Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 4 of 7 · from the scan, no model involved
Vint Hill closing
wilt hurt county
To the Editor:
I would like to comment on your March 17 article written by Bill Walsh concerning the inclusion of Vint Hill Farms Station on the recommended Department of Defense Base Closure List.
His statement that “Closing Vint Hill Farms Station will not have much effect in Rappahannock County” is absolutely false. The quote he includes in his article from Col. Ellis Bingham is much closer to the truth - closing the base would be “devastating.”
I am one of the 454 contractors mentioned in your article. A little over 25 percent of this number works for DynCorp, the Company I work for that provides base operations and maintenance support at Vint Hill.
For our contract alone, 33 people live in Rappahannock county; if our contract is reflective of the others at Vint Hill, well over 100 Rappahanncok County people could be out of work if the post closes.
In addition, we contract to more than 100 suppliers and vendors in this region of Northern Virginia, and I would guess that many of them employ people who live in Rappahannock County - closing the post will also jeopardize their livelihood.
I would estimate up to $2.5 - 3 million is generated annually to Rappahannock County by the people who work at, or otherwise support Vint Hill Farm.
Unlike Mr. Walsh, I consider this to be a significant amount of money. An elimination of this source of funds, would have a tremendous negative domino effect, on local small businesses, restuarants, motels etc. when the income that Rappahannock County derives from Vint Hill operations, starts drying up.
I have been a resident of Rappahannock County all of my life, and an employee at Vint Hill Farms Station
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