We’ve been so busy pointing fingers at the people who caused the MLLA crisis here in Mammoth that we have hardly touched a couple of central questions.
What would it feel like to put a town of 7,000 people at risk? How does a person sleep comfortably, knowing that a little, small town in the mountains would have to reduce its resources to below bare-bones levels?
Sadly, before my recent trip, I hadn’t visited the Mammoth Lakes area for a long time, having been a regular winter visitor when I lived in Southern California. Back then I saw the mountain, the condo, the restaurants and the clubs. It had never occurred to me that this was also a wonderful summer recreation area. Boy, was I surprised.
If you stand on top of Mammoth Mountain and are not obsessed with skiing down in one piece, you can take the time to look around, and what you see is the 10-by-20 mile Long Valley Caldera.
With the settlement of the MLLA lawsuit all but done, Mammoth enters into a new phase.
Now we all get to see who walks the walk.
Since 1997, the year Terry Ballas proposed his idiotic airport condo project, our people have talked and talked. Then they talked some more. Along with all that talk-the-talk there were extended periods of finger pointing and blame gaming.
All that comes to an end right now, and over the course of the next three months.
Thank you to all who participated in Wednesday’s first session of Mammoth Moves! We had a total of 12 participants, representing the following agencies, organizations, and businesses: CERT, Environmental Health, Mammoth Hospital, Mammoth Lakes Police Department, Mammoth Village Properties, Mono County Behavioral Health, Mono County Health Department, Nutrition & Physical Activity Taskforce, Recreation Commission, The Westin, Women, Infants & Children (WIC) Program, among other community members.
You may very soon get a bill from the State for fire protection. A bill was passed in July 2011 that establishes a new fee for anyone living in a State Responsibility Area (SRA). To see if you live in a SRA, visit www. firepreventionfee.org/ sraviewer.php.
We’d like to think we live in a fishbowl here—that everyone in California (and beyond) is paying attention to us.
They’re not.
We are a small town in one of the most remote, inaccessible areas this side of the Pakistan/Afghan border.
We all signed up for that, for a variety of reasons. But for those who may wish for thoughtful attention from Sacramento or L.A., not to mention Washington, D.C., it is best to get used to how small our fishbowl really is.
Well this guy will put the government right inside your hoo-ha. Todd Akin, a Missouri congressman who, by the way is on the Science Committee, let it slip that many in the Republican Party believe that if a woman is “legitimately raped” her own bodily trauma will prevent conception from occurring. Â
The conclusion which must be drawn from this statement is that raped women who did become pregnant (about 32,000 a year) must, somewhere deep down in their glands, have wanted to be raped.
Mammoth finally settled its lawsuit with Mammoth Lakes Land Acquisition this week. Our immediate response was a sense of relief, and we weren’t alone.
All over town, our citizens talked it up, not knowing, really, what the terms of the settlement actually are. We don’t know either, but we know enough to sense that it is not a victory.
Rather, the settlement is wrapped in the clothing of defeat. Our battle flags in this matter now are furled, never again to be unfurled. The settlement and its complicated aftermath represent a sorry chapter in our little town’s short, little history.
The Mammoth Unified School District would like to give a warm thank you to the community for their support of the temporary closing of Minaret Street for the Bluesapalooza Event the first weekend in August.
We thank the Town Council for their continued foresight to support community safety with their action with the temporary closure of the road.
We thank Sean and Joyce Turner who allowed our high school students the opportunity to solicit voluntary donations for folks that wanted to park their cars on Minaret for the event.
Members of The Campaign For A Healthy California would like express their deep appreciation to the all those from Mammoth and other Eastern Sierra communities, including representatives from Mammoth Hospital and the Department of Health, who joined us Tuesday evening for the showing of the wonderful documentary, The Healthcare Movie. Â
Greed, Terry Ballas, and MLLA
October 5, 2012
We’ve been so busy pointing fingers at the people who caused the MLLA crisis here in Mammoth that we have hardly touched a couple of central questions.
What would it feel like to put a town of 7,000 people at risk? How does a person sleep comfortably, knowing that a little, small town in the mountains would have to reduce its resources to below bare-bones levels?