Archive - Jul 6, 2012
By
George Shirk - Times News Editor
While the rest of Mammoth was enjoying the Fourth of July holiday at parades, arts exhibitions, and music in the park, the Town Council had a very different kind of holiday.
Meeting in a hurry-up special session on the afternoon of the Fourth, the council began deliberations on diverting up to $400,000 from the town’s Measure U revenue to the airport to secure fall flights to and from Los Angeles.
But it’s more than just fall flights, said Mayor Matthew Lehman.
By
George Shirk - Times News Editor
Mammoth’s legal team kicked into high gear this past week, preparing for a make-or-break appeal to a Sacramento bankruptcy court.
The process will begin next week, said Mammoth Town Manager Dave Wilbrecht.
If the legal team, led by town attorney Andrew Ross, wins its case, there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for a town carrying a $43 million legal debt that it says it cannot pay.
Outdoors journalism suffered a tragic loss this week, when Michael J. Ybarra, a former L.A. Times reporter who had recently written about his outdoors adventures for the Wall Street Journal, was killed in a mountain-climbing fall over the weekend on the edge of Yosemite National Park.
He was 45.
Ybarra had set out alone to cross the craggy Sawtooth Ridge in the Eastern Sierra and summited the 12,280-foot Matterhorn Peak before he fell about 200 feet to his death, according to sister, Suzanne Ybarra, who was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in its Friday editions.
Sharon Harvey, past President of the Mammoth Lakes Women’s Club, and her husband Dave, recently opened Mammoth’s newest bed and breakfast, The Swiss Chalet Inn Bed & Breakfast.
The Mammoth Lakes Women’s Club and the Harveys will host an open house and invite the public to tour the new establishment on Wednesday July 11, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at 101 Hill Street, in Old Mammoth.
Mammoth Lakes Women’s Club’s monthly meeting will be held after the event starting at at 7 p.m.
Now that the Reds Meadow Road is open again, there is a lot going on in the Valley. Here’s a summary of some of the events:
Weekly ranger-led walk to Devils Postpile: This one hour, one-mile walk includes topics such as wildlife, resource conservation, and the geology of the Devils Postpile formation. It begins every day at 11 a.m. at the Devils Postpile Ranger Station (shuttle stop #6).
A $25,000 study to assess whether Mono County and the Town of Mammoth Lakes need another, bigger re- cycling facility is a “last resort,” pending more discussion and cooperation between the two governments, the county supervisors agreed Tuesday.
Both are struggling to meet new state requirements that force municipalities to recycle more of their garbage. Solving “the garbage question” is a high priority for both governments, given high costs and low revenues due to a huge decline in construction revenues.
Mono County seniors will continue to get all the services they currently receive—from Meals on Wheels to other in-home service—for at least the next 90 days after the Mono County Board of Supervisors agreed to extend a current agreement with Inyo County for 90 more days.
But in the long run, a final solution regarding how to serve the county’s seniors still needs to be put into place, county officials agreed.
The Mono County Board of Supervisors voted to certify the election results Tuesday. The election delivered Tim Alpers and Fred Stump as two new county supervisors, with a runoff election between candidates Bob Peters and Tim Fesko this November.
The equipment is on the ground, the crews are ready to go, the studies have been done. Digital 395 is almost ready to break ground in Mono County. Almost.
“All that’s missing is a few, federal right-of-way permits that are still in the appeal process and some last minute work we are doing with the (Native American) tribes,” said private side developer for the project, Michael Ort.
That leaves Ort with about a year to actually construct the project and he said Monday that he is completely confident that the deadline will be met.
A year-round running track project near the Whitmore Pool site will break ground on Monday, July 9, according to representatives from the High Sierra Striders group.
The nonprofit has been the track’s biggest advocate and fundraiser. One of its biggest fundraisers occurred at Wednesday’s July 4 Footloose Freedom Mile race. Member Elaine Smith broke the news about the track to about 350 cheering race participants.
High up in a big, rock-strewn Sierra basin, below a little-known ridge that overlooks everything, a little turquoise lake disappears into a big hole in the ground, water rushing down, sounding like nothing so much as a bathroom shower drain.
Another lake—rockbound and swimming-warm even in late June—lies teal and clean down the road a ways and another—dark blue and icy—lies a bit farther on.
“If you think you can wait until November to decide to reopen this mountain, you can’t,” said June Mountain Ski Area’s general manager, Carl Williams, to a packed room of citizens at the Mono County Board of Supervisors meeting in Bridgeport on Tuesday.
Williams’ comments capped an emotional hour and a half as residents and June Mountain aficionados spoke at length about the impact Mammoth Mountain Ski Area’s closure of June for the summer and coming winter (announced publicly June 21) would have on the unincorporated community of June Lake.
By
George Shirk - Times News Editor
“I’m a BEAR!!!!”
Our View: The Temple of Folly
July 6, 2012
We were outdoors Tuesday morning and found ourselves at the Hayden Cabin off Sherwin Creek Road.
It’s a lovely spot early in the morning, with the brook babbling, the songbirds singing and trees sighing in a light breeze.
It was the day after the Town of Mammoth Lakes declared its intent to enter into bankruptcy to take care of the $43 million in legal debt it incurred during the expansion of the airport.
We wandered up to the flat where E Clampus Vitus had built a memorial to the first thriving business in old Mammoth City—a bar-grocery-hardware store called “The Temple of Folly.”