Mammoth Council rejects MUSD offer
M.U.F. remains in limbo.
Although Mammoth’s Town Council may not have agreed upon moving Mammoth’s Multi-Use Facility (a.k.a. Ice Rink) to Mammoth Creek Park West, Council nevertheless decided against pursuing another 20-year lease with Mammoth Unified School District (MUSD) to secure the Rink’s current location.
The Town currently pays $37,800 per year to operate the Rink on MUSD-owned property. In 2017, the Town will begin paying its pre-bankruptcy lease payment of $42,000 per year if it decides to exercise a 10-year lease option.
MUSD approached the Town with a new lease proposal after the Town first proposed moving the Rink to Mammoth Creek Park West (MCPW), then received vocal backlash from both current Rink users and MCPW neighbors. Rink users worried the move would delay the erection of a long-awaited roof, while neighbors worried about noise and light pollution, as well as traffic and parking issues arising from the Rink’s relocation.
In June, MUSD proposed a similar lease agreement previously entered into between the Town and MUSD. The annual payment would still be $42,000 as of 2017, but MUSD would also require that the Town build the roof – which had been written into the original lease as slated for completion no later than 2008.
MUSD would require the Town to build that roof by 2017.
MUSD also offered to give the Town five years notice if the District should ever need to terminate the lease (currently each entity needs to give one year’s notice).
And MUSD offered to allow the sale of alcohol on the property for special events, although MUSD would collect 50 percent of any fees charged by the Town to outside organizers for special events.
But Town Council ultimately chose not to pursue an extended lease in favor of allowing a Mammoth Lakes Recreation (MLR) strategic process to ultimately produce a recommendation for a new site on Town-owned property.
“I feel pretty strongly that we have to move this [Rink] to another site,” said Council member John Wentworth.
Council member Jo Bacon argued that “the current lease has not been to the benefit of the Town … I’m concerned that agreeing to go into a long term lease cuts short the strategy. We need to move to another location. I don’t think it will ever become a Multi-Use Facility at the current location.”
Council member Colin Fernie was kinder to MUSD. “I think we owe the School District a debt of gratitude for allowing us to place the facility there,” he said. That said, “I think we now need to decide a permanent home for this facility.”
But Mayor Pro-Tem Shields Richardson disagreed. “I’m not afraid of the 20 year agreement, except for the piece that we have to put a roof there,” he said. “The idea that we’re locking ourselves into a 20-year lease with the School I think is a fallacy.”
While the majority of Councilmembers agreed not to accept MUSD’s proposed lease, some did wonder whether the Town could afford to build a temporary shade structure to extend the skating season at the current Rink location while the Town works toward moving the Rink elsewhere. Such a move could take anywhere from two to four years, according to Town Manager Dan Holler, if not more, depending on the location.
However, Public Works Director Grady Dutton noted that the Town has already looked into the cost of a temporary shade structure, and it’s not cheap: $200,000 to $500,000 (a permanent roof would cost about $1 million).
Councilmembers came to no consensus about recommending a temporary shade structure, nor did they recommend placing a roof on the current Rink. Instead, Councilmembers ultimately agreed to direct staff to engage with MLR and the Recreation Commission “to conduct due diligence on a proposed facility that will accommodate moving the Rink”—meaning strategize a Multi-Use Facility—“and to consider site options.”
MLR will complete its strategic process in December of this year, with final recommendations in January or February of 2016.
