Oral History Program Tage Flint Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 22 January 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Tage Flint Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 22 January 2021 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Hill/DDO’95 oral history project documents the 1995 and 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process and its impact on Utah. In 1993, rumors started to circulate that Hill Air Force Base and Defense Depot Ogden (DDO) would be closed by the 1995 round of BRAC, causing state officials, local government, and local grassroots lobbying group, Hill/DDO’95, to spring into action to save Utah’s military installations from closure or realignment to other facilities. This project includes interviews from a wide range of players, from congressmen, state officials, members of Hill/DDO’95, and the civilian employees of Hill Air Force Base and (DDO). Their accounts describe the process of fighting for the base, the closure of DDO, the formation of the Utah Defense Alliance (UDA) and Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) from the Hill/DDO’95 group, and their fight to save Hill Air Force Base all over again in 2005. Also discussed is the importance of the F-35 aircraft and the “Falcon Hill” Enhanced Use Lease project to the prosperity of Hill Air Force Base and military relations in Utah. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Flint, Tage, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 22 January 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Tage Flint. It was conducted on January 22, 2021. Flint speaks about his and his father's experience with the Hill/DDO’95 group and the 1995 and 2005 BRAC rounds, as well as the Utah Defense Alliance's role in keeping Hill AFB open. The interviewer is Alyssa Kammerman. Also present is Sarah Langsdon. AK: Today is January 22, 2021. We are speaking with Mr. Tage Flint about the Base Realignment and Closure Project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and I'll be conducting the interview, and on the camera is Sarah Langsdon. Tage, thank you again for visiting with us. TF: You're welcome, it's my pleasure. AK: So, starting out, I know we heard that your father was really involved during the 1995 BRAC with the Hill/DDO’95 group. I just wanted to get a little more background on what your father's position was with Weber Basin Water at the time and kind of what prompted him to step in and join that group? TF: Right. He was the general manager and CEO of Weber Basin Water Conservancy District at the time, the same position I hold now. Very strange to have a father and son succession like this in an agency like this, but it just happened that way where I was the assistant general manager for one of the other large water agencies in the state at the time, interviewed for this job, and was selected after he left. So, that's the relationship and why I'm here after him. But he had this job at the time. Just so you know, this water agency serves five counties in northern Utah. Primarily, we're the wholesaler. We're the ones who operate the big infrastructure 1 to bring the water down to all the communities, and then we wholesale that water out to the communities, after which those communities retail the water further out. The reason for telling you that is it's a regional water authority that has a regional reach and hundreds of agency customers, of which one is Hill Air Force Base. That's one of the reasons why he would have been involved, because the water agency encompasses all of Hill Air Force base, and even the defense community at large in northern Utah, and some facilities for Thiokol at the time, and in other places out on the north end of the Great Salt Lake. He would have been involved in that. As a regional water authority, this agency is always tied to the viability of the economy for this region, because as water goes, so does the economy much of the time. If we show water shortages or the inability to get that service to an area, it really does dampen the ability for that area to have a viable economy. As is the defense industry here, if it were to falter, the economy would go the same direction, so I think that's another reason why he was involved. The third would be just because whomever is the general manager of this organization tends to be a community leader, because we are involved in such a large area and most all of the natural resource water questions come back to this agency for the whole region. AK: We have heard from other people and resources that if Hill Air Force Base had closed, it would have put northern Utah into almost a Depression Era depression. So, how would the closure of Hill Air Force Base had directly impacted Weber Basin Water? 2 TF: Sure. Yeah. The Utah Defense Alliance, of which I'm now the president—have been for too long probably, 10 or 12 years now—originally did a study back in about the 2005, 2006 range with the University of Utah, where they looked at the economical impacts of base closure of Hill Air Force Base. You may have heard of that study by now, somebody may have mentioned that. One of the approaches they took was what would the economic impact to each county be if Hill Air Force Base closed? It started in Salt Lake County, and it was in terms of how many years would it take to recover the economy. So, even in Salt Lake County, it was a decade for Salt Lake County to recover economically from the base closure up here. Davis County was decades, 25, 35 years, somewhere in that range, to recover. Weber County was indeterminate. They couldn't foresee a time when Weber County would recover fully, economically, if the base was closed. If any of those events were to happen and the economy did take a downturn in this region, it would rebound to everyone that does business here. That includes the water purveyance in the area, where we would have contracts with all the cities up and down the Wasatch Front that may not be able to pay their annual bills for water, because they're not delivering as much as they used to because things would close down and go away. But they might have a lot of customers that had an inability to pay for some time because of the economic downturn, and that all trickles up to us in terms of our wholesale billing of all those agencies. 