Army wants new barracks upgrades overseas by mid-2008
By Lisa Burgess,
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — The Army’s new quality-of-life initiative
calls for soldiers in Europe to enjoy single bedrooms with connected, semiprivate
bathrooms by mid-2008, Army officials said.
Brig. Gen. William Heilman, director of the Human Resources
Directorate in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, said the
“1+1” and “2+2” barracks plans are part of the Army’s goal to
provide a competitive standard of living for all soldiers and their families.
The Army’s barracks upgrades are long overdue, Heilman said
during a conference of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services conference
last week in Vienna, Va.
To guarantee that funding requests for the 1+1, 2+2 and other
quality-of-life programs are part of the Army’s yearly planning process, instead of
afterthoughts, the Army has launched a detailed planning scheme that pulls all of its
well-being programs under a single umbrella division in the Human Resources Directorate.
Each of the Army’s dozens of quality-of-life initiatives,
including barracks upgrades, has been assigned a series of goals, which are linked in turn
to the Army’s long-term operations and management funding timetable.
The Europe 1+1 plan and Korean 2+2 plans are scheduled for completion
by fiscal 2008, Heilman said. The U.S. government’s fiscal year begins in October.
The Army also intends to have finished upgrading family housing on
all of its bases by fiscal 2014. The Army intends to turn over management of most of its
family housing to private industry by that time, Heilman said.
The potential snag in the plans, as always, is funding from Congress,
Heilman warned.
Although the new quality-of-life initiative provides a clear
year-by-year blueprint for including various programs in the Army’s annual budget
request — along with hard numbers to back up the Army’s claims that the programs
are necessary to overall readiness — Congress still has ultimate approval of all
budget items, Heilman said.
“With the exception of health care, the funding area of greatest
challenge is new facilities, including refurbishing and improving housing,” Heilman
said.
With Congress firmly in control of the purse strings, the best the
Army can do is to stick to its guns, keep the lines of communication open between the
field, Army headquarters, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, and hope for patience from the
troops, Heilman said.
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