Here is yet another area in the US Army seeing cuts:
Family members visit the sand art table to make colorful creations during the Month of the Military Child event at Thunder Mountain Activity Centre, Fort Huachuca.
After years of warnings that major cuts to Army family programs are coming, officials with the Army’s Installation Management Command announced that the day has finally arrived.
“The bottom line is in fiscal year ’17, beginning in October, we’re going to have a little less money to put into our family Morale, Welfare and Recreation programs than we have in previous years,” Lt. Gen. Kenneth Dahl, head of Army Installation Management Command (IMCOM), which oversees family programs, said in a video posted on the command’s YouTube channel Aug. 30.
Until now, command officials said, Army budget shortfalls have been covered through non-appropriated fund accounts, which are filled by sales and exchange dividends. But that model isn’t sustainable long term, and anything that isn’t covered by taxpayer dollars must now be cut. Last year saw a $105 million overage.
“I can’t afford to keep borrowing money from our IMCOM bank accounts in order to reprogram into these funds,” Dahl said.
Rather than direct which programs to cut, Dahl has told garrison commanders the programs they must keep — and is leaving the rest up to them. Child care centers and child and youth services programs are safe from cuts, he said in the video, but almost everything else is fair game. [Military.com]
You can read more at the link, but something else to keep in mind is that many military spouses and retirees work in these jobs which now will be lost with the elimination of these MWR programs.
