MUSD SET TO APPROVE PAY HIKES
At the Mammoth Unified School District (MUSD) board meeting on Thursday, March 14, the board is expected to approve contracts with the MESP (Mammoth Educational Support Personnel) and CSEA (California School Employees Assn.) union bargaining units.
The approval is more or less a done deal, as the negotiations were consummated in December and salary increases went into effect in January.
The changes to each contract involved “step” increases for various positions.
Which resulted in pay increases of up to 27% for certain positions – notably in food service.
As Superintendent Annie Rinaldi told The Sheet, California’s Fast Food wage law that goes into effect April 1, 2024 ($20 hour minimum wage for fast food workers) has had the concomitant effect of boosting wages overall. We’ve got to remain competitive, she said.
For example, in the new CSEA contract, a “Food Service I” employee moves from step 11 to step 21. That means a new hire who previously started at $15.90 per hour will now start at $20.24 per hour. That’s a 27% increase. Similarly a “Food Service II” worker will moved from. Step 15 ($17.48) to step 24 ($21.76).
Which may already not be enough.
Anecdotally, what Rinaldi hears from some of her student’s families is that the new Limelight Hotel plans to start people at $25 – and that there’s already a wait-list.
On the MESP side, the biggest categorical ‘step’ jumps were for paraprofessionals (instructional aides), from step 11 to step 21. Yard Duty and Campus Safety Assistants also saw a similar bump. Paraprofessional bilingual goes from 13 to 22 and Paraprofessional special ed. goes from 15 to 24.
The other big jumps were under the Child Development headers.
Child Development Clerk 16 to 25
Child Development Aide 11 to 21
Child Development Asst. 13 to 22
Child Development Teacher 17 to 26
Child Development Asst. to Director 20 to 27
The contracts for both unions stipulate “that in light of the proposed adjustments, should MEA (teachers’ union) secure a salary increase, MESP and CSEA will forego a “me too” increase for the current year.
Last year, teachers got about a 6% pay hike. Though Rinaldi could not say, The Sheet has heard rumor that the teachers seek a similar wage increase this year.
The February CPI (consumer price index) number released Wednesday showed a 3.2% year-over-year increase.
On Thursday, March 7, as part of Mammoth Lakes Tourism’s community coffee day, a webinar was held with Devil’s Postpile Site Manager Rebecca Wong to discuss the Red’s Meadow Road project and access issues which will affect services in the valley this summer and likely next.
Wong confirmed there will be access to Devils Postpile 2.5 days per week this summer.
This comes on the heels of a 2023 summer which didn’t see Red’s Meadow road open until July 21.
Last year, Herback General Engineering of Minden, Nev. was supposed to commence work on the Red’s Meadow Road Reconstruction project. The large snow year and late road opening confined Herback to surveying work.
But this year, they’re supposed to get after it.
Which means that from Sunday evening through Friday morning each week, the road will be closed entirely to traffic.
This schedule may persist for the next two summers.
Initially, a one-year project was anticipated with 100-hour work weeks, primarily taking place at night, with the contractor ensuring access for buses and public traffic from 11 a.m. ’til 7 p.m. daily.
The contract allowed for a summer season of the first Friday in June through the third Sunday in September, with full closure on each side of those dates.
However, the contractor soon determined he couldn’t make this work financially, so the plan has been changed to a two-summer construction.
The contractor’s crew will work four, ten-hour shifts from Monday-Thursday.
This change is of great benefit to the contractor – he saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime and wage premiums for night work. He also gets to shut the road down completely during construction hours and not have to deal with the hassle of providing access.
Phil Moores of Eastern Sierra Transit Authority (ESTA) said it was his understanding that the set-up and breakdown of equipment required for the project makes full closure during the week a more sensible option.
The operational change was approved with no amendment to the contract in terms of compensation.
But this change to ease the contractor’s burden has shifted that burden to Red’s Meadow concessionaires. It also severely impacts public access – and the ESTA budget.
Moores said that despite last year’s late start, ESTA handled 40,000 rides. “This year, we might do 25,000.”
Moores says ESTA has the reserves to ride out the season and will not contemplate layoffs but will rather “repurpose” drivers in alternate work – such as using drivers to host the lines and provide customer service at the Mammoth Mountain Inn bus stop.
It gets a little trickier for Bobby Tanner of Red’s Meadow Resort and Warren Meyer of Vista Recreation, which manages the campgrounds.
Meyer said in January, “This area is only a small part of our operation and while we lose money not being open there, we can tolerate it for a few years … I will say this has forced us into what we currently think will be a full closure this year. We simply cannot get good employees who a) only get paid 2 days a week, and b) who are trapped in place through most of the week.”
As for Tanner, he says it looks like he will not be open this summer. “I have no clue what we’ll be able to do [if anything].”
It’s a reversal of fortune and policy from 2019. At that time, Red’s Meadow stakeholders agreed that “full season closures are too great an impact to numerous stakeholders and are not supported.”
Those stakeholders included five personnel from the US Forest Service, three from the Town, one from the National Park Service, Moores and Tanner.
Of the five USFS personnel, none remain. Nora Gamino took a job with the City of Bishop and the other four (Schweizer, Martin, Watt, Pietrasanta) have retired or moved on.
Deanna Dulen of the Park Service: Retired.
Grady Dutton of the Town: Retired
Mammoth Councilmember Cleland Hoff did not seek reelection.
So the only people left are Town Public Works Director Haislip Hayes, Tanner and Phil Moores. And no one on the federal side to hold accountable – or even gently remind.
