Letters to the Editor

Let’s work together

Dear Editor:

After attending the emergency Council meeting of July 4, it is evident that the Mammoth Lakes Town Council is ready to tackle the myriad challenges of a Town that has just gone bankrupt.

When a Municipal problem arises, as many will, in the next few months, we can waste valuable time looking for a person or entity to blame for our situation. This will do nothing to solve the situation at hand and could possibly lead to an exacerbation of the problem.

Many good and valid issues were brought up by the public, especially with regard to process, transparency, etc …

Airport service has been vetted over many years and remains a top priority of our Resort Community. The economic life of Mammoth Lakes depends upon our ability to compete on par with our peer Resorts.

Please join me in a personal pledge to support the hard work Council, Commissions and Staff will be faced with over the next number of months. This is a time for personal courage with regards to decision-making.

We elected our Town Council to represent us, so let’s work together.

Politics and personal issues will need to be put aside to allow this train to get back on tract.

David Harvey
Mammoth Lakes 

Credit where credit’s due 

Dear Editor:

Thank you to Andy Geisel for the article, entitled “Down to the Crossroads,” in last week’s edition of The Sheet.

He did a great job capturing the details of an hour long conversation and reducing it into something that was reflective of my hopes and objectives, both as Mayor and as a Town Councilman.

In the article, Andy gave me credit for being a driving force behind the Economic Stimulus Council and the “Best Summer Ever” campaign. While I have worked on both, it would be unfair for me to take anything more than just partial credit.

These two concepts originated from numerous meetings with community members over the past year.

In recent months Mark Wardlaw of Community Develoment and his staff, John Urdi of Mammoth Lakes Tourism, Brent Truax the President of the Chamber of Commerce and Mickey Brown of the Mammoth Lakes Planning Commission have been instrumental in developing these plans. They have also encouraged other citizens to participate on a grassroots level to make our community a more economically sustainable place to live and work.

Related to Economic Development, I also wanted to take a minute to thank all the members of the Transient Occupancy Tax committee, who have worked so hard to conceive, develop and implement improved methods for TOT enforcement.

Matthew Lehman
Mayor, Town of Mammoth Lakes

Quit whining and lead

Dear Editor:

Based on her comments (Sheet 6/30) it appears that Superintendent Stacey Adler’s political proclivities prevent her from exercising the kind of leadership necessary in these recession-challenged times.

“People in Sacramento are not putting kids first,” she charges. Really?  The budget that just passed and was signed by the governor addressed the continuing structural deficit with more deep cuts in nearly every category, but not in education. Education accounts for over 50% of general fund spending, the largest category, and as she well knows, voters created a spending guarantee to protect education and this year’s budget is above that minimum. But, when revenues decline, spending declines; education, because it is the largest category has had massive dollar cuts for several years, but as a percentage of the general fund Sacramento has given priority to making K-12 cuts the smallest.

Her ‘no new taxes’ comrades say Sacramento has a spending problem and she repeats Republican sound bites about the November tax initiative. I guess she never realized they were talking about education, too.  For years, Republicans have blocked every revenue idea while demanding (and getting) tax cuts for corporations, shrinking revenue even more.  Adler implies other budget categories should be cut more to make education cuts smaller like health and human services (the 2nd largest budget category) but they have already had severe cuts. The lion’s share of welfare goes to seniors in nursing homes and to provide a safety net for children. Would she prefer to throw seniors out on the streets and have sick and hungry children in her schools?

If she believes state government has a spending problem then she should be a leader in cutting spending. State employees are on their second 5% pay cut. She should say, “education wastes too much of your taxpayer money, especially on administrative costs. Therefore I will set an example, and like state employees, take a 10% pay cut.” I doubt that will happen.

If she truly cares for the children she educates, she needs to put her political mythology aside and tell voters the truth. Sacramento no longer has a spending problem; there is a genuine structural revenue problem. She could say, “The recession hurts us all, but it is important for the future of our children and our state to stop the bleeding in our schools. The Brown initiative stops the bleeding and builds revenue for schools over the next four years.  It is a necessary first step in saving our schools. If you earn under $250,000 and don’t buy any big ticket items like a car, it will cost you (for the median Mono County family) the equivalent of a Carl’s Jr. six-dollar combo a month. Is that too much to ask?”

Superintendent Adler, quit whining and pointing fingers. Be a leader.

Tim Willoughby
Crowley Lake