Letters to the Editor
“E”-gads!
Dear Editor:
Just a quick clarification for the caption that ran with the Mammoth Lakes Trail System Open House story on page 14 of your Dec. 18 issue. The photo was of the new trailhead sign at the corner of Lake Mary Road and Kelley Road, and the cutline read, “MLTPA may know trails, but the spelling needs some work …”
As a career copy editor, I must take some good-natured offense to this, as I spent many an hour checking and re-checking the messaging on all of those beautiful new signs so that they would not be marred with the deformity of a misspelling. Just to be sure, though, I spoke with Ray Jarvis, Town of Mammoth Lakes Public Works Director, who confirmed that the proper name of the street in question is indeed “Kelley Road.” Embarrassingly enough, it’s the name on the old wooden street sign, which lacks the seemingly superfluous “e,” that is incorrect. Mr. Jarvis assures you, the Mammoth Lakes community, that the Town will beg not only your pardon, but also Santa for a replacement sign next Christmas.
Kim Stravers
Development & Comm. Relations
MLTPA Foundation
Linaweaver: Hazard responds
Dear Editor:
Recently Paul Linaweaver wrote an editorial regarding snow removal in Crowley Lake that was published in the The Sheet on Dec. 25, 2010. Paul’s primary question for me when I returned his call was; why does my street get plowed after the street where the condos are? That would be on Lake Manor Rd. in Crowley Lake.
Paul, you were told that the County uses a road priority system that generally follows the principal of: primary collector roads and school bus routes are plowed first. Next are the main feeder roads within a community and then the neighborhood roadways. Lastly, are the other roadways that have fewer residents or are dirt roads. You were also told that local conditions such as heavy or wet snow could change the priorities. Further, the crews have mandatory rest breaks, and equipment failures are always possible.
As you will recall I told you I’d contact the shop foreman and find out why your street didn’t have a single lane plowed if the other street (as you said) were “Whistle Clean” and pavement was showing.
I reported back to you that Lake Manor and Delta Dr. would receive greater attention before moving onto other roads because the snow was so heavy and wet that the crew couldn’t leave a 6-foot ice berm to harden as they wouldn’t be able to remove it for days after the storm passed. This was a local call by the crews working at the time and supported by their shop foreman.
If you’ll recall the forecast was for another major storm to hit with only 24-36 hours in between storms. You were also informed that due to the steepness of the hill and the stop sign intersection at the bottom of the hill that snow removal dictates greater attention before moving on to other streets.
Since you elected to write an editorial, the readers should also be aware of a couple of misstatements in your description or account of the facts. I left my home and drove to the area you complained about. The roadway on Lake Manor was only plowed to one and a half lanes wide with berms. Delta Dr. was barely one rutted lane wide. There was no pavement showing on either roadway and the roadway was in fact barely passable. You lose creditability when those people living in this area know the conditions were not as you report.
Further, you didn’t “speak” with the snow plow operator; you got dead in his face. Confrontational, aggressive, and challenging is a more accurate description of your conversation. This matches the tone and nature of my conversation with you. However, I am a big boy and paid to take citizens’ complaints and deal with them. The snow plow operator is not and you just spent time delaying him from performing his snow removal duties for your neighbors and ultimately getting to your street. I will tell you that I am the appropriate contact not the crews.
You expressed concerns about emergency services and that your road wasn’t plowed. I told you that if you had a 911 emergency to call that number and we would dispatch the appropriate people. I also said that our crews are used to snow restricted responses and have equipment to handle such a call.
Your final comment to me was, “I guess we don’t have any other options.” All I can say is that anyone that knows me knows that I don’t play games or mislead people; I tell you the truth even if it’s not what you want to hear. You were told that if you needed to get to work you had the additional options of using a snow blower and plowing yourself out or contracting with a private snow removal company, (as I told you, many other people living on non-county roads remove their own snow).
We live in the Sierra. It snows here, sometimes lightly … sometimes hard and heavy. There will be days when you think it’s just beautiful to watch the snow fall, other days it will be difficult and inconvenient. The Crowley Lake Road Shop provides 198 miles of snow removal service every storm. These five crewmembers do the absolute best they can for our communities under very difficult conditions. There will be times when you’ll just have to wait for your road to be opened or you can explore your other options.
Duane “Hap” Hazard
Mono County Supervisor,
District Two
Free at last … thanks to MLFD
Dear Editor:
At 3 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 18, it was a stormy, windy day in town, and on Sherwin St., in Old Mammoth, an otherwise perfectly good pine tree decided to call it quits. Not content to go by herself, she fell into the arms of the good-looking power pole with the bump on its nose just to her left and came crashing to the ground. The bump, unfortunately, was a transformer, and the pile of tree and power pole created a modern Medusa with a nest of electric cables and snow providing hair and makeup, right in the middle of Sherwin St.
For the residents of that part of Sherwin and all of North St., no more electric power and, for the those of us without the good sense to have a wood stove, heat went too. To add insult to injury, just before the power went out, my loader died and I couldn’t clear North St. I called the mechanic, who said he would come right out as soon as the road was clear. That meant, as the snow piled up, the only way to the top of hill and the end of North St. was by snowshoe. Any other method, and it seemed like you were assaulting Everest.
But we knew that good old Southern California Edison would be on the job and get our electricity fixed in a day or so … or so … or so. Or not. Or at least clear the road. With the fact that North St. was completely blocked, it meant that if you were going to have a house
fire or a heart attack, too bad. But hope springs eternal, and, on Monday morning, I went down to the pile to check out the progress. A rueful and cold looking young man told me that a crew was coming and would be there in the afternoon but could only stay till 3 p.m. and then would have to go home to Bishop to sleep for eight hours but would be back on the job at 1.30 a.m. on Tuesday morning and we could expect to have the road cleared and electricity back by Tuesday afternoon or so.