3 AK: So, I want to know a little bit more about your father, Ivan Flint. I had read that he had a little bit of background with attending an Air Force school of management and development. TF: Right. AK: Was that maybe a part of his interest as well in Hill Air Force Base and the museum? TF: Yeah, that's a great question. It was a big part of his interest here with what happened to Hill Air Force Base, because he had a long history, in a prior career, with the Department of Defense. So, his background is he was born and raised here in Davis County. Father died when he was 16 years old. He was the youngest child; he and his mom were left to run the farm all by himself. He had to grow up fast. He started taking part-time in the fall, and finally full-time jobs at Hill Air Force Base as a young man, and later transferred to the GSA, the General Services Administration, who does contracting work for the Department of Defense, and so he got into that career. He had a 25-year career in GSA doing defense contracts, so he knew the business very well here. He was stationed here at Hill for some time, stationed in Salt Lake other times, but was doing defense contracts throughout, and really gained a great appreciation for what the, specifically the Air Force, but many other of the services within the Department of Defense were doing in defense of the nation. He was a true believer that we only had peace in the country because we had a strong defense. He attended the Air Force management school, and later Navy management schools as well, as part of his education that he obtained 4 through his career. Because back in the 1940s, not a lot of folks were going to college and getting degrees before they went to work, so he did that while he was working in that 25-year career. He would have stayed there longer and finished out probably with a very long career with the federal government had he not had kidney failure. He had a real event there, for about a year. I remember I was young at the time, but he was in the hospital, more in the hospital than out, for a year with kidney failure and problems, and so it ended his career with the GSA. Started a whole new career in natural resources and ended up being the manager here. So, he had, really, two full careers. One in defense and one in the water business. AK: Just out of curiosity, what got him into the water business? TF: Yeah, it was happenstance. He was hired because he was very good at contract negotiation. He was hired on a part-time basis, originally, by this agency to negotiate contracts with landowners in Davis County to acquire water service for their lands. He did that for a few years, that turned into a full-time job, which turned into a management job, and then he worked his way up the chain. So, that's how it happened. But that background that you brought up, about all of the training he had with the Air Force and later with the Navy and other agencies, really gave him that appreciation. He knew the lingo, he knew how contracting was done on base, and so he was a natural to help here. AK: That being the case, did he have any personal assignments as a part of the Hill/DDO'95 group? 5 TF: Yeah, he did. I know that he was on the team that traveled back and forth to DC telling the story and trying to compel the BRAC Committee, as well as the congressional delegations, that Hill Air Force Base was an important cog in the system and ought not take that kind of a hit. Because he had that background of knowing how much contracting, how much DOD depended on this base, and particularly the Depot that I'm sure you've heard about by now and what they were doing, and all of the contracting jobs that on the other end of the base were supporting them. He understood that system very, very well and knew the strategic location of Hill Air Force Base and why it would be very difficult to move it somewhere else. So, I think he made all those cases as a former GSA employee, which gave us credibility. I know he spent a lot of time—I watched him from afar, with my career— with folks in DC trying to explain to them the intricacies of the base. Then he also understood, of course, the economic part and how many jobs. Back in 1995, it's kind of true now but it was certainly true then, that almost anyone that lived in Davis or Weber county either had a uncle, son, parent, neighbor, acquaintance that worked at Hill Air Force Base. You couldn't go a hundred yards in any direction from your house and not find someone that worked up there. So, it was the kingpin for the economy back then. He understood that. AK: Were you involved at all with Hill/DDO'95? TF: I was not. I was working for the other water agency in Salt Lake County and didn't get here until right at the end of the year 2000. So, I was not part of the Hill/DDO'95 effort for the 1995 BRAC, but I was almost immediately integrated 6 into the Hill/DDO group, which is the predecessor to the Utah Defense Alliance, on their board on the day I got here. I think at that time they understood that this agency had a lot to do with the touchstones back to the base. Then we were revving up for the next BRAC right then. So, that's where I entered. AK: Okay gotcha. So, during 1995, it sounds like you were probably living in Salt Lake. Is that correct? TF: I was actually living in Davis County, commuting to Salt Lake each day. AK: Okay. Do you remember kind of the feeling out in that area? Was there as much concern as maybe in the Ogden area? TF: Yes, absolutely. I remember it distinctly. So, the other part of my family history is I had a brother who worked at Hill Air Force Base during that time and well past, and so at family dinners that's what we talked about. We talked about it because of my dad's involvement on the one side and my brother's concerns about the employment on the other. We talked about it all the time. I'm sure you've heard this by now, but my assessment was a lot of folks around here don't know how close we came to this base closing. It was that close. At the time, I believe there were five depots, and they were going to three. Hill didn't have the political clout, you know. At the time, I think we only had two members of Congress and two senators. That doesn't stack up to California and Texas having dozens of House members. We were keenly aware, the whole community was aware I think, but certainly my circles were. AK: Okay, so it was something that was kind of going on in the community, that Hill Air Force Base, without the political clout, was probably going down then. 7 TF: Exactly. Political clout, that was a big fear. At the end of the day, the reason it scored as well as it did, and it ultimately did not close, is because the workforce was good, their efficiencies were well-documented, their work product was excellent. All those