Fleet week brings over $100 million a year into SFO…

Full article, HERE.

But there are those who hate it…

We have been unable to find a single story in any local news outlet that raises a single critical issue about the cost, safety, environmental impacts, problems for veterans with PTSD or kids who get frightened—or the overall military promotion—of this annual Navy airshow.

In an era of worries about climate change, personal safety, and public spending, you’d think that the Navy’s Fleet Week and Blue Angels air show would be a tough sell. Yet, even as the event guzzles phenomenal amounts of fossil fuels and taxpayer dollars—and presents huge safety risks with its low urban flyovers and perilous maneuvers—the military celebration and public-relations stunt draws big cheering crowds and uncritical applause from mainstream media and politicians.

Full article, HERE.

The military used to have a LARGE presence in the San Francisco Bay area… Used to have… BRAC closed many of them, personally I believe due to the attitudes of the powers that be… I was stationed there twice at NAS Moffett Field. We closed Moffett for the Navy due to high per diem costs (it was taking a large chunk of the entire P-3 community budget to support training students there). Those squadrons were moved to Hawaii and Washington State, to lower costs, and VP-31 was decommissioned.

I know we were not treated well by the locals in the Bay Area, and the funds available for housing forced enlisted families to band together and share housing in order to get a decent place to live, and most of those were a longer distance than they liked from the bases (anywhere from a half hour to an hour away).

Almost no military bases remain in the San Francisco Bay area.
Downsized – Concord Naval Weapons Station
Closed – Fleet and Industrial Supply Center Oakland
Closed – Fort Baker
Closed – Fort Barry
Closed – Fort Cronkhite
Closed – Fort Mason
Closed – Fort Point
Closed – Fort Miley
Closed – Fort Ross
Downsized – Moffett Naval Air Station – Now Federal Airfield Moffett
Closed – Naval Air Station Livermore
Closed – Oakland Army Base
Closed – Treasure Island Naval Station
Closed – Hunters Point Naval Shipyard
Closed – Mare Island Naval Shipyard
Closed – Naval Air Station Alameda (Piers used for RRF Ship)
Closed – The Presidio of San Francisco
Closed – Hamilton Air Force Base

Closed- Skaggs Island Naval Communications Station

This would be somewhere around 70-80,000 military and civilian jobs/personnel. Taking a base salary of $35,000 a year as an average, that’s a loss of ~$2.8 billion a year in direct money coming into communities. You cannot convince me that didn’t have an impact. And many of those bases, even today, are not being used.

Right now, there are, to the best of my knowledge, only three small bases in SFO- Coast Guard Integrated Support Command Alameda, Coast Guard Training Center Petaluma, and Coast Guard Station San Francisco – Yerba Buena Island

And the only reason they are ‘tolerated’, is they take care of the boaters in the Bay Area.

Far as I’m concerned, I’d pull Fleet Week and send the ships somewhere they and the Blues would be appreciated…