VILSECK, Germany — Casing his unit’s colors for the last time on the Vilseck parade grounds Wednesday, the final commander of the 409th Base Support Battalion bid a ceremonial farewell to the unit that has served the local military community since 1991.

In his speech to a crowd of about 100 people, Lt. Col. Joseph Moore praised the work of the recently deactivated unit.

“There’s a spirit here of teamwork and support unlike any place I’ve ever served,” Moore said. “It’s an attitude of taking care of business by taking care of people.”

The 409th was the second of four BSBs to be absorbed into its parent Area Support Group over the next month as the Installation Management Agency-Europe prepares to revamp its administration of all U.S. posts in Europe later this year.

Base support units in Hanau, Heidelberg and Würzburg-Kitzingen are also being assimilated into their ASGs by the end of June, said Russell Hall, IMA’s European director.

“Where we’ve had a BSB co-located with an ASG … we’re going to merge those,” Hall said.

The move is part of the effort to convert U.S. bases to “standard garrisons” in the eyes of IMA, an organizational structure meant to standardize the services offered at American posts worldwide and make more troops available for tactical operations, Hall said.

The structure is a return to a similar one used by U.S. posts until the early 1990s, when battalion-level layers were added to the support structure.

Going back to a garrison approach, Hall said, means folding back up some of those layers, and deactivating about a quarter of the 15 BSBs in Europe.

For the four communities losing their BSB, the impact should be felt mostly by command staff and should not have an effect on services, Hall said.

“We don’t believe that this will diminish the responsiveness of our service providers to the community,” he said.

Though the move will force some workers to relocate to new offices, no civilians or local nationals will lose their jobs as a result of the mergers, said IMA-Europe spokeswoman Kim Walz. Employees, for the most part, have been simply absorbed by the higher commands, Hall said.

But while the dissolution of the BSBs will allow some posts “to turn more resources back to the garrison and back to the community,” in Hall’s words, IMA will not immediately see the big savings it originally expected to collect with the consolidations.

Between the mergers, a reduction in civilian staff and converting 550 military jobs to civilian posts, the agency expected to recoup up to $20 million, IMA officials said last year.

But the last two parts of that plan are now “on hold,” Walz said, mainly due to pending announcements on the final size and shape of U.S. forces in Europe.