scores came out in the end, but it seemed almost insurmountable politically to get past that. AK: So, I'm curious, did you see any differences—since you had a brother who was working on base and then a father who was working in the community—did you see any differences in maybe perspective or how much people on base knew, versus people in the community, of what was going on with BRAC? TF: Yeah, I think it's always the case that the community, by and large, doesn't understand what happens at Hill Air Force Base unless you have some sort of personal acquaintance there. There still wasn't a great appreciation for what was going on there in the community at large, but it was better then than it would be now, and here's why: Back then, number one, the press was covering it daily. The StandardExaminer, I don't know that they went a day without talking about it and all the ins and outs and what was going to happen behind the closed doors and all those kinds of things. People were tied into that media source much more than they are today. So, that's one. The other is just percentages, right? There is a higher percentage of folks who knew about the base then than there would be now. The economy's grown so much bigger around it than that today, and so many more people. We've doubled in size in Davis County since then, Weber also. I think the saturation of knowledge of the 1995 BRAC was higher all the way around. 8 SL: Well, I want to know what your brother's feelings were about being on base. TF: Yeah, he was my older brother, and he was smarting a little bit because he had thought he was going to be a career guy with Boise Cascade. If you remember, Boise Cascade was one of the biggest lumber conglomerates in the U.S., and they were actually headquartered in Boise. He was there as a career guy. As a college graduate, he came right out of college and went there and thought he was going to be there. Boise Cascade had massive layoffs and reorganized the entire company and dismissed a majority of their employees. So, he'd been burned once and that was still on his mind. He started a new career here working for the Air Force in contracting and administration. Here comes this talk again, so he was nervous that he was going to have to restart another career again. He also knew that there was opportunities maybe for him to move elsewhere and still work for the Air Force and that was a disruption, it would have been, for his kids at the time and his wife and family. That was a worry, too, that if he didn't lose his job over it, he would at least have to relocate somewhere else. That was a big worry as well. So, yeah, if it's directly going to impact you at that level of that magnitude, he was tracking it pretty closely. AK: So, what are your memories specifically of BRAC, as far as when the commissioners came and visited? I know you were maybe not as involved at that time, but do you remember the day when they came? They came in-person in December 1994 to kind of get to know the community a little bit, and then in May 1995 is when they actually visited the base. Any memories of that? 9 TF: Boy, not much. I don't want to give you any indication that I was tracking it on a daily basis, because I wasn't. But I do remember that the sentiment at the time was, "Here comes this group. You have this very short time to make certain big impressions. What is it?" I remember them sorting through what information was pertinent, and what wasn't, to give them. It had all to do with the scoring criteria at the time. "We got to make sure the messaging fits the scoring criteria and not go off on something that's important to us but not necessarily to them." I still remember those discussions and how to fine tune that. Jim Hansen's involvement was critical at the time. Whatever input we could get from him was always a big deal. But specifically how those meetings went? I don't have any memory of it because I wasn't there. But I do remember all the run up before those visits and what to do, what not to do. I think it's fascinating, still is to this day, why is Utah Defense Alliance so relied upon for these types of conversations with the Federal Delegation, with the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, with the Presidential Administration? Why is it that the community has a voice as much as they do? It's an interesting dynamic where the military, by law, may not lobby Congress, for example, and the Executive Branch houses the Commander in Chief of their organization. So, sending the message of why this community is great and why it should not be shut down, those kinds of things, largely rests on laypeople in the community to carry that banner. That's a really interesting dynamic. Almost nowhere else do you see any organization rely on an amateur group, if you will, of volunteers—that's the other 10 piece of this, they're volunteers—to carry the message. But this whole military dynamic creates that all the time, still does to this day. It amazes me the conversations that I have with people in the Pentagon or the White House or the Capitol regarding issues that surround Hill Air Force Base, or the Air Force in general, but it's because of that dynamic. We still do it all the time. Why is a water manager, of all people, why is he up there in the Pentagon talking about the Missile Mission at Hill Air Force Base? But that's why, because they're hamstrung a little bit on the other side. AK: I think that's an interesting point that you bring up because, from what I understand, other states also had some action groups kind of like Hill/DDO that were lobbying. TF: Yep, every one of them. Yeah. AK: Do you feel like it was maybe because of the way that the BRAC 1995 went that you maybe gained some of that—what's the word, I don't want to say clout again, but you know? TF: I know what you're asking, and the answer is yes, absolutely. We ran through the paces in the 1990s, you know, and it was urgent, and it really rallied people on a volunteer basis to spend their time and energy and resources on trying to get this done. That's carried over to this day, no question. I mean, I tell people this all the time, but I still marvel at the fact that it's not just the water managers doing this, there's the guy at the power company, and the real estate people, and the retired military folks that you've talked to already. All these people are still willing to show up, mostly at my office, on a monthly 11 basis and go over these things in great detail, and then take assignments and go out and do them for hours on their own with no