Earlier this month, Escambia County Commissioner Jeff Bergosh and other leaders from Escambia and Santa Rosa counties attended the 2024 Defense Communities Summit in Washington, D.C.
- Sponsored by the Association of Defense Communities, the summit brought together the top Defense Department and Congressional decision makers and diverse experts from all sectors to discuss the big issues that will define defense policy for the next decade and what defense communities need to know to remain mission-ready.
“Growing up in a military family, with two of my three kids serving in the military, the military is very close to my heart,” Bergosh said. “I worked at NAS supporting that mission for 18 years as a contractor employee. Growing up in Pensacola, we just realized how important the defense community is locally to our economy, our way of life, really. It’s very, very intertwined with the entire Pensacola community.”
He continued, “There are concerns that some of the missions that we support here in the Pensacola area could be ripe for the picking. And so, we were up there trying to defend against that.”
The Greater Pensacola delegation aimed to spotlight critical needs at NAS Pensacola and Whiting Field, such as child development centers on both bases and a new hangar for the Blue Angels.
“We desperately need it because it’s something that will allow us to keep the Blue Angels going here,” Bergosh said. “And there was the issue with the traffic. We discussed that with the commander of Naval Installations Command, Admiral Scott Gray. He gave us a private audience, listened to our concerns. He is a very, very thoughtful, very intelligent guy with a lot of big fish to fry, but the fact that he gave us the time he gave us was really great.”
As the Defense Department officials discussed their infrastructure problems worldwide, the main theme was resiliency and being able to recover from disaster, whether manmade or natural.
Bergosh said they talked about intergovernmental support agreements. “They gave a number of examples of facilities where the DOD mission is actually generating electricity or running wastewater. And the admiral came out and just said bluntly, “Look, I don’t want to be in your business. I want to be in core military functions. I don’t want to do these support functions. They’ve, in other areas of the country, been able to work out these creative partnerships.”
The commissioner said that the DOD and its personnel are experiencing some of the same issues in our communities, such as housing, education, child care, and health care access, nationwide and worldwide.
“Affordable housing is a big issue for junior military personnel, and it’s a big issue for our citizens, too, as they’re coming up and joining the workforce,” Bergosh said. “If we can solve that for the military, we can solve that for our citizens.”
Another issue is access to mental health care. He said, “Over 50% of the military were saying they were having a hard time getting their juvenile dependents mental health care. That’s an issue in our community as well.”
Here is my interview with Commissioner Bergosh yesterday:
