Federal Budget Axe Spares Concord Air Tower

Bay City News Service

Buchanan Field in Concord has been spared the tower shutdown threatened in automatic federal budget cuts.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced recently that the Salinas air traffic control tower would be part of the national closure of 149 towers. But other small airport towers in the Bay Area — including Concord, Livermore, San
Carlos, Napa and Santa Rosa — were spared the budget axe.

The tower at the Salinas Municipal Airport will be part of a four-week phased closure beginning on April 7 because of federal budget sequestration cuts. The sequestration went into effect March 1 after the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction failed to reach a compromise, putting in place $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts that will roll out over the next decade.

The tower closures are part of the agency's sequestration implementation plan affecting its 47,000 employees. Originally 189 towers were planned to close to meet budget requirements of $637 million in cuts.

Twenty-four towers that were part of the original closure plan were kept open because their closure would "have a negative impact on the national interest," FAA officials said in a statement March 22. An additional 16 towers will remain open under a federal "cost share" program that requires funding that was cut by 5 percent but will keep those towers operable, according to the FAA.

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