Pete Aleshire Staff Writer
Recent stories
- Lobbying contract spurs GCC board dispute
- February 3, 2012
- A lobbying firm’s contract renewal spurred a bitter exchange in an otherwise harmonious meeting of the Gila Community College board last week. Board member Tom Loeffler objected to a $36,000 annual contract for Triadvocates to lobby for the provisional community college district in the Legislature. Loeffler said the Phoenix-based firm has done a poor job in pushing for bills in the Legislature to ensure GCC gets the same treatment as the state’s other community college districts. Loeffler has in the past opposed the Triadvocates contract because the firm also represents Eastern Arizona College, with which GCC contracts for administrative and academic services. “Triadvocates actually worked against us and was aligned with other colleges for workforce development funding,” said Loeffler. “I don’t think they did the job we were paying them for.” However, board member Bob Ashford took vigorous exception to Loeffler’s statement.
- GCC board member ‘flying blind’ on budget details
- February 3, 2012
- Everyone on the Gila Community College board seems to agree they don’t have enough information on their own budget to make crucial decisions. But they mostly disagree on what they should do about that. Board member Tom Loeffler triggered an inconclusive discussion of the issue at the board meeting last week when he suggested the board hire its own full- or part-time finance director. “The state audit showed we are less than stellar in our financial report,” he said of a recent review of the board’s financial control systems. “I believe every one of us has experienced some problem in understanding the monthly reports” provided by Eastern Arizona College.
- Funding for schools better than last year
- Projected state surplus may stave off cuts, but won’t restore losses says superintendent
- February 3, 2012
- The brightening state budget picture could this year give the Payson Unified School District a break from financial trauma, but probably won’t allow the district to regain lost ground, Superintendent Casey O’Brien told the school board this week. Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposed budget projects a $672 million surplus, in contrast to the multi-billion-dollar deficits of the past two years. “Arizona is certainly in a lot better position than a lot of states, but I do not think that we will be restored to the levels before the recession,” said O’Brien. The district has closed a school, increased class sizes, nearly stopped buying supplies and new textbooks, and laid off teachers and other staff in the past three years. “My job is to find solutions to get us through these very, very trying times,” said O’Brien, who recently announced he’ll retire at the end of this school year. “Fortunately, our community stepped up and passed an override, otherwise I have no idea where we’d be.”
- New, quarterly financial report shows Payson not ‘thriving’ but still ‘strivin
- Building permits show sharp rise
- January 31, 2012
- Could have been worse. Might even get better. That’s the gist of the Payson Town Council’s first-ever quarterly financial report, offered by finance director Hope Cribb at a recent regular meeting. “We’re not thriving,” said Payson Mayor Kenny Evans after hearing the report, “but we’re striving to get to the next step.” The most hopeful tidbit in the report lay in the big jump in building permits issued by the community development department, after three years without a single significant new housing development. Building permits for the first half of the fiscal year totaled $95,000, a 35 percent jump from the year previous. That’s still far below the boom times in 2008 and 2007, when the building department approved permits for an average of more than 250 new homes annually.
- Ranger seeks direct sale of land for college
- January 31, 2012
- The Payson Ranger District hopes to get approval to sell some 260 acres of land directly to Payson without putting the land on the market, said Head Ranger Angie Elam. She said such a “direct” land sale remains unusual, but she hopes the regional and national offices of the Forest Service will approve her request for a sale based on an independent appraisal without putting on the market the land the Rim Country Educational Alliance wants to use to build the later phases of a 6,000-student university. The Payson Ranger District has also signed a “cost recovery” agreement with the Alliance, which will move the sale to the head of a long line of Forest Service projects based on the Alliance’s promise to cover the agency’s costs. Among other things, the Payson Ranger District is working on a plan to restrict cross country vehicle travel, monitor the Blue Ridge pipeline, overhaul the overall forest plan and approve massive timber sales as part of the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative. “We don’t yet have the authority to do a direct sale,” said Elam. “Such sales are uncommon. It’s much more common to do a land exchange,” she said.
