{"id":55124,"date":"2025-07-10T21:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T21:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/55124\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T21:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T21:29:09","slug":"mayor-jones-lobbies-in-washington-to-keep-san-antonio-central-to-u-s-defense-amid-potential-army-relocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/55124\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Jones lobbies in Washington to keep San Antonio central to U.S. defense amid potential Army relocation"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO<\/strong> \u2013 A delegation headed by Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones traveled to Washington, D.C., this week in an effort to keep Military City USA an integral part of U.S. defense missions amid talks to relocate U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South in San Antonio<\/p>\n

An April 30 memo from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calls for the merger of Forces Command, U.S. Army North, and U.S. Army South into a single headquarters to create the new Western Hemisphere Command.<\/p>\n

Currently, U.S. Army North and South are stationed at Joint Base San Antonio, while Forces Command is based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the Army takes steps to ensure we can fight and win our Nation\u2019s wars, Military City USA will be with them every step of the way, as we always have been. We need to be proactive, which is why I shared a short list of Army missions currently performed elsewhere that if realigned to San Antonio would further help them achieve their goals around cost-savings and operational efficiencies,\u201d Jones, the former Under Secretary of the Air Force, said in a news release. \u201cWe need to speak with one voice, and we will continue to position San Antonio and our unique civil-defense ecosystem to attract additional missions and contribute to the defense industrial base.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the delegation included Assistant City Manager Jeff Coyle; Retired Maj. Gen. Juan Ayala, who serves as the city\u2019s director of Military and Veterans Affairs; and Sally Basurto, who is the director of Government Affairs.<\/p>\n

They met with the Operational Planning Team (OPT) that\u2019s planning the logistics of the proposed merger, which included Maj. Gen. James Isenhower and Col. James Allen.<\/p>\n

According to the release, the Army\u2019s preliminary plan would be to move about 200 active-duty soldiers from JBSA-Fort Sam Houston to Fort Bragg. That makes up less than 1% of the total active-duty personnel based in San Antonio.<\/p>\n

The move would leave about 350 Army North and Army South soldiers at Fort Sam Houston, along with 400 civilians. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe merger, designed to achieve operational efficiencies, combined with higher staffing levels at the command, could mean the actual impact to the active-duty footprint at JBSA is negligible,\u201d the release read.<\/p>\n

Ayala emphasized that as of Thursday, no official decision has been made, and Army leadership does not expect any significant reductions at JBSA.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon is expected to issue an executive order in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 A delegation headed by Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones traveled to Washington, D.C., this week in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":55125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,7452,40657,1802,6986,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-55124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-gina-ortiz-jones","10":"tag-jbsa","11":"tag-military","12":"tag-pete-hegseth","13":"tag-san-antonio","14":"tag-sanantonio","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-tx","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}