Letters to the editor
“Stupid,” not “Lucky”
Dear Editor:
Many people move to Mammoth knowing they’ll sacrifice some compensation and big city amenities for a better, simpler quality of life and the beauty of the surroundings. That has worked for the Mountain, which pays the minimum, but gets employees anyway.
The excellent employees get pay raises and promoted; the bad ones get fired, just like the rest of society. Would the Mountain be guaranteed great employees if they paid them $50 per hour to start? No, but as usual, the government bureaucrats know better than the rest of us.
So, the idea that the current Town bureaucrats, pay new bureaucrats large sums of money, to get “Quality Bureaucrats” worked as it normally does. We didn’t get good value for our money, but by allowing the Town bureaucrats to give themselves pay raises FAR beyond what they’re worth, for doing what is in THEIR best interest, we get highly-paid, highly-benefitted government bureaucrats, which are also impossible to fire.
When our Town bureaucracy decided that the taxpayer(and visitor) should pay $80,000 per year for an Assistant Bookkeeper(don’t forget, “plus benefits”), we weren’t “Lucky” to save $200,000 in severance pay.
We were “Stupid” for allowing that liability in the first place. Perhaps the WHOLE Town needs a revision in its salary scale, before the bureaucrats spend us into insolvency like the rest of California.
Ron McMartin
Mammoth Lakes
Stick to your job
Dear Editor:
The job of both the District Attorney and the Sheriff is to protect the public from crime and criminals. They should concentrate on finding real criminals in our community rather than trying to conjure them out of a business which is neither illegal nor threatening the safety of the public in any way.
Marijuana is and should be a legitimate choice for anyone facing illness. Just because it wasn’t created by a scientist in a lab at Amgen for some conglomerate pharmaceutical corporation does not make it less valuable or effective.
Susan Berger
Crowley Lake
Health shouldn’t take back seat
Dear Editor
In response to the Note to Cellf article (The Sheet, Feb. 7.) I think we need to look at more details about cell tower placement. Knowledge is our best tool to make the best decisions. There can be serious health problems with these towers if they are not placed in a responsible manner.
The comment in the article said that the FCC trumps the County on decision involving health and that Federal law prohibits state and local agencies from denying tower placement solely on health concerns. This is a true statement but it doesn’t make it right. It says “We can’t deny tower placement solely on health concerns. It does not say we can’t include them in our concerns. Come on, we are very health minded in this community. Why does our health take a back seat now just because we want the convenience of cell service? Now I’m not against cell service so don’t get me wrong. I just want the best for all in the community.
There is an overwhelming amount of scientific studies showing the negative health effect caused by Cell Tower Base Stations. All you have to do is Google cell tower dangers and you will realize that there is far more problems than we know. The data that the FCC is using to set its safety standards are outdated (1996). The limit was for thermal effects only and the test was for only 30 minutes with a 6’ man. They never looked at long term 24/7 effects on adults, let alone children! The FCC then deferred the testing of the non-thermal effects to the nation’s health agencies (EPA, FDA, OSHA) and then cut funding to zero. There’s something wrong with this picture. So please don’t just look at convenience as a gauge to tower placement. We live in a very special place. Let’s keep it that way.
John and Victoria Rawson
Crowley Lake