remuneration. We're not paying anyone to do this. It also speaks to the fact that UDA is highly influential in the military realm, even compared to the other states’ like agencies. Because that volunteerism is kind of built into the community, most communities cannot match it. To this day, they can't match it. So, to your point, I think a lot of that, to use an old term, they cut their teeth back in the ‘90s, and it's carried on several decades later. AK: I'm interested about the evolution of the Utah Defense Alliance from the Hill/DDO'95 to where it is today. So, after BRAC 1995 where news came out, Hill Air Force Base is safe, for now right, what happened with Hill/DDO'95? TF: So, it morphed, because now we did have contacts. Now we did have a better knowledge from a community perspective of what goes on here. In a better appreciation was, “Oh, all this stuff we've been telling them about the economy's going to really take a hit, it's true! We got to stay diligent here.” That is when I entered the scene is we were in that mode. How is it we may grow the missions here at Hill Air Force Base so that when the next BRAC round came, it was even more fortified against that? The focus changed from protecting it to enhancing it. In the early 2000s, that's where we were and what we were trying to do. That was our first time of having some loose partnerships with the universities to get technology contracts coming this direction. That fed more college graduates that fed the new missions going on to the base in technology. We became much more of an economy or economic growth -based group of trying to make this 12 work no matter how we could or how we came up with it. We would try all sorts of different things. That was much more of a wider focus than Hill/DDO'95, because that was “stay the wolves off” type; this was “we've got to grow the mission” now. So, it really shifted in that early part of the century. Then we started thinking, How is it we could utilize and get the Hill missions to grow exponentially, utilize the lands on the west side?” I know you've talked about Falcon Hill already with some folks, but make no mistake, the MIDA group was created by UDA. It was our idea. It was our creation and became part of us originally and then ultimately became their own governmental organization. But the governmental organization came because UDA folks were talking to the governor and to the state legislature about creating a new governmental taxing agency that would reside on a lease from the Air Force on an Air Force ground. It was just a concept that couldn't possibly be conceived by anyone in Salt Lake. It had to be here with these expertise. That's another big success story: the fact that we have the largest, the most successful enhanced use lease set up in the Air Force. I serve on the chief of staff of the Air Force's Community Leader Group, the advisory group to the chief of the Air Force back in the Pentagon and with the secretary of the Air Force. Now the Space Command has been hooked in there, too. But the idea of Utah being the one place where that has worked successfully, it comes up every time I go there, and other communities are still intrigued on how we ever got it done. It had a lot to do with a lot of people that were well-connected and educated the legislature on what this could become. Don't discount the 13 legislators up in this area who took the time to understand it, and then took it back as an economic development project for the state as opposed to just “We want it up here north” type of thing. That all comes from the grassroots of UDA becoming this economic-focused mission. AK: So far we've only talked to people about Hill/DDO'95 and their involvement in BRAC 1995, but what was the involvement during BRAC 2005? TF: So, that one I have clear memory of. By then I was the treasurer, so I was on the executive committee. That one we took very seriously, obviously. Wasn't quite as imminent of a threat. 1995 was almost a sure thing we were going down, and that was a huge lift. But 2005 had the same feelings again, because now we were down to three depots, and if they were going to cut one more, Oklahoma and Georgia were tough foes. We had the same problem again. We were undermanned in Congress, we had missions here that were critical but weren't as highly visible as some of the other places, we weren't as established here as "The" fighter airplane depot to fix all the fighter planes. Once again, we were dredging all of the benefits to the Air Force and to DOD that were housed here and making sure that we compiled a list of what's important and what's very difficult to move. That's the key. Some missions, on any base, you could shut down and move tomorrow. There are other ones that would be decades just trying to get them out of here, of the specialties that were here and the location or whatever the case may be. We focused on the fighter wings and the fact that they had this 14 Utah Test and Training Range five minutes from the runway, and how that flying mission needed to stay. We picked it apart, and we were better at it. I think we were better at it in ‘05 than we were in ’95, because it was brand new back then. We knew the ropes by then, and we knew where the important messaging should be. So, here we go again. We did it again. In the middle of all that, we were still trying to, and this might come up later, but we were still trying to gather enough money for Utah Defense Alliance to do all this, work studies, conduct studies and all the things that we had to do. We were largely depending on cities and counties in the area and some businesses to contribute to fund all this. There's a fundamental shift in the funding for UDA that happened about a decade ago that's very important, and that is the governor and the state legislature recognize UDA as being "The Utah Advocate" for military missions in the state and started funding us directly from the legislature. That was a huge shift for us. Now we don't have to tap counties and cities and industries to try to do an annual fund drive. We can do our work and be funded by the legislature, for which they are very comfortable because they're getting a ton of economic driver and advocacy for military missions in the state that they don't have to do otherwise. So anyway, sorry, I went on a tangent there. SL: So, was that Governor Leavitt that did that? TF: Yeah, so it started with Governor Leavitt, and then Governor Huntsman started to recognize that this was something to stay, and it can be relied upon. By the time Governor Herbert first started