FORA begins talks on who will inherit it.

When Michael Houlemard, the executive director of the Fort Ord Reuse Authority, talks about future plans, he can summon a far-off deadline from memory: “We are four years, three months and seven days away,” he says.

He’s talking about the day, June 30, 2020, that FORA is set to go away. The authority was created in 1994 with a 20-year life, and the purpose of directing the civilian repurposing of the former Army base roughly the size of San Francisco. Its lifespan was extended to 2020 thanks to legislation State Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel (and then an assemblyman), successfully carried in 2012.

FORA staff members and board members think a second extension is unlikely, and they’re starting to plan now for who will inherit FORA and its ongoing responsibilities.

There’s a $100-million contract that lasts through 2037 for an Army-funded munitions cleanup on more than 3,400 acres. There’s a community facilities district that collects fees from developers, then uses them to fund things like building removal and habitat conservation. There’s also a $50 million pollution liability insurance policy.

Who will take on those tasks remains a question mark, but the talks have begun. A delegation from Monterey County, including Houlemard, FORA Program Manager Stan Cook, County Supervisor Dave Potter, County Counsel Charles McKee, Assistant County Administrator Nick Chiulos and Seaside Mayor Ralph Rubio visited Washington, D.C. in late February. There, they met with Tom Lederle, the Army’s division chief for Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), aka “the BRAC guy,” as Lederle puts it, and he’ll be in Marina next week for the next round of conversations.

In Lederle’s view, extending FORA would be the most seamless way to keep projects moving along, but “it may not be an option,” he says. “I’m not sure there’s the political will to do that.” (A spokesperson for Monning’s office referred questions on the odds of a second extension to FORA.)

Knowing that’s unlikely, Lederle offered up a few suggestions, including that the county or a new joint powers authority could be a single agency that takes on FORA’s continuing functions.

“My strong preference is that the Army just get to deal with a single entity rather than multiple entities,” he says. “That would just get messy.”

The Army won’t have veto power over whatever FORA settles on as FORA 2.0 – but permitting agencies, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California Department of Toxic Substances Control, will.

Options for a single entity include making a new agency that resembles FORA, or the county, but Potter’s initial read on that option is that ongoing munitions removal and the habitat conservation plan won’t go over well: “The county’s not going to want to do it, nor is anybody else,” he says.

The FORA Executive Committee was scheduled to consider creating an ad hoc committee at a March 30 meeting, after the Weekly’s deadline, for the purpose of crafting a transition plan post-2020.

“Extending FORA, as FORA currently is, is not likely,” Houlemard says. “At some point, we have to trust local communities to do what’s in their own best interest.”