Robins city comptroller Bill Harte said the city has not yet received any money from any municipality.

Maj. Gen. Polly Peyer, commanding general of the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, alluded to the slow progress of the project during a speech to a military contractor symposium in Perry on Wednesday morning. Peyer stressed that a failure to finish G-RAMP would not endanger the base.

“This is not about ‘BRACing’ Robins Air Force Base,” she said, referring to buffering the base against the Base Realignment and Closure process.

Base officials have repeatedly said that no Department of Defense funds will be used for G-RAMP. “It’s city land, it will be city developed, with city funding, with sources of funding they’ll get from the state or other sources,” Peyer said in a September interview.

The subject of G-RAMP dominated Tuesday’s debate between the two remaining candidates for mayor of Warner Robins, Chuck Shaheen and Chuck Chalk, with the latter candidate acknowledging that the project is not proceeding as planned.

“G-RAMP, I’m afraid, is losing momentum,” Chalk said.

The charge of coordinating local support for the project has fallen to Laura Mathis of the Middle Georgia Regional Commission. The commission has applied for government bonds and grants, and lobbied other local governments to support the project.

Mathis stressed that the commission is taking a “regional approach” to funding G-RAMP, urging local governments to help fund the project, as they too would benefit from the added workload that G-RAMP would attract to Robins.

“There’s a lot of private sector interest” in funding the project, Mathis said, but acknowledged that no other local municipality has yet pledged any support for G-RAMP.

Once the environmental assessment is completed, G-RAMP supporters will have pushed a few more chips forward.

Williams said that about $4 million has been invested in the project already. He did not discount the possibility of putting a special purpose local option sales tax referendum on the ballot in a future election to pay for the project.

To contact writer Thomas L. Day, call 744-4489.