THE NAME’S BOND. GO BOND.
Published in the Dec. 20, 2025 issue.
Bishop resident Randy Short may be long in the tooth, but he’s never been short in the brains department.
So when he looked at his property tax bill this year, he immediately knew something didn’t look right.
Not that he could actually see many of the numbers without a magnifying glass, but he could see the bottom line, and the bottom line indicated his tax bill was $1,000 more than it had been a year before.
As a Californian, and staunch supporter of Proposition 13 (passed in 1978 which sets a base rate of 1% of home valuation at the time of purchase and places a cap on property tax increases of 2% per year), Short would accept a $1,000 increase if he owned a $5 million home.
Alas, he does not.
A closer look showed the new Bishop School Bonds approved by voters in November, 2024 for school facility improvements took a chunk out of Randy.
But a comparison of bills also showed he was paying 70% more year-over-year for the Northern Inyo Hospital General Obligation (GO) bonds passed by voters and issued in 2005 and 2009.
So he called Northern Inyo and ultimately got ahold of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Andrea Mosssman.
Mossman explained that the hospital district tells the county every year how much it plans to pay on these voter-approved bonds.
In recent years, the district has not been receiving enough in tax revenue to cover these bond obligations.
The County Assessor, Amy Shepherd, verified the bond repayment schedule and approved the new rate.
“We’re aware it’s a significant increase,” said Mossman.
A la Paul Revere, Short decided to sound the alarm to the wider public. After all, many people’s property taxes are folded into their loan payments, so oftentimes, people don’t even look at the bills.
He drove down to Independence to give public comment at the Inyo County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.
The Board’s reaction was underwhelming.
Board Chair Scott Marcellin, who makes Flash the Sloth in the Zootopia movies appear positively rambunctious, cut off Short just as he was getting started (three minutes!). This despite the fact that every meeting Supervisors spend 45 minutes on new employee introductions, employee appreciation milestones and the like. Those are never cut off and are paralyzingly awkward.
Jeff Griffiths chimed in that, well, what do hospital bond payments have to do with us?
Short figured as putative community leaders, Supervisors would at the very least wish to do some public education and outreach on bond debt.
Don’t expect any of the county leadership to attend. They’re probably too busy cooking up their next round of salary surveys to justify the next big raise they give themselves.
And from Klusmire’s desk:
For obvious reasons, I’ve been tapping into the Northern Inyo Hospital District webpage more than usual these days. Unfortunately, I haven’t paid much attention to the contact information for board members.
That’s unfortunate because I can’t verify that the direct email link to board members allegedly disappeared at some point after the strike announcement by nurses and technical workers. What I can verify is the “contact” form to reach each board member sends you to a generic fill-in-the-blanks box, so it doesn’t provide a direct connection to the board members.
Fortunately, the internet and email programs never forget. Here are the NIHD-provided emails for the board members:
Board Chair Jean Turner: Jean.Turner@nih.org
Melissa Best Baker: Melissa.Bestbaker@nih.org
Laura Smith: Laura.Smith@nih.org
David Lent: David.Lent@nih.org
Maggie Eagen: Maggie.Eagan@nih.org
Although the recent labor dispute has been settled, taxpayers and patients might want to contact the board about how it plans to operate the district with a significant, growing budget deficit.At the end of September, the first quarter deficit was $4.6 million and at the start of December put the red ink was at $6 million.
