A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION…
It was the biggest story of the week.
Buried in a department report at Tuesday’s meeting of the Inyo County Supervisors.
But while the sharing of a modicum of information is deemed helpful by Inyo County leadership. TMI (too much information) makes ‘em nervous.
Especially County Counsel John Carl Vallejo.
Because as the information spilled forth from Treasurer/Tax Collector Alisha McMurtrie and Auditor-Controller Amy Shepherd, it raised as many questions as it answered.
All the while producing an unmistakable whiff of … incompetence.
Which started as a celebration.
McMurtrie and Shepherd announced that they had finally tackled a backlog of supplemental tax bills dating as far back as 2019.
These supplemental bills affected approximately 10% of all parcels in Inyo County.
And generated $1.2 million in supplemental bills and approximately $130,000 in refunds.
McMurtrie explained that the vendor of the property tax software had finally ended years of frustration by making a site visit two weeks ago and making the software functional.
It was the vendor’s second visit this year.
McMurtrie issued a public apology for the extreme delay.
She also kept insisting the backlog was four years but 2024 minus 2019 = five years.
But who’s counting?
Shepherd said that when the software was initially installed, there was a failure in the initial testing phase – but that county staffers didn’t realize the software didn’t work until 18 months later.
What?
That was when Vallejo stepped in and said something to the effect of, ‘Geez, thanks for the presentation but you know, this is going on a lot longer than I thought it would and we’ve got a busy day in front of us so perhaps we should schedule a future agenda item for this.’
Supervisor Jen Roeser said her constituents have contacted her about these supplemental bills, which are due at the end of the month. “Some taxpayers have been shocked by their bills,” she said.
County Assessor Dave Stottlemyre told The Sheet his office has received several calls since taxpayers began receiving their supplemental bills.
What’s interesting is that McMurtrie admitted that 150 supplementals were “pushed out manually” two years ago.
If they’d pushed out a few hundred bills per year manually over the past five years there wouldn’t be such a backlog – if any.
But I suppose pushing out those bills manually must’ve been a “LOT” of work.
The other thing that struck me was McMurtrie saying the county had to pay for two (expensive) site visits by the vendor (after initial installation) before the software was made functional.
Why would you have to pay for site visits for a program that never worked? Payment should have been withheld UNTIL the damn thing actually worked.
In other news, Sierra Lifeflight announced at Tuesday’s meeting that it will no longer fly in/out of the Lone Pine Airport at night.
The company’s regional manager Nathan Alexander, who just happened to have another call scheduled so he could only speak for three minutes and then disappear, said the decision is about risk management.
Five people died in a Care Flight approximately one year ago during a night flight in Nevada – so that’s why there’s been a reassessment of risk tolerance.
Travis Powell of Lone Pine said he’s not suggesting that Sierra Lifeflight operate during storms, but during clear nights, this is “pretty basic stuff” given the equipment we have.
He suggested minimums of say, a 10,000-foot ceiling and 10 miles of visibility.
“It doesn’t add up,” said Powell. Who described the move not as risk mitigation but rather, risk aversion.
Sierra Lifeflight’s Mike Patterson said the company is willing to serve Lone Pine via ground ambulance and then bring patients back to Bishop for air departure if necessary.
Incongruously, Patterson said Sierra Lifeflight may be able to serve Lone Pine via helicopter (if available). I say incongruously because helicopters are a helluva lot riskier to operate than fixed-wing aircraft.
Helicopters have an accident rate of 3.49 per 100,000 hours of operation. The rate for airplanes is 0.84 per 100,000. This according to a Federal Aviation Administration study conducted between 2006-2016,
Patterson said his company does 10-12 transports out of Lone Pine per month.
