Is the 7E7 program worth the high price?

As a retired Boeing employee I am glad to hear that Boeing has selected Everett as the place to design and build the proposed new 7E7 Airplane. However, as a resident and taxpayer in Washington and the Everett area I am very concerned that we haven’t given away the farm to protect one terminally ill horse.

According to my understanding the taxpayers are committed to contributing 3.2 billion dollars over the course of the next 20 years to Boeing and its partners. In addition The City of Everett will appoint eight coordinators, undoubtedly high paid civil service positions, to help Boeing with obtaining environmental and land use permits, and address transportation and worker training issues. This group is also responsible for seeing that Boeing gets all the tax breaks it has coming which is a pretty good deal in my opinion. The state will build a new training facility equipped per Boeing specifications to train workers for Boeing and its suppliers and the taxpayers will get to pick up the costs of road and traffic control improvements around the factory.

In addition they have given Boeing the option of selling its manufacturing facilities to the Port of Everett, Snohomish County or a third party under a leaseback agreement. Over the last seven years Boeing has announced two new airplane projects, the Jumbo 747 and the Sonic Cruiser, both of which were canceled. What makes the state and local government think that this project won’t be scraped and we won’t be left with a huge empty factory. Boeing has said when the project is up and running it will only employ 800 to 1,200 employees. Notice they didn’t say new employees. With the closing of the 757 and probably 767 after the Air Force Tankers are built, the net result quite possible will be no increase in employment. In fact with a large percentage of the plane being built overseas we could see a further reductions in the work force in the near future.

Everett