ALC Commander answer base employees' questions

  • Published
The following is the first of two articles in which Maj. Gen. Kevin J. Sullivan, Ogden Air Logistics Center commander, answers questions submitted by those who attended his commander's call Dec. 14. The second article will appear in the next issue of the Hilltop Times.

Q. With the new fitness center, what will happen with the Hess Fitness Center? What are the plans to update the equipment in the Westside gym?
A. The Hess Fitness Center will remain an active facility and will be used for group PT sessions, swimming, and arts and crafts instructional classes. A team is working presently to develop a parent/child exercise area as well which we think will be a big hit! The Westside Fitness Center has a five year replacement plan for the equipment and will continue to update. Recently, it replaced one treadmill with a brand new Star Trac treadmill, added a rowing machine and stepper machine, and replaced six television sets, a weight bench, and a preacher curl bench.

Q. Are there any plans for a restaurant (i.e. Burger King) in the West Area?
A. There is a plan by the Army & Air Force Exchange Service to build an addition to the gas station by the West Gate for the restaurant Popeye's Chicken. Hill AAFES representatives expect construction on the addition to start in March 07.

Q. What is being done with the old Base Exchange facility?
A. The old BX (Bldg. 430) is scheduled to be renovated to house a new Consolidated Customer Service Center. The CCSC will be a one-stop inprocessing center made up primarily of 75th Air Base Wing support functions, such as: the military and civilian finance and travel offices; pass & ID; the 75th Mission Support Squadron; the base housing office; the transportation management office; and, the 75th Civil Engineer Group Environmental Management Division. This project has been funded and renovation should start any day now.

Q. Will a traffic light be placed at the intersection of Wardleigh Road and West Gate Road?
A. There are no plans at this point to put a traffic light at this intersection in the short term.

Q. Is the Defense Energy Support Center taking over Hill's fuels section? If so, to what extent will it be contracted and what will happen to the civilians who are currently filling the positions in question?
A. DESC is in charge of fuels distribution (until it is purchased by the user), the pipelines that supply the fuels to the base, and the large bulk storage tank systems. The 75th Logistics Readiness Squadron Fuels Management Flight is currently responsible for refueling and defueling operations on Hill. The control and operation of the bulk fuel storage area will be turned over to DESC for a majority of the Air Force in 2007. According to DESC, the scope and contract development is taking longer than expected and most likely will not start at Hill until 2009. Once implemented the three civilians currently working in bulk fuel storage here will move to the distribution element and drive refueling units as outlined in their position description.

Q. Rumor is that the base paid for ski passes for the AFMC commander and his group when they visited here in December. Is that true?
A. No. Services facilitated the purchase of ski tickets and transportation to and from the ski area. Each individual paid the cost of meals, ski tickets, transportation and other expenses.

Q. With all the firewalls we have on base, why do we still receive spam and solicitation e-mails?
A. Hill's Information Assurance Office, Firewall Team, and the Base Exchange Team are constantly trying to protect our network from all types of attacks. Trying to block all attacks is almost impossible. Once a spammer has found your e-mail address, you will most likely keep getting spam at that address.

Stock spammers are breaking the law, so they are careful not to include any information that could be used to identify them. Most spammers will conceal their identity by sending spam through hijacked PCs, also known as "zombies." The 'From:' address or contact information in the spam is usually false. This is one of the reasons why it's so hard to block this type of attack.

Users are our best line of defense. The best thing users can do is delete the e-mails and never click on a hyperlink in an e-mail. Users need to be very careful with whom they share their own and other individual's e-mail accounts (official and private). They also need to be especially careful about putting their e-mail address on Web sites, especially sites associated with shopping, travel (hotel/airlines/cruise lines, etc.), games, investments, etc.