Letters to the Editor
Better ways to spend $11M?
Dear Editor:
Rea’s article last week [in the Dec. 24 issue] about the Town Council meeting discussing the Ice Rink was very well written and very factual. How the move of the Ice Rink was sold (baited) as a $400K-$600K project, and now realized (switched) to becoming a $11M project (with demolition costs, as you wrote), is really unfair and a deceptive representation to the town’s people that bought into the new vision early-on.
Despite this massive cost escalation, the Town Council continues to move forward on this. Where is the money going to come from? And remember that this was all started to avoid the Town from paying $3000/month in leasing costs to the School District where the Ice Rink currently sits. Think what the payback ROI analysis would look like at $11M dollars? At $1M payback the ROI is 28 years. At $11M, it’s greater than 300 years!
“Can’t we just put a roof on it?” Isn’t that what we heard from the Ice Hockey supporters in this town, at earlier Town Council meetings?
I haven’t heard anybody on the Town Council ask “Are there better ways to spend $11M in Mammoth Lakes?” After all, it’s coming out of everyone’s pockets.
Steve Ball
Del Mar
Snow and Town Council
Dear Editor:
Our town’s residential snow removal is a joke. For the past five years, locals have accepted dangerously diminished public services due to the airport lawsuit, drought and recession, and difficult cuts our Town Council was forced to make. Now we are told our government is seeing “record” revenues and yet basic services remain at third world levels. Our elected officials just voted to spend $10 million to move the town’s ice rink from one location to another and are doling out millions of dollars in subsidies for our “airport to nowhere,” and yet, our residential roads go unplowed (And, of course, the police force remains dangerously understaffed).