- Historic thinning plan could save Rim Country
- Projects included in first phase of ambitious plan to revive timber industry and protect the forest
- January 31, 2012
- At least 2,000 acres in Rim Country will be included in the first, historic 10-year contract with a new generation of loggers to protect forested communities through massive thinning projects, a Forest Service team told top elected officials in Payson last week. Loggers will thin two huge tracts of overgrown forest along the Control Road between Tonto Village and Whispering Pines as part of the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative (4-FRI), which ultimately hopes to thin 2.5 million acres in four national forests. “This is the largest environmental impact statement ever done and the largest statewide contract in history,” said Dick Fleishman, assistant team leader in the sweeping attempt to restore the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest. The Forest Service team made the presentation at the Payson Town Hall last Thursday before Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin, Payson Mayor Kenny Evans and other Rim Country leaders.
- Surprise vote gives GCC a new president
- Payson board member’s unanimous election changes dynamics on an often-feuding board
- January 31, 2012
- A thunderstruck Larry Stephenson found himself unanimously elected president of the Gila Community College board on Friday, signaling a potentially dramatic shift in the politics of that contentious board. Outgoing President Bob Ashford took Stephenson completely by surprise when he suggested the Payson board member take the gavel at the beginning of the long-delayed January meeting. Northern Gila County board members Stephenson and Tom Loeffler both said they expected Ashford’s election to a sixth term with the predictable support of the two other members with districts dominated by voters from southern Gila County. Ashford offered no explanation for his decision to support Stephenson, although he has reportedly struggled with serious health problems in recent months. “I was thrown for a loop,” confessed Stephenson, who has clashed often, but politely, with Ashford in the past two years. Stephenson and Loeffler have both persistently criticized GCC’s contract with Eastern Arizona College, which provides academic credentials for the provisional community college district and imposes a 25 percent surcharge on everything GCC spends. Flummoxed, Stephenson objected saying the board should go through a formal nominating process before voting on new officers. Ashford agreed.
- Surprise move gives GCC a new president
- January 30, 2012
- A stunned Gila Community College board member found himself unanimously elected president of the college board Friday, signaling a potentially dramatic shift in the politics of that contentious board.
- Trailer park residents face Forest Service closure
- Some 167 second-home residents face loss of homes and predict big impact on Roosevelt Lake community
- January 27, 2012
- After a decade of threats, the Tonto National Forest is moving to shut down a 167-resident mobile home park overlooking Roosevelt Lake. The Forest Service has decided that the decades-long lease of the land for the park filled mostly with trailers owned by vacation homeowners violates its policy barring exclusive private use of public lands. However, the operators of the trailer park say the action will shut down the only sewage treatment operation in the area and could dry up business at the marina that represents one of the few economic enclaves on the southern shore of the lake. The people with mobile homes in the park have until January 2013 to move them, but many of the homes are so old they don’t meet modern standards necessary to relocate to another park, said David Buckmaster, the leaseholder. “It doesn’t surprise anybody. We started having people sign disclosure forms in 2000, but it’s going to have a huge economic impact on local businesses. They’re all scared to death.”
- Payson financial systems show ‘vast improvement’
- January 27, 2012
- Payson this year cleared its state-mandated annual audit with flying colors. “We didn’t find any significant issues at all this year,” said Dennis Osuch, with Larson Allen CPAs, Consultants and Advisors. The town’s financial accounting system has corrected the problems revealed two years ago when Town Manager Debra Galbraith discovered nearly $1 million stashed away in “restricted” accounts that weren’t really restricted. Moreover, the town staff has instituted monthly and quarterly reports to the town council that have eliminated the lack of oversight that four years ago prompted the councilors to approve budget changes that consumed the reserve fund before they even knew they’d done it.
Recent photos
The Grand Canyon reveals a 1.8-billion-year glimpse into Earth’s past from views like these along the 1.2-mile-long Trail Through Time, with displays of rocks from each of the two dozen rock layers in the mile-deep canyon.
A layer of 230-million-year-old Kaibab Limestone caps the rim.
The Grand Canyon reveals the layers of limestone and sandstone that testify to vanished seas and deserts
Visitors study the colorful layers of the Grand Canyon from the observation window in the geology museum at Yaqui Point.
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