his first term, he got it. This is by no means 15 bragging, but I knew Governor Leavitt and Herbert very well, from my water business that we have to do with the state all the time. I had lots of access, and I had lots of opportunities to explain to him how important this mission was up here. Same with some of the legislative leadership, and it wasn't just me, it was a half dozen of us that had access to one or another of the state leaders that really brought that along. AK: So, what was the UDA involvement in 2005? TF: Yeah, they coalesced again. The cities this time had a whole handful of strong mayors that understood it and were willing to be involved, and then a whole handful of county commissioners from Davis and Weber counties. Between those two categories, they brought political leadership to the table for us. Just as importantly, too, was the messaging they were sending back to their city councils and to their economic directors and their planning commissions and all that goes into the city governments. They were getting that message sent down the ladder a bit that this is something that needs to be handled diligently and handled well. We got a lot of cooperation from the city, economic development projections. We were looking at projections and what they could do. Layton City was great in pointing out that they not only have a flyover zone for the airplanes to take off, but they were willing to enhance it and not allow development to happen underneath the flight line. That was a big deal to the BRAC folks, that we had a community that actually was donating, or at least setting apart, lands that would normally be developed for their own good, setting it apart as a zone that would not ever be developed. Those kinds of things went a long ways, and we 16 weren't going to get that kind of involvement unless the mayors believed in it. I think that local political connection was a big deal. We had it down. In ‘05 we had it down. They were already well educated. Some of them were already on the UDA board, and they were willing to come in and do the work. So, that might be something you haven't heard as much, but I observed it every day for a long time that those local leaders pushed that message out. That all resonates with our congressional delegation. Today we have two congressmen in Utah that have almost nothing to do with this part of the state. You got Burgess Owens and Curtis that are from the south Wasatch Front and beyond, and Hill Air Force Base is hardly on their radar. But if you have enough local and state leaders that understand it, that word gets to them easier than just me showing up at their office and telling them. So, that political sphere of influence is important from the locals on up. AK: So, was there any community efforts kind of like the day that the BRAC Commissioners visited the base in 1995? TF: Yes. You have to know, too, about these BRAC commissioners: they want to hear public input on their schedule and in their format. They're not going to fraternize with us much and, boy, by '05 they really didn't. They came in, did their analysis work, and hardly would talk to the community unless it was in the time slot where they got the community input. So, there wasn't a lot of opportunities to bring them aside and say, “Look at this part, or look at that part or look how important this is,” or those kinds of things. 17 We had to be very succinct in our presentation of what the community was all about. We spent a lot of time, did a pretty good job I think, in conveying a couple of messages. One, the community viability is dependent on the base. The community is incredibly supportive, it's like most patriotic place around, and why would you even consider taking the base out of a place that gets almost full community buy-in? The regular Air Force and the Reserve Air Force is treated so well here in the community. The reality of it is there are places in other states that really have a disdain for the military, and it comes out in the community when they go to 7-Eleven to get a drink, or to the grocery store or whatever the case may be. Here it's not that way, so we played on that a lot. But more importantly, the things that count are, we had the defense industry background here. We had the big defense contractors that were doing things like what's now ATK within Thiokol. We had missile test areas, we had the desert here that we had room to move. There were all these things that we were trying to explain that were important to the missions of the Air Force. We were better at it in '05, just because we'd gone through it once before, knew how to get to them. But it was in very controlled timeframes and exposure to the committee by then. We were doing what we could to get word back to committee members through other means, of some of our talking points. But the direct contact with them was pretty limited. AK: So, we kind of talked about this a little bit, but I just wanted to know a little bit more about what your specific job was during the BRAC 2005? 18 TF: Yeah, by '05 I was treasurer of the of the Utah Defense Alliance, and so my involvement was me and my staff were helping on the finance side. Books, you know, those kinds of things. But more importantly, probably, is they made me part of the executive committee, which was kind of the A-Team, the folks that were spending a lot of time in the effort. They were Vicki McCall, and Pat Condon by then, and Steve Rush, and these folks that you've all talked to were all engaged on that executive committee. I learned a ton in a hurry, being with that group. Jerry Stevenson, Senator Stevenson was the mayor back then, I think, of Layton. So, we all got assignments that were kind of hard and took our evening time to get done, but we all happily did them. That was my introduction to the executive committee and to even more work than the whole board was doing. These folks were really doing it. I got pressed into service like the rest of them. But that's how I gained a greater appreciation. I already had appreciation for the base for obvious reasons. I grew up here and knew it. Then I'm a civil engineer by training, and while I was in engineering school at the U—I went to Weber first, though, just so you know. I got a math degree at Weber, before I went on to the U. Don't tell anybody about the math degree part, though, because that kind of makes you a nerd. But I was at the U, going to engineering school, and I interned in an engineering branch on base for two years. So, whatever appreciation I didn't have before then I got while working