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Weekly News
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Budget cuts have fire chiefs seeing red...ink |
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Saturday, 28 August 2010 |
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By Leslie Willoughby
Special to the Mammoth Times
In a move that surprised the county’s five district fire chiefs, the Mono County Board of Supervisors enlarged their budgets by $33,000 this week, after the chiefs told the supervisors they were running out of money.
That addition did not entirely make up for the $41,477 increase in property tax administration fees that hit the districts last year, but it did help.
Five fire chiefs, representing Wheeler Crest, Long Valley, Chalfant, Bridgeport and Mammoth were joined by assistant chiefs from Paradise and White Mountain in petitioning the board Tuesday.
Reeling from decreased property tax revenues, plus state deductions in the form of “educational revenue augmentation funds” (ERAFs), the increase in the annual tax administration fee seemed to the chiefs to be one issue the board could address immediately.
“Property tax administration fees have gone up 150 percent in the last five years,” said Brent Harper, Mammoth Lakes Fire Protection District Chief. While observing that the county “has the right and the obligation” to collect those fees, he asked for help with the situation.
“We internally have started charging ourselves. These administration fees are quite a shock. I don’t want you to feel singled out. Once we know what those costs are, we can take a path to start controlling those costs,” said Vikki Bauer, District 3 Supervisor.
County finance director Brian Muir said that although the tax rolls went down, the amount of time in the system went up because changes create more costs.
“I am not going to tell you that the fire departments aren’t strapped,” he told the supervisors. “You have the ability to give them money, loan them money, or whatever, but State Code tells me ‘this is the formula and you will charge that.’ I don’t have any option.”
Byng Hunt, Supervisor District 5, agreed that the Board could research the tax administration fee. He said he would “be happy to support staff research into finding ways to get some of that money reimbursed.”
The end result was that the supervisors increasing the First Responder fund from $100,000 to $125,000. This fund supports fire protection within the county in areas outside established fire protection districts. Not all of Mono County resides within a district and Mono County has no fire department of its own to serve those areas. Districts thus provide the protection as needed.
Supervisors also continued support of EMT and First Responder training by releasing $8,000 to be managed by the chiefs.
The $25,000 and the $8,000 together make up the $33,000 noted above.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 28 August 2010 )
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County down one fire truck |
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Saturday, 28 August 2010 |
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By Leslie Willoughby
Special to the Mammoth Times
The largest Fire Protection District in Mono County gave up one of its four fire engines last Saturday and protecting 114 square miles just got harder due to state and county budget constraints.
“We had to set priorities and cut things,” said Fred Stump, Chief of Long Valley Fire Protection District, based in Crowley Lake. “Our decision to shed that engine and cut the budget reflects a decline in revenue. “
Though one district lost a truck, the donation enabled Mono City’s fire district (which serves a neighborhood north of Lee Vining) to eliminate their oldest engine, upgrading to one that is 15 years younger.
“When we got the engine free from San Bernardino County, we committed that if we moved it forward we would include the truck and equipment in a donation within the county or to a neighboring county,” Stump said.
During the 2002 Birch Fire, Long Valley used three engines and had the fourth in reserve in case one broke. That fire, which occurred on the Inyo National Forest about 15 miles north of Bishop, burned across 2,600 acres.
“The choices we are making are specific to this fire department, but every fire district in the county is affected,” said Stump. “Each district receives the majority of its income from property taxes. The state diverts some of that money from districts, cities and counties.” In 1992, the State of California told county auditors to shift local property tax revenues from local government to “educational revenue augmentation funds” (ERAFs) to support schools.
Along with decreasing income from property taxes, Stump said that Long Valley is hit with the highest percentage of ERAFs, when compared to other special districts in the county. Add to that the impact of a 38% increase in the county’s property tax administration fee, and something had to go.
As real estate values decrease, property tax revenues decrease. Decreased property revenues result in decreased fire protection.
