The Mammoth Lakes Town Council talks a good game when it comes to making good on transient occupancy taxes.
But when push comes to shove, the majority of the council showed this past week that it can roll over like so many submissive puppies.
Faced with its first high-profile, public TOT case, council members Rick Wood, Jo Bacon, and John Eastman voted to let property owners Kevin and Carolynn Cozen get away with no penalties or fines for illegally renting their single-family home on Hillside Drive.
June Lake’s Winter Festival and Triple Threat Winter Triathlon event was a great example of a community coming together and being proactive in response to the loss of its biggest business booster.
When Mammoth Mountain Ski Area announced (unexpectedly) its decision to close June Mountain Ski Area for the 2012-13 season, we imagined every June Lake citizen’s hearts dropped to the bottom of his or her stomach. Ours did.
We are pleased to hear that Mammoth Dog Teams owner Jim Ouimet finally got word this week that he will soon be able to move his dog sleds and gear into a covered indoor space instead of storing the irreplaceable and historical items in sheds and outdoors in the snows of winter and heat of summer.
They said it could not be done—that California’s fiscal problems were so immense, so mind-boggling, that no one in his right mind dare even take it on.
Then again, few people have ever said that Gov. Jerry Brown was ever in his right mind, and that goes for his supporters as well as his critics.
We went looking for the face of Mono County this week, but we didn’t find it.
We tried straining our ears for the voice of Mono County, but it was so quiet in Bridgeport that all we heard was the breeze fanning the fog over the Mono Basin and the occasional—and distant—roar of a snowmobile.
The curious vacuum in the county’s halls of politics has taken nearly everyone by surprise.
Now that the first round of High Holidays are on the ebb, we’re left on the edge of speechlessness.
In a word, “Wow” might do it. Given two words, we’d say “Holy Smokes!”
No one around here can remember Mammoth being so packed in a two-week period. Matthew Lehman, a lifelong Mammothite who just happens to be the mayor of our little burg, said the other day he can’t remember one like it.
Having digested the whole of 2012, we’re looking forward to the New Year. Honestly, there was no way we could have predicted the events of the year just past, but we think we’ve got a pretty good handle on what’s to come, that is, if the Good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.
1. President Barack Obama will appoint Marianna Marysheva-Martinez to replace Timothy Geithner as the new Secretary of the Treasury. Americans will spend-spend-spend, all the while complaining she makes too much money.
There has been so much handwringing about our failures around here this past year that it’s been easy to overlook Mammoth’s successes.
Yet we’ve had them, and not just little ones, either.
Last month, the new running track opened south of town at the Whitmore sports complex. It is hard to overstate what a remarkable achievement that is. It took five years of work in the form of grant writing, fund drives, and political maneuvering to get it done.
Pushovers
February 22, 2013
The Mammoth Lakes Town Council talks a good game when it comes to making good on transient occupancy taxes.
But when push comes to shove, the majority of the council showed this past week that it can roll over like so many submissive puppies.
Faced with its first high-profile, public TOT case, council members Rick Wood, Jo Bacon, and John Eastman voted to let property owners Kevin and Carolynn Cozen get away with no penalties or fines for illegally renting their single-family home on Hillside Drive.