Army Reserve Centers Face Budget Axe

The Army Reserve wants to open support centers at colleges and universities across the country in an effort to connect Soldiers with their GI Bill benefits and assist families who live far from a military installation, the wife of the Army Reserve's top general said today. But budget constraints threaten to gut the program before it's fully in place.

"There are a lot of young people looking to use their GI Bill benefits, or join the Reserve and get the education benefits," Laura Stultz told Military.com today in a telephone interview. "We're there mainly for the soldiers and their families, but it's also a connection to the community."

Lt. Gen. Jack Stultz commands the Army Reserve. Laura Stultz spoke to Military.com in a wide-ranging May 20 interview focusing on Army Reserve family support.

Funded through the Reserve's budget, the centers have very low overhead costs because they are hosted in existing facilities and only staff two employees each. Over 2010 the Army Reserve spent only about $560,000 maintaining three centers.

Still, thanks to budget constraints, Gen. Stultz's plan to open eight locations by the end of his tenure has been reduced to six.

"I wish … I could put these in every state. But I know the financial constraints that this country has right now, and everyone in the military is saying we need to do more with less," Laura Stultz said. "I don't think that making do with less means not taking care of our families."

The Army Reserve opened its first college based  "Army Strong Community Center" at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City, Ore. earlier this month. Three other centers, opened over the last two years, are located within existing Reserve facilities in New York, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Stultz said the service hopes to open at least two more centers before her husband retires next year -- with at least one based out of a college or university.

The idea for the centers was born from Stultz's own experience as a Reserve spouse while her husband was deployed to Desert Storm and Bosnia. Over his absence she and their four children felt isolated living two hours away from the nearest Reserve facility, she said. The new community centers aim to fix that problem by providing families with a way to connect locally to their military benefits.

"I just wanted to bring the installation to the communities that did not have support networks there," she said.

The new reserve facilities also help connect active-duty servicemembers with assistance, Gen. Stultz told Military.com in an interview last fall. He said that of the families and Soldiers that have used the Rochester, N.Y., center since it opened in 2009, almost 30 percent are active duty, not Reserve.

"It's not about the Army Reserve, it's about taking all those services you want on your installation and [putting] them out there in the communities where we have Soldiers dispersed and families dispersed around this nation," he said. "There's a need and we're going to work together … to see how we can make this part of the Army's plan."