Good News

[Donna]

Wanted to share a little something that has been a hot topic for some time. I read this in Navy Times this morning. This should but a smile on a lot of sailors faces.

Navy lifts freeze on PCS moves

By Mark D. Faram - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Jun 21, 2009 14:18:37 EDT

Navy officials were cleared to begin cutting permanent change-of-station orders Friday, breaking free more than 10,800 sailors and officers whose transfers have been on hold since the end of April.

That’s because the service will get $89 million restored to its PCS budget as soon as the president signs the military supplemental budget request. Earlier this year, the money was taken away from the PCS fund to help pay for a $350 million manpower budget shortfall, which was caused when the Navy halted its drawdown.

“Earlier this week, Navy’s supplemental funding request passed both the House and Senate,” Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Mark Ferguson said Friday. “Accordingly, we have authorized the Navy Personnel Command to resume normal order writing to enable sailors and their families to move this summer.”

This means the Navy will now begin to dig out from the backlog of sailors awaiting transfer. Officials say they expect to get things back to normal within the next month, though it may take a while before everyone moves.

“To the greatest extent possible, we intend to honor the orders that were already approved and work to minimize disruption for sailors and their families,” Ferguson said. “I can’t thank our sailors enough for their patience and understanding throughout this process.”

So, right now, if a sailor was approved by the detailer for a set of orders before the freeze happened, officials say they will make every attempt to keep their word.

“Many sailors had already applied for and been accepted for orders, and those were recorded when we put things on hold,” said Capt. Robert Weitzman, director of distribution management at Navy Personnel Command. “Sailors who are in this position should contact their detailer and discuss the issue — we intend to honor as many of those agreements as possible, but it might not be possible in all cases now.”

First to be released will be 1,600 sets of officer orders that are already queued up in the system, Weitzman said. After that, officials will begin cutting orders for the 9,200 sailors who are on hold.

Sailors whose rotation dates were officially put off until next year because of the delay, but who haven’t agreed to orders, should start looking at the job openings available online in the career management system. The current orders application cycle ends June 24. Another cycle starts July 9 and closes July 22.

Sailors negotiate orders on a monthly cycle, in which two weeks are allowed for sailors to browse jobs in the system and apply for openings through their career counselor.

Once the application process closes, a few days are set aside for detailers to sort through all the applications and decide which sailors have been accepted for jobs and which must start the application process over the following month.

If a sailor isn’t under orders five months before his rotation date, he is assigned “needs of the Navy” orders — and he won’t have a say in where he ends up.

Because of the lack of PCS funding, the number of available jobs shown the past few months have been few — only reflecting the priority billets officials were still allowing to move during the freeze, but began to reverse that earlier in June.

“In anticipation of the funding being restored, we made the current [June] cycle a full requisition cycle again, so sailors will see a full selection of billets,” Weitzman said

The July cycle, too, will reflect the detailers’ back-to-business attitude. Sailors with questions are encouraged to correspond with their detailers directly or work through their command career counselors

[Tamie (mom of Michael)]

this is great news, good luck to those sailors getting to move on yea!

[annieNC/NAS]

donna, thanx soooo much for the info...I forwarded it to my son. I sure hope this really is happening! he's been stationed in san diego for 2 yrs now...which was right after GL., and we are all anxious as to the next step. we are, in fact, going to SD for the 3rd time (from wilm, nc) to see him soon. you look familiar to me....cant figure it out. thanx, again.

[Janice]

Thank you so much for this information. My son has been in Okinawa going on 3 years in October with the exception of 6 mos. in Afghanistan and several months ago he put in to go on a deployment. Since he did not have this as a "hard order", due to the lack of funds, he has been put on hold there in Okinawa. Maybe now he will eventually find out what will be going on.