Page 2: Keystone cop shop

Okay, one thing you don’t do is lie to the press in a press release. The press hates that.
I received a call last week regarding a “cop shop” item which appeared in our Jan. 23 issue. The “cop shop” item was a press release we’d printed from Mammoth Lakes Police regarding the arrest of Matthew Tood Underwood.
The press release stated that when Mammoth police were summoned to Snowcreek Athletic Club to arrest Underwood. that he left via a back door to avoid them.
Witnesses tell a different story.
Underwood was apparently in the mens locker room following a workout when police arrived. They told him they wished to speak with him and that they would wait outside for him to change.
The two policemen then apparently went upstairs to The Bistro where they became distracted.
Underwood, said eyewitnesses, left the premises via the front door.

T&R Applauds A.V.E.

At the Tourism and Recreation Commission meeting Tuesday, The Sheet learned about whole new algorithms marketing people use to quantify the value they generate to the community.
In this case, Tourism Marketing Manager Jimmy Kellett talked about AVE, or Advertising Value Equivalency.
Last year, Kellett said Mammoth Lakes received $712,000 in value last year for articles which appeared in various regional and national publications.
How is AVE calculated? It depends upon the publication and the content and images included therein.
Kellett said his department calculated AVE value by figuring out how much it would cost to place a similar size advertisement in the same spot.
For example, a profile on Mammoth Olympian Meb Keflezighi in Sports Illustrated which talks about Keflezighi living and training in Mammoth is valued at $336,000, the cost of a full-page ad in a publication with more than three million subscribers.
Commissioner Knud Svendsen, MMSA’s Vice-President of Sales and Revenue Management, thought this calculation to be conservative. He said a multiplier is generally factored in for editorial content.
Tourism and Recreation Director Danna Stroud acknowledged that a multiplier of 3 to 5 is generally used, but that Kellett’s estimates were made on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

Harris sentencing delayed

Sentencing for Michael Harris, convicted by a Mono County jury on Dec. 11, 2009 on 18 counts of lewd and lascivious acts against a minor, and one count of rape against a child under the age of 14, has been delayed. Motions have been filed by the defense, possibly for a new trial.

Dubrovner back at MLAC

During public comment at the Mammoth Lakes Town Council meeting Wednesday, Shira Dubrovner said she had reached an agreement to stage her next production, Fiddler on the Roof, at the Mammoth Lakes Arts Center, thanking Mayor Neil McCarroll and the Arts Center Board for making it happen.
Also at Council, candidate Rick Wood was beside himself over a statement made by Finance Director Brad Koehn that Town expenditures have only exceeded revenues once during the past twenty years.
“By their own admission, they’ve spent $9 million more than they’ve taken in [over the past few years]. They seem to count borrowed money as revenue. A loan isn’t income.”
Speaking of taxeating, great story by Steven Greenhut in the Jan. 22 Wall Street Journal entitled, “Public Employee Unions are Sinking California.” Greenhut reports that “over the past decade, pension costs for public employees increased 2,000%. State revenues increased only 24% over the same period … this year alone, $3 billion was diverted to pension costs from other programs … there are now more than 15,000 government retirees statewide who receive pensions that exceed $100,000 a year.”
Locally, according to former budget subcommittee member John Vereuck, on top of their salaries, municipal employees receive 58% of the value of their salaries in benefits.
Imagine my surprise when I received a Mono Basin RPAC agenda from former Town Clerk Anita Hatter this week. I wrote back asking her if she was moonlighting for the County. This was her reply: “I signed up with the local temp agency shortly before I retired, because I knew I would need part-time work; as it turned out, the Mono County Community Development Dept. needed some temp help because of a retirement and a resignation. I’m working four mornings a week. It’s a good transition, I think—”
So the retiree has replaced the retiree. I love government.
*No disrespect to Anita, who is solid.