up there, and learned a ton about the Air Force operations and whatnot. So, I was ready to go. I was all in with what the missions were and what they were doing at the time. 19 AK: So, you mentioned earlier that UDA works to help bring in new missions and stuff to Hill Air Force Base, is that correct? TF: Yes. AK: They work with the military to bring it in. Did you guys have any part in bringing in the F-35s? TF: Oh, sure. We're not going to take credit for that. I mean, there was a basing process that the Air Force went through to look at all the different possibilities of where to put the first operational wing of F-35s in the world. We knew that the two fighter wings here, the Air Force 388th fighter wing and the Air Force Reserve 419th fighter wing, was well-positioned. Had the runways, had the pilots had a lot of the infrastructure, and we had the Utah Test and Training Range next door, and it just seemed like a good setup. So, we advocated for that hard, but what some of the messaging was, I'll give you an example. There was a series of public hearings that were held here during the EIS process, the Environmental Impact Study process, of what does it mean to the environmental impacts of putting new fighter planes in an area? That was all being done by a consultant. They had to gather public meetings for public input. They were doing the same thing for basing in one of the New England states. Where's Burlington? SL: Vermont. TF: Vermont. It was in Vermont. They were doing the same thing for them at kind of the same time. What they found in the public hearings that were held here on the Wasatch Front, and there was one out in Tooele and out in Wendover as well, 20 was Utah Defense Alliance packed the room. We were there in force and with all our community leaders and mayors and whatnot, to be sure that the Air Force understood that there really wasn't any public pushback on putting a new type of fighter plane here. So, we went through three hearings, I went to all of them. We had one man stand up after dozens of people getting up and saying, "Bring them on. We understand it's going to be noisy. We've had fighter jets here for decades. We get it. We don't mind. In fact, we've made you easements so that you can do it better." We had one poor guy get up and say, "Could you just not, you know, maybe fly at night as much?" Everybody just looked at him like, “What are you doing?” He was a nice guy, and he really wasn't even adversarial at all. But that was the only comment that, even in the middle category of basing them here. That had all to do with UDA. I was the president by then, and we were diligent in making sure that room was full of people that understood why it's important they still come here. So much so that the Vermont folks flew out and met with me and said, "How did you get three hearings with like 100% support content?" Because they were experiencing like 75% negative comments in their public hearings. They went through with us how we accomplished that. But that isn't all us. It's the whole community at large is still very supportive, very patriotic. They're very defense- 21 oriented, and so wasn't as hard as it would be in Vermont, that's for sure. But that's just an example of why I think the F-35 came here. Then there was a lot of other talk, because we'd gone through the BRAC, because we have people on these CLPs, different commands throughout the Air Force. So, we have a whole slew of folks. Vicky McCall and I are both on the chief of staff of the Air Force's Group. We have UDA folks that are on the AFMC, so the Materiel Command side, which has all to do with this. We have other people who are on ACC, the Combat Command, the fighter jet side. There are all of these national groups, and so we have a ton of information that we can bring back, boil down, get the right message. We know what the messages should be, going back to the users. Again, the Air Force and the fighter wings take the credit, and should, for being ready to take that F-35 mission. But the community can really hurt them if they don't show a lot of support and a kind of strategic way of getting about it. AK: So, was BRAC 2005 also looking at the Air Logistics Centers just like 1995 then? TF: Yeah. Well, just because if they look through a kind of a general base closure, it's going to affect any of the tenants on the base. That, at the time, was by far the biggest tenant. But yes, there was talk about it. It's a great question because— and I don't profess to understand all of it, but the idea of closing bases is one thing, the other is consolidating mission. So, in the depot business here, they were down to three. If they were to close any one of these depot type bases, they would be down to two. That concentrates the work even more so on the other two. 22 So, there are almost two different conversations. Do you close the base on its merits of cost and savings and benefits to the Air Force? But part and parcel with that is, do you actually reduce your depot capacity at the same time by closing one of these? We had a lot better argument. Going from three to two is a lot bigger percentage cut than going from five to three. So, that was one of the arguments. We used it all the time. AK: Okay, would you tell me a little bit about the birth of MIDA? TF: Yeah. Because we were so focused on the economy for the state through the defense means, we started realizing that—well, let me back up. Because we were focused on that, we started talking about all this land on the west side of Hill Air Force Base, right against I-15, that wasn't being utilized. One thing that the Air Force has is a lot of bases that don't have a lot of room left on them. So, we looked at this, we looked at the land mass for Hill Air Force Base and said, “That's growth potential.” What does growth do for us? Well, it gives us more jobs possibly, and it BRAC-proofs the base a little bit more, because the more missions you have here, the harder it is to move them all back out at some future point. I mean, that's kind of the background thinking. So, how is it that we can utilize all this land here? Folks that were staffers on-base working for the Air Force, the attorneys and others, are the ones that say, “There is this enhanced use lease concept out there. Hasn't been used much, but it is allowed if we could ever get through the paces and get that thing defined and workable, then the community is going to have to step up and do certain things in the leased area. Somebody's got to bring 23 a developer in and build stuff. They got to make