Input? Inyo wants input? Oh boy
Good for Inyo County. In a first, the county’s leaders are asking the local riffraff for ideas about what they think the county’s priorities should be and how the county could create a “strategic plan” of action that would actually see some of those priorities implemented.
Here we go.
For decades county leaders at all levels have only flapped their lips, wrung their hands and clutched worry beads about the lack of affordable housing in general and workforce housing in particular. It’s time the county quit paying lip service to housing issues and actually takes some concrete steps to address housing needs. That means creating a Housing Authority or a Housing Department and hiring a competent, experienced Housing director.
Money talks and BS walks. If there is no staff or dedicated department to tackle what everyone assures everyone else is a huge issue, housing just falls into the to-do list handed to overworked department heads also juggling how to remodel the historic courthouse, promote economic development, and keeping state funds flowing to mandated programs at Health and Human Services.
And no, just offering letters of support to the city of Bishop and pawning off housing issues to the Mammoth Lakes Housing Authority as a “cooperative, regional approach” is not taking action. That’s a bait and switch to make sure housing stays out of sight and out of mind.
Hire some staff and tap into state and federal funds for housing. Use county land, like the 40 acres in Big Pine, to build some affordable housing, preferably by creating a public/private partnership with an experienced, well-funded developer/builder.
This is a painfully obvious approach. Which makes me think the county and its conservative leaders don’t really want any “government housing” or don’t want the government “meddling” in the housing market.
Let’s have it out.
Either put staff and
OPINION
resources into the housing issue or just admit Inyo County doesn’t want to do anything about it and quit wasting everyone’s time.
Same goes with the heartfelt declarations about getting the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to hand over or auction its land holdings IN TOWNS so they can be developed for businesses or housing. Tag this job into the Housing director’s task list. Again, I’m not sure anyone in county government really wants to do this, since it is far easier to make LADWP a scapegoat for all manner of problems, like housing, than to pressure LADWP.
Instead of the timehonored, obviously ineffective “let’s work quietly behind the scenes” approach, have the county housing honcho speak at every LADWP commission meeting and rattle off the land, businesses, houses, parks and landfills in Inyo County that are “on the list” to be handed off. Every meeting. Once more for emphasis: Since there has been essentially no real progress on getting LADWP land, it’s easy to assume this is just a political talking point, not a real policy priority.
On the customer service front, how about finally coming up with a clear “office attendance” policy dictating when county employees should be in the office and when they get the privilege to work from home. The pandemic is over, the Bishop office building is full, the Independence courthouse and campus can appear mostly empty and there are plenty of county residents not sure which county employees are working where and when. Once there is a clear policy, post office hours for each department so the public knows who is “in.”
Here’s a clear goal: apply the “Willie Sutton Rule” when supervisors and residents complain that “too much county money goes to Bishop,” or demand equal funding for similar programs in all communities, regardless of population or need. Willie was a bank robber, and when asked why he robbed banks, he said, “That’s where the money is.” Likewise with county spending: Bishop is where the people are, so the money will flow to where the people are.
When it comes to money, the county should continue to spend money on improvements and staff at the Bishop Airport. This is a recognition that Inyo County is getting a sweet deal at the airport. The FAA paid for millions of dollars of improvements that literally paved the way for commercial air service. More federal funding is likely, and landing fees and fuel sales help defray the county’s ongoing costs.
The cherry on top of the airport deal is that the only reason United is flying into Bishop is because Mammoth Lake Tourism and Mammoth Mountain talked the airline into moving to the Bishop airport and are forking over millions of dollars to subsidize the flights.
The entire county also benefits from the national marketing campaign aimed at getting visitors to fly into Bishop. The best part: Mammoth Mountain and Mammoth Lakes Tourism, not Inyo County, are paying for the slick ads touting flights into the Bishop airport. For all intents and purposes, the county does not have an aggressive tourism marketing campaign. The Bishop airport advertising and marketing efforts are the best national marketing the county has. That alone is enough of a benefit to more than cover whatever the county pays to run the airport.
(Jon Klusmire of
Bishop is going to load up his “input” on the spiffy county webpage dedicated to the effort, located at https://bit.ly/ InyoStragegicPlan.)