Our View

Urdi’s World

May 15, 2013

We can hardly remember what it was like around here before John Urdi arrived almost three years ago. Now, it’s hard for us to imagine what Mammoth would be if he were to somehow disappear.

Two major pieces of progress happened this week under the wand of the Mammoth Lakes Tourism Executive Director.

First, Mammoth took its first steps toward establishing a Tourism Business Incentive District, a TBID, joining about 75 other California cities in such a revenue-generating scheme.

Trail Talk

April 23, 2013

We have a soft spot in our hearts for the ineptly named, but highly effective, committee that has been put in charge of the Mammoth Lakes Trails System.

Against long odds, the so-called Mammoth Lakes Trails System Coordinating Committee (MLTSCC) has taken one central idea—all of us want great trails around here—and created a vision on behalf of at least 21 separate user groups.

Earth Day

April 16, 2013

Earth Day is coming up, on April 22. Forgive us if we’re less than enthused.

Forty years after the great, green, grass-roots environmental movement of the 1970s began, it already has begun to lose its luster.

Hoop dreams

April 3, 2013

There is a timeworn basketball strategy that is as simple to understand as it is hard to execute:

Play to your strengths, cover your weaknesses.

Reduced to that formula, basketball is easy to grasp, except when it’s not.

We’ve been thinking about that during the past few weeks, and not just because of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Rather, we’ve been thinking about it in terms of Mammoth, and Town Manager Marianna Marysheva-Martinez’s push for economic development.

The digital future

March 19, 2013

We can’t wait to meet Mammoth’s new director of community development, whoever that is.

Judging by the job description, he or she will, ideally, possess superhuman powers, with an ability to juggle a minimum of 19 specific job duties and about a dozen peripheral duties.

He or she also must leap tall buildings in a single bound, and demonstrate superhuman strength, speed, stamina, invulnerability, freezing breath, super hearing, multiple extrasensory and vision powers, longevity, flight, intelligence, and regeneration.

Rich Boccia

March 13, 2013

We’re sorry to see Rich Boccia go.

No we’re not.

Yes we are.

Boccia’s sudden resignation as superintendent of the Mammoth Unified School District, effective March 1, elicited similar responses all around town and, presumably, in the cloistered halls of the high school, middle school, and elementary school.

He was a smart, brash, in-your-face Italian American, and Mammoth has never seen anyone quite like him.

Yosemite

March 6, 2013

Amid the debate over the proposed Tuolumne River and Merced River Plans in Yosemite National Park, two questions remain unanswered.

In years of development and tourism in Yosemite Valley, what have we lost? And what have we gained?

Yosemite Valley has a long history of one set of people evicting others in an ongoing exercise in how best to utilize the spectacular, one-of-a-kind glacial valley.

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.

Go Fish

February 15, 2013

The kiss of death for any resort community is doing the same thing all the competitors are doing.

The kiss of success is finding the one thing that people want, or the two or the three things, that no other resort, anywhere, can do.

In Mono County’s case, that one thing is not Mammoth Mountain Ski Area—other resorts have big mountains, too.

It’s not our great scenery—others have that, too.

It’s Alpers trout.

Great, big, fat Alpers trout.

An idea for June Lake

February 8, 2013

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.