Finally, when does 55 feet become 64.5 feet? Well, leave it to a developer to make it all seem logical.
Mammoth Lakes Planning Commission received a presentation of the new Old Mammoth Place (Clearwater) design on Wednesday afternoon.
As you may recall, Mammoth Lakes Town Council approved a maximum building height of 55 feet for the property last year.
The question is, where do you start measuring the 55 feet?
Idiots like me just assume it’s from the ground I’m standing on to the top of the building.
Silly me.
Rather, Old Mammoth Place developers suggest that one measures from the average grade of two corners of a building not to exceed 9.5 feet above any other corner. I think.
“This isn’t a cavalier approach at all,” said Community Development Director Mark Wardlaw.
Perhaps, but does it adhere to the spirit of Council’s direction? Why didn’t Wardlaw talk about this last year during Council deliberations?
It didn’t help that the architect kept saying, well, based upon the building height on the street, you could go another 10’ higher above the 64.5’ and really not have your view (what little there is left of it) impacted.
A subscriber recently alerted me to an interesting battle going on in the Bay Area between two weekly papers, the San Francisco Bay Guardian (a local independent) and the SF Weekly (owned by a larger corporation, New Times Media).
The Bay Guardian won a large judgement (now pegged at $21 million with interest) against the Weekly for predatory pricing practices. The Guardian alleges the Weekly used its size (and financial support from sister papers) to drive down ad prices in an attempt to push the Guardian out of business – at which point, presumably, prices would have immediately rebounded.
Any similarities between this situation and a local situation where the Fifty Center low-balled a bid for the Town’s legal classified business are surely coincidental.
FYI, The Sheet won that bid anyway with a 4-0 vote from Council Wednesday night on the strength of two major factors. 1.) The Sheet’s circulation now dwarfs the Times. 2.) Why should the public have to pay to see a public notice? Yes, accepting the Times’ bid would have saved the municipal government a few dollars, but it would have done so at the expense of those individuals who would have been forced to pay for the look-see.

Lehman running

Matthew Lehman is officially running for a seat on Mammoth’s Town Council.
Lehman told The Sheet this week that the biggest assets he could bring to the table are leadership and an ability (demonstrated by the success of last summer’s Mammoth Rocks event, getting the Village leased, and getting his Rock Creek Ranch development project down in Paradise approved) to get things done.
“I think this town is screaming for a leader,” said Lehman, “particularly someone who is willing to make difficult decisions … if I had to choose a word which defined 2008-2009, that word would be ‘process.’”
The focal point of Lehman’s frustration is the Town budget. Specifically, Lehman would like to see more money spent on events to draw people here. “I think we misspend our marketing dollars,” he opined. “I don’t think they’re allocated properly.”
As to development, Lehman is, well, a developer, but he also grew up here and believes he knows what people want.
Sheet: Which is what?
Lehman: That property should be developed with respect to current limits. People understand … that developers will build on vacant land. But when that land is zoned for 40 units per acre and the developer asks for 80? They don’t understand that. At Rock Creek Ranch, I knew what I had bought,” he said.
Lehman did say he expects a revisiting of what current limits are. It’ll be an ongoing struggle, he said.
Sheet: How about the Town’s current staffing levels?
Lehman: They’ve budgeted for a temporary downturn. I think we’re dealing with a longer-term issue.
Sheet: How about staffing levels at the police department in particular?
Lehman: Let’s just say I feel very, very safe. Mammoth must be one of the safest places on Earth.”

Eastman, too

John Eastman formally announced his re-election bid for Town Council this past Monday. Excerpts from his press release say he thinks it likely that voters of Mammoth Lakes “are now ready for a new direction from our Town Council.” Eastman touted a history of “fighting the fight, and coming out as the minority vote much too often” as validation of his credibility on the dais. Also stated was his take that there is a “strong desire” to elect three Council members who will bring about “a CHANGE in Council DIRECTION.”
Councilmembers, he opined, should not take individual credit for accomplishing goals, and that Council candidates likewise shouldn’t make promises about what they can get done. “In almost all instances it takes a cooperative effort between community members, cooperating agencies, Town staff, as well as a majority of the Council members to actually make things happen.” He went on to give himself a wee pat on the back by saying, “I’m told that I bring common sense to issues, and maturity to the Council.”
Near his closing, Eastman said he’s been the “lone Council voice standing up for true fiscal responsibility.” It is, he said, “the town’s budget,” and even though Town Staff and Council have been “generally financially responsible, there are still areas to make additional, sensible financial adjustments to the budget,” adding the answered question, “Can we do better? You bet!”