In a vicious cycle, compromised fire protection could result in even lower real estate values. The ability to obtain home insurance can impact the price a potential buyer is willing to pay.
“A home is eligible for fire insurance with State Farm if it meets certain guidelines. Proximity to a qualified fire station is one of those guidelines.” said Lesley Bruns, Office Representative of State Farm Insurance in Mammoth Lakes.
The importance of fire insurance to home buyers becomes even more important as “the projected regional warming and consequent increase in wildfire activity in the western United States is likely to magnify the threats to human communities and ecosystems” according to the journal Science.
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New education foundation helps schools bridge their revenue gap |
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Saturday, 28 August 2010 |
By Wendilyn Grasseschi
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
It’s no secret that times are tough for schools. All public schools rely on state and federal funds as well as local property tax revenues to operate. Not one of those three things has gone any way but down in the past few years.
But Mammoth residents do not give up easily, especially when it comes to their kids.
So when Mammoth Mountain Ski Area CEO Rusty Gregory and his wife Bonnie decided last year to donate $250,000 to Mammoth Unified School District, it didn’t end there.
The money facilitated the hiring of enough staff to fold the charter school into the high school and create a supervised independent study program. This met one of the Gregorys’ goals: to increase academic options and flexibility at Mammoth High School.
Things went well. Certified teachers and a few new staff and tutors were judiciously moved around a bit, resulting in more classes, on-site tutoring and supervision. Students could now take several new Advanced Placement classes which was not possible before the Gregory family gift. And that’s not all. At the end of the year, there was still some money left over, enough to fund the same program again this year, according to foundation board member Dan Dawson.
“We initially realized we could funnel our efforts into creating an alternative to the public school system, or we could pour it into the public schools, and we decided to go for the public schools,” said Dawson. (Dawson has been behind the change since the beginning; he was one of Gregory’s partners in crime in proposing to fold the charter school into the high school, something born of both men’s frustration with what they said were limited options open to their high-school-age children).
Mammoth Schools NOW
Education Foundation
And that’s where Mammoth’s newest non-profit education foundation comes in.
“We realized that by creating a non profit, it not only gave the Gregory family a tax write off, it gave us something more credible to work with,” Dawson said.
The foundation is already busy, having just finished holding a “meet and greet” with all the district’s four new adminisitators this week. It now holds the remaining money from the Gregorys’ gift, and will be the repository for whatever funds the foundation raises from now on.
The foundation’s mission has been expanded to include all the schools in the district, said board president Shanna Bissonette.
Right now, the biggest challenge is simply that everything about the foundation and the new independent study program is so new, she said.
Dawson agreed. Everyone is in uncharted waters, and meshing the school board, the new administration and the foundation is going to take shape in stages, he said.
“We are waiting for a strategic plan to come from the district; where they are going, and when and how will they get there.”
Once that is done (something Dawson believes will finally occur now that the new administration is in place) it’s a matter of being in close communication with the district in order to make sure that the foundation’s goals and priorities mesh with the district, he said.
There will be some growing pains, but the new foundation provides an option that the district is glad to have.
“The purpose of the NOW foundation is to support all of our students in the Mammoth Unified School District by engaging our community in the education of students as we prepare them for college and careers in their pursuit to be competitive citizens in the global marketplace,” said Rich Boccia, Mammoth Unified School District’s new superintendent.
For example, this year the extra money allowed the high school to hire a former English teacher, Glen Kenney, to take on the senior AP English class, freeing the one remaining full-time English teacher, Chris Cooper (the English department is down from three to one full-time teacher), to give his junior AP English class the full attention it deserves, rather than splitting himself between two large AP English classes and four other English classes, as he did last year.
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Lee Vining High School, Eastern Sierra Academy morph into one |
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Saturday, 28 August 2010 |
By Wendilyn Grasseschi
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
Last Friday, 55 students from two very two different schools with two very different philosophies met together as classmates for the very first time.
