The Defense Department is releasing $47 million to replace two schools on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Tacoma, announced today. It’s the first part of a major renovation of the base’s elementary schools that will replace a total of six campuses that are operated by Clover Park School District.
The Defense Department is releasing $47 million to replace two schools on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Tacoma, announced today. It’s the first part of a major renovation of the base’s elementary schools that will replace a total of six campuses that are operated by Clover Park School District.
The money comes from a $250 million fund Dicks helped create two years ago after a Pentagon study showed dozens of substandard schools on military installations all over the country.
A funny thing happened on the way to a predicted disaster: The Pentagon is learning to live with the automatic budget cuts its leaders had warned would threaten national security if they took effect.
Republicans, and many Democrats, are upset by the prospect of so-called sequestration cuts to the nation’s defense budget. Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is so alarmed that the day before the Senate took up what became the “fiscal cliff” agreement, he called a key Republican lawmaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham, to express deep concern that the cuts might go into effect. As it turned out, Congress put them off for two months.
Spending on military construction in Washington would slow under the Defense Department's 2014 budget request released Wednesday, but it would continue to steer hundreds of millions of dollars toward projects around the Puget Sound.
The Defense Department is sending almost $91 million to Lakewood’s Clover Park School District to demolish and rebuild three elementary schools that serve students at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
Defense spending soared in Washington state last year, even as the specter of long-anticipated budget cuts drew closer.
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