So, Tuesday morning I came back to the pile to check out the progress once more, but, instead of a crew of hard-working technicians, all I saw was a fat guy asleep in his SCE truck. The pile had not changed in any way. The SCE guy woke up and told me that a crew was coming from Yucca and would be there some time on Tuesday night or Wednesday perhaps. Who knows what happened to the crew from Bishop.
On Tuesday night, still nothing, but on Wednesday, hallelujah, a crew was actually at work, something was being done. That afternoon, I talked to one of the workers, who told me that we would have power sometime in the later afternoon or night, but that he had no idea when the road would be cleared, if at all. “They told us a crew would follow us to clear the road, but who knows?” he said, with a wink and laugh. That pissed me off.
I understood that power was off all over Mammoth and getting it restored would be a time-consuming effort, but having the road blocked was a threat to health and safety and clearing it up didn’t require highly skilled technicians, just some guys with chain saws and a lot of heart. With that I figured, what the heck, I’ll call the Fire Department and whine to them about the safety hazard. To my surprise, Thom Heller, who took my call, was equally surprised.
“I talked to SCE days ago and they told me they would have the road opened pronto. They were so sure of themselves, I didn’t even check. I’m glad you called. I’ll go out there and deal with this right now.”
Wow, I didn’t expect such a pro-active response. A couple of hours later, the power finally came on and when I went down the hill to the see how road clearing was going, the road was completely open. Come to find out, Heller came out to Sherwin St. with a Fire Dept. crew and when SCE was out of the way, his crew and some neighbors with chain saws, (thank you, Derek and Jeff) made short work of the road closure! When was the last time you called a government agency and got an immediate and effective response to a problem? Hats off to Thom Heller and MLFD! If every government office worked this way, we’d volunteer to pay more taxes, not less.
Paul Rudder
Mammoth Lakes, CA
Town crashed its own plane
Dear Editor:
Attached please find a copy of the appellate court decision, issued today, unanimously upholding the Hot Creek verdict and judgement in full, specifically including the $30,000,000 damage award and roughly $2,500,000 in legal fees (plus our costs of appeal and I also note that there is now about 2 and 1/2 years of interest that has accrued on these awards).
Please read this published decision carefully. The Town’s failure to live up to its contracted obligations in the Development Agreement could not be more cogently expressed. Justice Nicholson did an extraordinary job of summarizing the behavior of your Town officials, as revealed, in detail, to the Mono County jury that rendered this verdict.
To date, we have refrained from arguing our case in the press, we felt it appropriate to simply let the courts determine the merits of our claims. While we are still not prepared to make any of our own editorial comments, I think it will be clear from this opinion why the Hot Creek Developers were left with no alternative to filing suit. Many years were spent seeking an alternative to litigation, but we were unwilling to accept a solution that simply absolved the Town of its contractual obligations.
Now that both trial and appellate courts affirmed the legal position that the Hot Creek Developers expressed to the Town’s representatives for years, perhaps your Town officials will choose take responsibility for their actions and work with us to seek a realistic resolution to a problem of their own making, rather simply spending more money on legal fees.
Mark Rosenthal, Manager
Mammoth Lakes Land Acquisition
Grizzly Adams survives Mammoth
Dear Editor:
On the way to Mammoth we had an inkling that we would be treated to a little of the white stuff. Little did we realize that we would get buried. Of course in a ski area a lot of snow is a great thing! The problems arise when there are 13 people in the house and the power goes out. These issues are compounded when the members of my family take it as a personal affront that Edison is not able to restore the lights instantaneously. Blizzard be damned.
To think that prior to the outage my biggest concern was the status of our TVs. Does anyone else think that Direct TV has a personal vendetta against them? Paying for a service that doesn’t work makes terrific financial sense to me. I find it interesting, however, that when I call to report yet again that there are “no channels available,” the kind Direct TV representatives never fail to offer me added service and of course a rental car.
At Mammoth we have been warned many times about impending storms. Our house is equipped with flashlights. Unfortunately, heat and hot showers cannot be purchased at the hardware store. People start to get a little grumpy when their core temperature dips below freezing. The new fireplace that we just installed was supposed to help with the heat issue. The blower was not functioning secondary to the lack of Edison juice. At least it created the illusion of warmth.
We were blessed, though. The Village is across the street and they had electricity. I know the restaurants truly enjoyed having our crew there for charging parties and four hour happy hours. Maybe not so much, one location tried to poison two of us with fish that most Sushi aficionados would view as undercooked.
God finally smiled on our group. I had been told by multiple Edison representatives that it may be two to three more days of chilling fun. Ironically they also offered us great deals on a rental car. I’m sure I was speaking to people in India that Delta had trained. At about midnight the lights magically went on. Usually I make my wife keep the thermostat at 50 degrees (Last year we had to sell our first born into male slavery to pay the propane bills). To celebrate our good fortune, I let her jack the heat up to 60.
This morning I was smiling from ear to ear. Lights, hot showers, and fresh powder. It doesn’t get any better. To top it all off, the Direct TV repairman came and successfully made our sets functional. I was so overwhelmed that I bought lots of extra channels and the rental car. I think it will come in handy after our friend’s car was nearly devoured by the plowasaurus rex.
Richard Brown
Mammoth Lakes 2nd homeowner