So far, things are going pretty well for the combined students of Lee Vining High and the former, Bridgeport-based Eastern Sierra Academy (ESA), at least according to the new principal, Roger Yost.
“It’s three days in and though the kids are not still totally meshed, there’s a lot of positive energy around here,” he said Wednesday.
Yost, former principal of the academically high ranked ESA, was instrumental in pulling community members and parents together to get behind combining the two schools, after ESA was closed earlier this summer due to budget problems.
Over the course of the summer, the students and parents from both schools raised thousands of dollars for new equipment, desks and a new wood shop for the high school.
In the process, they also built personal connections between the members of two schools that had almost nothing to do with each other before this year; a high school struggling with challenging test score results and a charter school ranked as one of the top schools in the nation by Newsweek magazine.
Those connections are allowing ESA students to adjust to being in a new place with an additional 30 classmates, and they’re easing the way for Lee Vining students to adjust to the high expectations that Yost and the community determined to be the highest priority of the high school.
But that doesn’t mean everything is at the “Shangri-La” level, yet, Yost said.
“It’s a matter of changing the culture and the level of expectation about what kids think they are capable of,” he said. Already, the school’s Advanced Placement classes have a lot of Lee Vining students in them, he said.
And the process is kick-starting even more with one big change that Yost won from the Eastern Sierra Unified School District board – the elimination of the “D” grade.
“That’s caused a little apprehension, but we want the kids to know we will be there to make sure they get through this,” Yost said.
Many of the changes parents and students said they wanted for their school are now in place, including new desks and a new wood shop. Both were made possible through a community fund raiser that netted $9,000.
When asked if the ESA kids were participating in the sports that Lee Vining High School is known for, Yost noted that both schools were learning from each other.
“They have some concerns about it impacting their academic performance, but they probably will join in more when they see Lee Vining students both doing well academically and being involved in sports,” he said.
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New superintendent takes reins for Mono County Office of Ed |
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Saturday, 28 August 2010 |
 Stacey Adler By Wendilyn Grasseschi
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
The first thing most people ask about the Mono County Office of Education’s new superintendent Stacey Adler is “What the heck is the county office of education?”
Unlike its two, high-profile school districts with their rambunctious classrooms filled with students, the office of education operates a bit more out of the limelight, more an administrator than a teacher.
But make no mistake; without the office of education, there would be no school districts.
One of the office of education’s duties is to oversee and approve each district’s budget. If the office doesn’t believe the budget is sound, it can refuse to give it a positive rating, alerting the state to possible problems and sending shock waves throughout the district, which relies on a good chunk of state funding.
The office also runs all Mono County’s libraries and two community schools, educates special needs students, and sponsors special events, such as spelling bees.
Adler, a former Mammoth Elementary School principal, became the new superintendent about three weeks ago, when former superintendent Catherine Hiatt resigned due to a family illness. Adler had been the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the county for the past four years, following four years at MES and before that, work with a San Diego school district.
She just spent much of last week with all the top administrators and staff members from both school districts – Mammoth Unified School District and the Bridgeport-based Eastern Sierra Unified School District – and her own staff. The workshop was her idea and was designed to help administrators be more efficient. The end result was both unexpected and equally valuable, she said.
“It turned out to be as much about building relationships as anything else,” she said.
Can the rift heal?
She hopes to continue the work, acknowledging that the rift between the county office of education and ESUSD that played out over the media these past six months has been anything but beneficial.
Another focus for her is the California state budget fiasco and its potential impacts on education.
“It’s a very deep concern,” she said.
“In my deepest heart I am a teacher,” she said. “I believe you come to the world with a passion and this is mine.”
The result is a deep commitment to service, to helping people.
“I wake up with this every day and it keeps me going,” she said.
The desire to be of service, to teach, translates naturally to a focus on empowering other people, be they staff or students, to succeed, she said. |
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