Personally Speaking: Too busy for its children?

Despite the many articles I've written with a toddler on my shoulders, I like to think we run a professional publication here. 

 

If you ever visited us in the news office, you're sure to meet some of these (in)famous Mendez children. We homeschool, and Ron and I work together on the newspaper. It's our family business, and our family life is central to everything we do.

 

If it's messy or loud in the office, or if I've ever interviewed you over the head of a fussy baby, I've always thought, "If I’m too busy to have my children with me, then I’m too busy. I'll be as professional as I can be, but I won't miss out on my family."

 

I bring this up, dear readers, because sometimes our family life collides with the demands of our business, and we make mistakes. Last week, Ron and I were separated for five nights and four days by the snowstorm. He was at home with our oldest son, tending to our livestock. I camped out in the office building with the other three children, and separately, we each did our part to build the paper ahead of our deadline.

 

Two stories prepared for last week's edition are appearing in this edition instead. One, our coverage of the city of Willow Springs' 2025 in review, was a particularly egregious omission. Without the story, the financial numbers we printed in last week's paper had no context. You will find the six-month financial review for the city of Willow Springs again in this issue, along with my article about it.

 

What you won't find, however, are six-month financials for the city of Mountain View. This time, it's not my mistake.

 

Despite asking for the opportunity to bid on that placement, one of the biggest and most expensive the city will be required to publish all year, those numbers will not appear in these pages. City Clerk Terry Thornton said she, “doesn’t have time,” to get bids from the two newspapers that have legal status in Howell County.

 

That is, she is too busy to send two e-mails that would help her spend taxpayer money the most efficiently.

 

I don't want to be coy here: legal publications make money for newspapers. Like all for-profit businesses, I am out to make a living with this paper, and I'm definitely not sorry about it. 

More to the point, the city of Mountain View should be held accountable for every penny of taxpayer money they spend. 

 

One of the upsides of a family-owned publication is that our personal values can, and do, inform how we run the newspaper. Our values make us deeply uncomfortable earning a living off the backs of the taxpayer, so our legal publication rate is lower than the rate that for-profit businesses pay to advertise. It's lower than our classified rate, the rate at which state law says we may set it, by 30 percent.

 

It is the lowest rate you will find in the area. My colleagues in the industry are constantly telling me to raise it.

 

It's not because we want to undersell the competition. It's because, like most thriving newspapers in the area, we are a mom-and-pop shop, which allows us to charge very competitive rates. 

Since Terry Thornton has been clerk in Mountain View, the city has published with any newspaper but the Howell County News. That is their prerogative, but as the chronicler of irresponsible government behavior, I must point out that we would gladly lose a bidding war. Unfortunately, we have been denied the opportunity to bid.

 

And consider this: Mountain View has passed three versions of its 2026 budget so far.

 

The first had funding for two beloved youth programs.

 

The second cut funding to support mowing for the Mountain View Soccer Association and the Mountain View Family Youth Center entirely. As we have reported, the aldermen wanted to be more discerning with funds for the Youth Center. They wanted details about the facility's operation, and they eventually restored the funding plan to the Youth Center.

 

The third budget still doesn't have funding for the soccer program.

 

The soccer program is run by Laura Wagner and her husband. Yes, Laura is our reporter in Mountain View. She covers city government like the morning dew.

 

The city should be incurring the cost to mow the soccer fields. The program serves 300 children in the Mountain View area. Those immaculately maintained fields bring families to Mountain View, including mine, and we shop, eat, fill our tanks – paying sales taxes on all those things. The cost to mow is minimal, but how much money is the town losing if hundreds of families go elsewhere to play soccer?

 

That doesn't sound professional to me.

 

That sounds like a grudge.

 

If the city wants to be discerning about how it is spending your money, it should be bidding out legal-publication work. Bidding once a year for a locked-in rate would take no time at all. When private businesses compete for government work, taxpayers and voters win.

 

But City Clerk Terry Thornton doesn't care about a win for the people. Remember ... she's doesn’t, “have time.”

 

In 2025, Howell County News earned $1,669.51 from legal publications and classified ads from the City of Mountain View. If they have budgeted publication costs based on our numbers from last year, the city will deficit spend in 2026.

 

It’s not enough money for state law to require a bidding process, but the city wants to pinch pennies. It should be pinching all the pennies.

 

It’s tempting at this point to make the argument that we, as a family and as a business, care deeply about Mountain View. That's why we are hard on its elected leaders and its tax-paid employees like Thornton.

 

But the truth is, even if we never covered Mountain View city news, the city should still be bidding out the work. We can’t earn it by covering it the best or winning the most awards. We can’t even earn it by having the largest circulation in Mountain View, which is 14% of the addresses in the zip code. 

 

The publication with the lowest cost should get the bid. Period. 

 

Citizens of Mountain View, demand a bidding process for this spending. 

 

Mountain View city officials, we'll be waiting to hear from you. 

 

That is, if you're not too busy.