Rep. Dennis Kucinich told Fairview Park officials he will fight to help the city regain lost income tax revenue after NASA Glenn Research Center closes two of its buildings located in the suburb over the next 20 months.

In a meeting with regional leaders at his Lakewood office Friday, Kucinich also pledged to fight for jobs at Glenn by reversing cuts in NASA’s aeronautics programs and by helping the center obtain more work in the agency’s space exploration projects.

Officials from Fairview Park were officially told in January that two NASA office buildings on the north side of Brookpark Road will be closed. Building 500, which currently employs 449 individuals, will close in October 2007. Building 501, with 72 employees, will close this October.

While the two buildings occupied only five acres of Glenn’s campus, they house the suburb’s largest group of employees.

Fairview Park Mayor Eileen Patton said her city will lose $631,000 in income tax once those buildings close.

“This is devastating,” Patton said at the meeting.

Patton was critical of the level of concern toward her city’s plight shown by Glenn officials during a meeting with them

“We said directly, ‘What are you going to do with these buildings?’” Patton said. “And after they went through the routine of the 521 people who will be (moved), they said they were going to lock the doors and walk away, leaving those buildings vacant.

“Now what does that do to the economy of Greater Cleveland?” Patton asked. “What does that do to the city of Fairview Park?”

Patton said it was important that NASA Glenn remain an important part of Greater Cleveland.

“We are at a major crossroad right here,” Patton said. “You know, I have a community that I have to take care of as well as my police and fire and our service departments, and this is a huge hit on us. And we need some answers. We need some assistance and some help, and we don’t seem to be getting it from anyone at this point.”

Allowing the federal government to abandon the buildings and say “too bad” is not an option, Patton told Kucinich.

Fairview Park officials have discussed several redevelopment options with Glenn officials, Patton said. However, a deed restriction from the 1940s when the city of Cleveland turned the land over to the government requires the land be dedicated to aeronautics research. Patton questioned whether such a restriction would still be valid after NASA abandons the building.

NASA officials have said the agency plans to retain ownership of the land in case Glenn ever needs it in the future. But they have expressed a willingness to help Fairview Park put the buildings to use.

“We’ll go to Washington with you,” Patton told Kucinich. “We’ll do whatever we need to do. But we can’t just let them walk away.”

Kucinich noted he had written Glenn officials expressing his concern for Fairview Park’s situation and said his office was on top of the issue.

“It’s really urgent that this community not take a hit because of changes at NASA,” Kucinich said. “And if you need those buildings for economic development, I think it’s important that we find a way for the economic development to proceed.”

Jim Kennedy, Fairview Park’s director of planning and development, told Kucinich the city needs to redevelop the buildings in whatever way necessary.

The Bush administration’s budget request for NASA saw a 1 percent increase for fiscal year 2007. However, aerospace programs, a key strength at Glenn, were cut by 33 percent, Kucinich noted. Glenn’s budget would be cut by 27 percent, Kucinich said. Although his office has not yet been given any official projections on how many jobs would be lost at the center, the congressman said hundreds of civil servants and contractors could be in jeopardy.

The Bush administration has not adequately funded its vision for space exploration, which includes developing a replacement vehicle for the shuttle to explore the moon and Mars, Kucinich charged. Rather, it has severely cut other parts of the NASA budget, like aeronautics and science research, to fund space exploration, he said.

Kucinich pledged he would fight to restore funds to NASA’s aeronautics programs. Aeronautics research is important for the nation, the congressman said, because aeronautics is the only industry in which the U.S. still has a trade surplus.

But to the extent that money is going to space exploration, Glenn should fight for those programs, too, Kucinich said.

“The money is going into space exploration,” Kucinich said. “We’re trying to simultaneously protect aeronautics but also recognize ... that the administration has taken a new direction into space exploration. We want that work. If they’re cutting jobs under aeronautics, then we’ve got to get the jobs from space exploration.”

Kucinich pledged that his office, along with Ohio’s bipartisan congressional delegation, would monitor the process by which NASA headquarters assigns projects to ensure that Glenn gets its fair share.

One contractor, Bill Smith from Paragon Tech, said qualified personnel from Glenn are already being transferred to other NASA centers known to be in the running for space exploration projects. He said he fears projects will then be awarded to other centers on the basis that Glenn doesn’t have the qualified people to do the work.

North Olmsted Mayor Thomas O’Grady said the crisis at Glenn is simultaneously a local, regional and national issue.

“Of the cities in the region, North Olmsted has more employees that work at NASA Glenn than just about any municipality in the area,” O’Grady said. “So it has an impact financially for us, but also because (the workers) are our family, they’re our friends.”

O’Grady said expanding the space exploration program is fine, but it should not be done at the expense of aeronautics.

“This is a national issue because it was aeronautics research that made us a technology leader in the world,” the North Olmsted mayor said.

“If we don’t stay on the cutting edge, if we don’t stay as a leader on aeronautical research in the world, then our future is very much at risk.”

Kucinich called on staffers of Senators George Voinovich and Mike DeWine attending the meeting to have the senators raise the NASA Glenn issue personally with President George W. Bush, who will be in Cleveland Monday for a City Club speech.

That led Patton to say, “If you can get me 10 minutes with the president Monday, that would be great. I’ll be there.”

Kucinich said another meeting on Glenn’s future will be held next month.

On the Net:

• NASA Glenn Research Center
• Rep. Dennis Kucinich
• NASA to close two Fairview Park buildings
  (WEST LIFE, Jan. 25, 2006)
• House budget boosts NASA, aeronautics research
  (WEST LIFE, June 22, 2005)