improvements, streets, sewers, water, light, electrical, all that stuff has to go in this area in order to support it, even before you build anything. Who's going to do that?” I still remember the original talk was, "Well, I wonder if Clearfield City would like to do that. Or if Layton City would like to do that. Sunset City." We're looking at all the ones that border the base as stepping in and doing that. But that oversteps their municipality annex boundaries. Cities don't operate really well outside their own boundaries. Any one city would be clear over here in front of another city operating, and that was uncomfortable and legally difficult to accomplish. So, how are we gonna do this? What kind of agency can do this? That's where the talk about MIDA came up was, "Maybe we create our own." So, where would they get any money? I remember this step by step how we went through this, but where did they get money to do it? Well, the logical place was to give them property taxing authority to get them an income. They can tax the properties that are being built on the lease area to get a little bit of income to make themselves whole. Then, how are they going to operate like a municipality and own pipelines and sewers and electrical and all that kind of stuff? Well, they could look like a municipality kind of, but not be another city to compete with the others. "I know, we'll make them a state political subdivision." That's kind of the thinking process. We started talking to legislators on what their thoughts were. We had great support up here. Some of them are still in. Senator Stevensen, President Stuart Adams, were all on board and very involved at the time in making sure the 24 story gets told correctly at the legislature, because ultimately, if it was going to be a political subdivision of the state, the legislature was going to have to create it. There wasn't much of a model out there. There isn’t a whole lot of other states that have these kind of organizations. This water district is a political subdivision of the state, so I understood that business fairly well. We are a taxer of property, a property taxer, so I knew that part of it well, too. Then there was the part where the cities would have to say, “That area could be ultimately annexed into the city, but I'm willing to give up some of the property tax that I would collect from there to get the infrastructure built.” MIDA was finally formed on all those kind of building blocks, and state legislature created them, gave them taxing authority and brought them forward. Then we finally had the agency that could do all that stuff with the Air Force's lease, and then they could help bring a developer in that would be willing to build buildings, and all the stuff on top, and lease them out, and hopefully make money on building and leasing their infrastructure. Long before MIDA was created by the legislature, all that work had to be done by UDA, because MIDA didn't exist. That's why we always call them our kid, we kind of created them. It's our monster, we created them, because that's just the process that we had to take to get it done. Now we've completely unaffiliated. Our board does UDA stuff, their board does MIDA stuff. We don't cross the streams any longer. Of course, we talk to each other all the time and still help MIDA constantly. We're still helping fund them through our state allocation. We funnel some of that money over to them for their operations. We'll 25 always be linked, but we're two independent organizations now. So, that was long story, sorry. AK: No, that was perfect. About what time period was that? Was it around BRAC 2005? TF: After. It was, I think MIDA's probably been around, and this is a guess, eight years? Somewhere in that frame. So, 2012-ish. I need to tell you one more thing about MIDA. The other reason why MIDA got a start and was welcomed by some of the communities was the Air Force owned property in Park City. Have you heard this story? I'll just give you the brief version. I won't tell you all the—it's too long and sordid otherwise. This water district serves Park City, so I knew all the Park City folks well. The Air Force owned a chunk of property. They always intended to build a military hotel in Park City close to the ski resorts, and that would be a very popular destination for military folks to visit. Building hotels in Park City is, on the best day, almost impossible. I could tell you stories, but it's very difficult to do. They were getting nowhere with getting one done. So, what to do? It was fairly well discussed after a while that it would be better if we could get a different and maybe even more property on the other end of Park City, right over the Wasatch County line where Highway 40 goes up to Jordanelle Reservoir. Maybe that's a better place. Park City was much more comfortable with that than where they were originally. So, there was a move afoot to try to get that consolidated and moved so they could do something finally. Well, who can 26 we get to help land acquisitions, putting a developer in, build sewers? Here we go again, right? So, MIDA had its second mission almost overnight to do that project up there. They were a state agency and weren't just a one-stop, or just a one show agency for the EUL here. Now they were doing that up there. So, I think it's important to note that MIDA, because they were already created, it was natural to just put them up there and help them facilitate that building. So, they're in the construction phase now of that development. It turned out to be a big development. It'll look like a private development with a big hotel, but portions of that hotel are always reserved for military folks. The rooms will always be available for them. It's right adjacent to Deer Valley Ski Resort on the east side. Anyway, it worked out great, but MIDA had all to do with that. Then NSA, national security guys, wanted to put a computer facility in Utah and a big data center in Utah. They had purchased property in northern Utah County, just over the border from Salt Lake County outside of Bluffdale there, just south of Camp Williams. Who could come in and get the sewer and water? Here we go again. So, MIDA facilitated that process as well, as the governmental agency. So, you can see that it obviously was built right, because now MIDA can do it all over the state where there's a need for these military-type installations. How do you bridge between the military owning something and getting things built that they can use? So, there's three examples now that MIDA's involved in and facilitated. That was a lot of MIDA talk, sorry. 