Jeremiah Partyke, maintenance mechanic for the Directorate of Public Works at Fort Cavazos, Texas, writes up the paperwork in 2023 for repairs being done by Nicole Stegall, maintenance worker helper with DPW. (U.S. Army photo )

A federal employee buyout program has left Fort Cavazos without enough maintenance workers, forcing base leaders to stop all non-urgent repairs on facilities and use soldiers to fill gaps in fire prevention and the hunting and fishing office.

The cuts to base personnel were the product of Defense Department’s efforts to reduce staff through resignations and early retirements among civilian personnel and a hiring freeze that blocks replacing them, said Brian Dosa, a retired Army colonel and director of the base’s Directorate of Public Works. The public works department at the base has lost about 15% of its staff.

“It’s been significant because we were already a bit short-handed,” Dosa said. “A really unfortunate thing about the way this transpired was we didn’t have any control over the people that we lost.”

The Pentagon has offered two rounds of deferred resignation to certain civilian staff, which allows them to leave their job and continue to get paid through September. It is a way to realign the workforce and strategically restructure it, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in March.

There are more than 900,000 civilians throughout the Defense Department, and as of March, about 21,000 had taken the resignation offer during the first round. However, the Pentagon aimed to purge about 60,000 workers.

Officials did not respond to a request for an updated count on how many employees took the offer in the second round. The Army did not respond to questions about the impact of the resignations and how it could affect troop readiness.

The military only funds about 90% of its facility maintenance needs, according to a 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office. In fiscal 2020, the Pentagon had a maintenance backlog valued at about $137 billion.

“Installation officials stated that deferred maintenance leads to the premature failure of facility systems and often leads to more costly repairs, and that maintenance is most often delayed for lower-priority facilities such as living quarters and child care facilities,” according to the report.

Home to roughly 38,000 soldiers and more than 14,000 family members, Fort Cavazos is one of the largest posts in the Army. It’s home to a corps-level headquarters, an armored division, a training division and testing command. Overall, it supports more than 500,000 people, the base said.

In a year, the public works department at the base receives about 50,000 work orders for maintenance, Dosa said. About 33% fall into the non-emergency category that will be deferred, he said.

“We don’t see any relief in the immediate future. We are told that there will be an opportunity for us to rebalance, which is really, really needed, so that I could cross-level a bit and get us so that we’re better able to support soldiers, units and families here,” Dosa said.

The ability to rehire would also help, he said.

In the meantime, Dosa said he worked with Lt. Gen. Kevin Admiral, III Corps and Fort Cavazos commander, to make difficult decisions to reduce the workload of existing employees. Admiral agreed soldiers could step into some jobs to fill the gaps.

“We will keep showing up for the mission and for our people,” Admiral said in a statement. “This isn’t just about personnel numbers. It’s about trust. It’s about the way we lead through change.”

Public Works oversees all maintenance of facilities at Fort Cavazos, as well as roads, range operations, outdoor recreation such as hunting and fishing, utilities and even some programs to assist in housing military families. Nearly all are affected by the reductions in staff, Dosa said.

Public Works dissolved a team dedicated to just barracks repairs and ended two housing-related programs – one that put families into temporary housing while waiting for on-post housing and another that partnered with off-post landlords to vet safe, affordable rentals for military families.

The base will defer all routine maintenance requests that do not threaten life, health or safety, and soldiers will begin chipping in with clearing brush in firebreaks, helping with hunting and fishing operations and keeping the training ranges at full operations.

From the soldiers’ perspective, they might begin to see more lightbulbs burned out, more broken toilets and more downed tree limbs, Dosa said. A toilet will only be fixed if it is the only one available for a facility and lights will be replaced only if there are no others around. Only tree limbs blocking roads or posing a safety risk to people or property will be moved.

“We understand priorities, and we’re going do everything we can to address, in my world, the most critical,” Dosa said. “We’ve tried to message and ask people to be patient with us, particularly with air conditioning.”

With summer approaching, temperatures in central Texas routinely top 100 degrees. Dosa is down to 60 HVAC technicians when he should have 80. Other areas hit hard are staff who repair traffic signals, those who maintain fire-alarm systems and people licensed to operate heavy machinery, who are often sent out to repair tank trails and ranges.

Robert Evans, an Army veteran who now runs Hots and Cots, an app where soldiers can rate their barracks and dining facilities, said he is worried this deferment of maintenance requests will further degrade some buildings and cause soldiers to lose faith in the system.

“We’re just getting caught in a circle. Soldiers aren’t going to submit issues because they’re not getting addressed. Leadership is going to say we didn’t know there are issues because [soldiers] are not reporting them,” he said.

Evans also said he hasn’t seen an Army base be as open about the staffing challenges, and he welcomed the transparency.

Dosa said that is intentional because he doesn’t want soldiers to stop sending in maintenance issues, even if they don’t see the results immediately.

“When the situation improves itself, then we’ll be able to start attacking some of those and getting after them,” he said.