Page 2: One for you, nineteen for me …
From Vane’s desk: After The Sheet’s own Jack Lunch raised a stink about the $13 business renewal fee added to the business tax this year, Town Council addressed the issue at its regular meeting on Jan. 7 in Suite Z.
Town Manager Dan Holler claimed that Council had not approved the $13 fee without discussion at its December 3 meeting, as Lunch alleged, but that the $13 renewal fee has been in place since 2002, all the way up to 2009, and that Council regularly approves the fee along with the business tax itself.
But nobody has been paying $13 since 2009.
As it turns out, in 2009, Town Attorney Peter Tracy raised questions about the validity of charging a fee on top of a tax. The $13 fee has not been levied since.
Current Town Attorney Andy Morris had no such qualms.
“My predecessor apparently provided an opinion in 2009 that we couldn’t [levy the fee],” said Morris. “I have no idea why … I don’t agree with that opinion.”
Holler said he consulted with Morris, and that “looking at the legitimacy of the fee, and what it’s paying staff to do, there is no reason not to be charging this. It’s a legitimate fee in terms of recovery of the cost it takes to process [the business license tax],” he said.
What Holler seems to imply is that cashing a check and filing a form goes so far above and beyond Town staff duties that it necessitates a fee to offset the time and effort spent; as though staff salary alone cannot cover the cost.
Holler wisely drove this home by alluding to the impact not charging a $13 fee might have on the already depleted General Fund. “The General Fund is subsidizing that activity if we weren’t charging that $13,” he claimed.
Mayor Jo Bacon drank that Kool-Aid: “I think [the fee] is appropriate, so we can use our General Fund in the ways we’d like to,” she said.
But, “When you have a tax for the purpose of managing businesses, if you’re going to make a cost recovery, why not include it in whatever the tax was?” wondered Rich McAteer. “As I look at small businesses in this town, every time you add a fee or cost, all of that cumulatively raises the cost of living in Mammoth … I’m sorry that our town has gotten to the point where you have to have cost recovery for every individual process. What a crazy way to run a town.”
Morris’s reply was priceless: “For what it’s worth, I would point out that the Town could not roll this into the tax, because that would be a tax increase, which would require voter approval.”
In other words, a fee is a handy way to get around a tax increase that would undoubtedly fail at the polls.
Yet Councilmembers ultimately had little issue with the fee. Council member Shields Richardson said he was reassured that, although the fee hadn’t been applied in five years, at least it was on the books. Mayor Pro Tem Raimondo had less of an issue with the fee itself than with the way in which the Town began charging it again.
“It’s come off in the business world as an issue of transparency,” he said. “The issue is that it wasn’t stated that there was a $13 fee that was going to go back on [the books]. [Some wonder] is this a money grab because we [Council] can?”
From Lunch’s desk:
Benett
I didn’t have the easiest relationship with the now-departed Benett Kessler (see obituary pages 6 & 7), but a few observations.
1. A measure of one’s character is the company one keeps. There are still three staff members at Sierra Wave (Bob Todd, Bill Lefever and Catherine Hurdle) whom I worked with 13 years ago. That’s a testament to Benett – that loyalty she engendered.
2. At one of the lowest points, if not the lowest point of my life, Benett gave me a job when I really needed one. And it was a good job. She didn’t micromanage me, and she didn’t forbid me from going after whatever stories I wanted to go after, regardless of the consequences. I liked that.
3. I remember reporting on what I perceived as a fairly innocuous Mammoth Council story not long after I started, and was absolutely startled by the response. At that time, Benett was truly the only independent journalistic voice in the area. The response convinced me there was room for more independent voices – or at least one more, anyway. Without Benett, you could argue this newspaper would not exist.
MLR
I attended the Mammoth Lakes Recreation Board meeting on Monday.
From my notes: “Creating new political entities allows bureaucratic types to play at government, much like a child playing house.”
Now I understand it’s a nascent group and I know they deserve time to get their bearings. But just because they deserve time, that doesn’t mean they’ll get it. Sorry. I know this feels like robbery – depriving politicians of their public oxygen-sucking time. Suggestion: Pontificate into a mirror if you feel like talking to someone who’ll listen.
The point is, we the people voted for Measures R and U with the idea that we’d build things, invest in things … we’re tired of hearing about bylaws and branding strategies. We want to see things actually done. As much as I give Elizabeth Tenney hell for her Gateway Monument, I admire her for getting it built.
The top priorities in no particular order:
1. Partnership with the Mammoth Lakes Foundation to build the proposed Performing Arts Center.
2. Acquisition of Sam’s Wood Site.
3. Shade structure for Ice Rink.
4. Continued trails system investment.
Figure out how you wish to allocate your budget among these items, commit to a three-year budget cycle … and then reconvene in 2018. Seriously.
“Oh, but people will criticize us for lack of public outreach,” Board members will whine. “Or they’ll criticize us for how we divvy up the funding, or what we didn’t fund, etc.”
If you don’t feel like you have the stomach for the criticism, quit right now. I’ll be happy to take your place.
In particular, the Foundation has a great management core right now – hard working, aggressive, hungry. Investing in them and their idea is a no-brainer.
Sam’s Wood Site has become an iconic place. No-brainer.
As for the Ice Rink, it just hosted a tournament this past weekend for seven teams and tournament organizers hope to bump that number to 12 for a second tournament over Thanksgiving weekend this year. Each team has 12 or 13 players, never mind the coaches, parents, siblings … Cha-ching!
When I attended on Saturday, there was a strip of slush about two feet wide along the boards due to sun exposure. I literally witnessed one kid go for a swim trying to corral a puck for a potential breakaway.
Get a shade structure in place, roof or otherwise, this summer. Capitalize on your initial success. Stop making excuses.
Correction
John Urdi called Monday to say the editorial comment last week was off-base – that he bought drinks for his Mammoth Lakes Tourism staff at a Chamber event out of his own pocket and did not charge it to the organization. Reimbursements only occur, he said, when employees are traveling. “The only time expenses are reimbursed while in town is when we are hosting, media, sales contacts, or VIP’s. Local events like chamber mixers are not expensed.”