27 AK: No, that was perfect. It's good to know the difference between the two. Like it makes sense like you would work hand in hand, where UDA is more advocating for… TF: Right, right. Nonprofit advocates and educators and supporters, that's what we do. One other distinction for UDA, I guess, is that the local chambers of commerce here have Military Affairs Committees, and they do great. I'm on that board too. But they just do great work. They do furniture collections for the Airman's Lounges. The Air Force didn't have any money, they couldn't get any couches, they didn't have any gym equipment, so the community rises up and does collections and puts stuff together, so they're supporting the airmen and their families on base. Great efforts. UDA doesn't do any of that. We are on the political-economic side, to influence and educate the process for the economy, and we happily stay involved with the military affairs committees on supporting the airmen and their families, but those are two different missions, just like MIDA and UDA are. That's how we see ourselves. AK: That's perfect, thank you. I'm just trying to see if I have any other questions here. SL: I have one. Back to BRAC in 2005, how were the base commanders involved? Because we've heard that their ability to be involved slowly got chipped away with each… TF: Yeah, so they're involved very carefully [laughs], and you're exactly right. My memory of that is, and I don't know any great details, but my memory is that we were able to ask them questions for a long time and they provided information the best they could with unclassified information. But the closer the BRAC 28 decisions came, the less they were able to talk to us. That came down from their commands, and wisely so, by the way. It was frustrating for us, but I would say it's still the right thing to do, because you didn't want Air Force officers who were here only temporarily to try to help promote or not promote the closing of bases. That's not their job. Their job is to go wherever they're assigned and do the mission. So, the closer we got to it, the less they were able to talk to us, and their upper commands were telling them that was how this is going to go. I was actually appreciative. It was frustrating because we could get a lot more information from them, but I actually appreciated it because it kept a kind of a clean line between what we were saying and doing and anybody jeopardizing their career or their mission up here in the middle of the political action. That's what these BRAC's are, these are political actions. I think ultimately I appreciated the fact that they weren't able to talk to us towards the ends of them. SL: Do you remember who was the base commander at that time? TF: Oh, boy. You would ask. SL: Because had Kevin Sullivan left by then? TF: Yes, barely. We'll have to get his years for sure. It would have been his predecessor. Is he on your list? SL: Oh yeah. TF: He'll know these dates to the day to tell you exactly how this went down. Kevin will be fascinating, by the way, because he has a great perspective. He's our executive director for UDA. He's our only paid person, by the way—everybody 29 else volunteers—but he's not paid much. But he has that perspective of being an Air Force general at the time these things were going down, and he's going to be fascinating to talk to. He'll give you that inside part that I cannot and what he could and could not say, and all of those kinds of things. Of course, as a retired Air Force person, he can tell you what UDA's doing completely. By the way, we need interpreters. You've probably run into this already. As good as we are and as involved as we are, and we are involved. I mean, I don't go a day without talking Air Force with somebody. I even get scared that I know as many acronyms as I do down there, and know their missions well, because I'm involved in the Pentagon, I get a lot of briefings. All that to say, I still need an interpreter. If you go into a meeting in the Pentagon and there's just Air Force people and you're the only civilian, good luck! Because they'll talk, they make acronyms into verbs, nouns, adjectives, and half of them don't even know what the acronym stands for. It's just become a thing of its own. Kevin is invaluable that way. I have to call him still once a month and say, "Kevin, I probably should know what this one means, but I don't," and he knows it every time. So, he's been a great asset here. I'm sure glad he retired here [laughs]. AK: [To Sarah] I think that's all of our questions. SL: Yep, that's it. TF: Does that cover ya? AK: Yeah. Thank you so much. Really, we appreciate it. It's been really helpful. 30 TF: You're welcome. Thanks for your interest. I think it's a great story to tell. I think it's a great project you're on. You think of something else, call me. I'm happy to talk to you. AK: I appreciate that. It was really nice to get more information on 2005 BRAC. We've mostly been working on 1995, so thank you. TF: Yeah. I just lost my dad three years ago, but he had a great life, and he always was thrilled that I was president of the Utah Defense Alliance. He had not done that. He thought that was the greatest that I had that much interest and was that involved. He wanted to know about my trips to the Pentagon. I got all sorts of briefings in the Pentagon that he had not heard about, so he was interested till the day he died about all that stuff [laughs]. So, he had a lifelong thing. The two of you can't even relate to this, but in 1962, when I was six months old, my dad was working for GSA on a contract in Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. That's where I lived, because he was temporarily stationed there for a year. I lived in a single-wide mobile home there in Mountain Home. I don't remember this, obviously, but I was there during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he used to tell stories all the time about me being a baby and about he and my mom being there and the bombers on 24-hour alert, because they thought they were going. They thought this was the possibility of a world war. He told stories about that, and that's how far back that Air Force stuff ran with him. He told those stories all the time. AK: Did he have any involvement in 2005? Like with the BRAC round? TF: No. He would have been retired by then. 31 AK: Just interest, probably. TF: Oh yeah, I still had to tell him the stories all the time, but he was retired by then. AK: Well, thank you so much. Really. TF: Yeah. You're welcome, my pleasure. 32