More Than Neighbors: Fred Meurer on Monterey's Partnership Story - Defense Communities

ADC sat down with retired City Manager Fred Meurer for a wide-ranging conversation about The Monterey Model, BRAC and how to harness existing community resources.

ADC: Monterey has a long history as a defense community, right?

Meurer: In many ways we were one of the first on the West Coast. The Presidio of Monterey came first, and the city followed in June 1770 when Father Junípero Serra came ashore. We’ve pretty much been “military town, USA” from the start. A lot has happened since then, but from the mid-1980s on, we’ve had to respond to continual changes in the military, beginning with BRAC and then in the post-BRAC world. Over time I realized the question isn’t only about budgets, it’s about mission capability, and what a community can do to enhance it.

ADC: Tell us about the tragic story that shaped your thinking about partnerships.

Meurer: In 1984, housing at Fort Ord was in crisis—over 3,000 people were on the waiting list and 37 families lived in tents at East Garrison. A 13-year-old boy, Danny Holley, the son of an E-6 deployed to Korea, died by suicide and left a note that said, “If there were one less, maybe things would be better.” It made national news. My commander, General Moore, told me, “You’re the housing officer—be the face of the problem and the solution.” We had 50 acres planned and 300 units approved on paper that probably weren’t going to materialize on the timeline we needed. I proposed bringing in the private sector under existing authority, 10 U.S.C. § 2667, and asked for permission to try. That’s when I began to see that community tools could solve military problems faster.

ADC: BRAC forced a lot of change in Monterey. How did it also become the impetus for what we now call community partnerships?

Meurer: After BRAC ’88, ’90, ’91, and ’93, the question became how do we keep supporting military families and the mission as a community? A base is a city. I’d run base public works, and I’d run a city. We made an unsolicited proposal: if the Army didn’t want to operate parts of the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio, the City of Monterey could provide municipal services.

That led to special legislation in the 1994 NDAA, a Monterey County demonstration to test whether commanders could purchase municipal services like utilities and public safety from local governments. We started small—fire-alarm maintenance, elevator maintenance—and then expanded.

ADC: What did the results look like once the model took hold?

Meurer: By 2000, I asked for the Army Audit Agency to come in, the first time a contractor had asked for an audit, they told me. They found we were doing the work 41% cheaper than before. The Army’s own audits showed about 22% savings steady state. We grew from those first task orders to roughly $20 million a year in reimbursable work. We covered our direct costs and direct overhead, and we also earned back indirect overhead. The city’s general fund saw around $800,000 a year, which allowed us to expand services for both the military and the community. Everybody won. We weren’t subsidizing DOD; we made the model pay on both sides of the fence, as a team.

ADC: Congress later expanded the Monterey model into a national authority, but it took more than legislation to get to where we are today, right?

Meurer: Policy is necessary, but capacity is decisive. We had Congress, the department, and a demonstration of capability. The next challenge was building capacity inside the services, and simultaneously inside communities, because no city has “excess capacity” sitting around. So, you build a team, not an adversarial buyer–seller dynamic. Traditional FAR contracts can push people into guarding turf. We did the opposite. We sat down at the table with garrison and city leadership and asked, “Where do we put scarce dollars to maximize mission capability and quality of life?”

ADC: Looking back—from where this began for you almost 40 years ago to today—what have you learned?

Meurer: You don’t have to do it alone. Your neighbors run cities every day. Tap into that. If you structure it right, you’ll get better service at lower cost, faster, and you’ll gain political and community support that money can’t buy. That’s resilience. That’s readiness.

We started with crisis, but we stayed for the mission. I go back to 1984 and what Danney Holley’s story taught us. Keep beating the drum. Keep demonstrating the need. Show what works and keep practicing. The job isn’t done, but we know how to do it.

This story was published in America’s Defense Communities magazine. You can read the full publication *here**. *

ADC photo