Okay. Welcome to the Snowmass Village Town Council Chambers. Today is October the 14th. It is 420. And this is the work session.
But, Megan, please do roll call.
Roll call for work session October 14th. Councilmember Fridstein.
Here.
Councilmember Merle.
Here.
Councilmember Schenck.
Here.
Councilmember Gustafson.
Here.
Mayor Madsen.
I'm here.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you.
So today we've got a discussion about our airport.
We're going to have a presentation from Aspen Flyright,
and also a whole lot of people for our local airport.
So we'll start with Amory Lovens.
Welcome, Amory.
Good to have you here.
We're starting a little bit late.
One second.
Amory on a mic.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate the invitation.
Sorry I was delayed by an unannounced closed road.
I'm going to summarize key facts for Aspen Flywright. Chuck Butler will discuss the two
ballot measures for a total of 20 minutes, then 10 discussion followed by the same format
with expansion advocates. Clint described your 83-minute session on July 17th with two leading
expansion advocates, one of them on county staff, as the fact-based staff presentation,
Supposedly official, neutral and accurate. I didn't hear it that way, neither did several council members who asked to hear the other side.
And almost three months and two follow-ups later, I appreciated Clint's kind invitation.
He calls today's sessions, both of them advocacy, the same length, hence manifestly fair.
I think members and the public will have to decide whether giving the pro
expansion side three point eight times more face time than its critics is fair
and a good look but I'm glad to be here. All five of the airport groups in this
taxonomy agree that our vital and beloved Aspen Airport is
up-standard deteriorated and in need of upgrades. But which ones? Everyone wants
a safe, clean, quiet, better Aspen Airport for all. But the three upper groups
shown do not want the bigger planes that the lower two groups want to add.
Bigger planes that are not needed to achieve any of those goals and that they
don't want to mention because it's unpopular. They never mentioned the
specific plane, the 130 to 160 seat Airbus 22300, for which the FAA wants
their airport rebuilt. Our main airlines don't want it. The coalition
Regional jets are the right size.
It's not certified to fly here in the county's lead forecast
or personally thinks it never will.
But our airport would be redesigned for that double-sized plane,
not for the 109-seat, 221-hundred that you'll hear about.
Either one would open the floodgates.
Now, since all groups agree on the modernization agenda except bigger planes
and the other side conflates the two,
I'm going to focus just on bigger planes,
not on the consensus topics like the new runway terminal and transit integration.
When those come up, please ask yourself, does this gold need bigger planes?
It won't.
Modernization works fine with just regional jets.
Bigger planes are a bolt-on, not an unavoidably bundled package deal.
I'm going to address safety, environment, overcrowding, regulation, and finance.
Then Chuck will discuss the ballot measures.
Aspen Flyrite can't do that as a 501-C3 Public Charity.
Our respective groups are completely separate and independent addressing different topics.
Aspen Flyrite does science, facts, and public education,
and we carefully document our work at aspenflyrite.org.
Now we're told that the new layout brings critical safety improvements on the ground and in the air,
and that our airport does not meet FAA safety standards.
Both statements are false.
claims that the 400-foot runway taxiway separation is an FAA safety requirement
amid the punchline if we want to bring in bigger planes, but our airport is now
safe for the airplanes that can legally use it. No analysis shows that it
has any safety problem or how expansion for bigger planes would fix that
problem. FAA designed our 95-foot wingspan limit to be exactly as safe
with our actual planes and layout, as with standard ones.
That equivalent safety has worked fine for 25 years, there's no reason to change it.
FEA said they wouldn't make us, you'll see the video, Deputy County Manager Rich Engelhard
said two years ago that our airport is about as safe as it can possibly be.
This month Bruce Gordon said as regards safety and the proximity of the taxiway to the
runway, I personally have been flying in and out of this airport as an ATP commercial
in CFII rated pilot to top levels for over 40 years had never felt the current
distance to be a problem or felt unsafe. Now I think the word safety is being
thrown around here as a magic incantation but not an actual need. The
county was unable to show me any analysis of an actual safety problem.
That's a myth. And I suppose theoretically wider separation or wider
Their runways might make operations a little safer, but claiming that is really an attack
on FAA safety standards, which don't call for those improvements for the planes we have.
I'm not prepared to do that without strong evidence for which I can find no basis in
practice or literature.
Also bigger planes are not safer for basic reasons.
the new United E175s will have better avionics.
That's good. That's done.
Now, the FAA does prohibit local enforcement of unjust discrimination
between different aircraft type sizes or operators.
So once we allow any bigger planes in, all that fit can come,
even if they're dirty, noisy, and bad for climate,
like the many hundreds of private 737s, A31920s,
and many, many of other types.
Bill Tompchich's misleading 737 post
is almost all about implausible airline use,
not the lighter private versions
that are the real concern.
Now, nobody knows or can know
whether worse old private planes would add more harm
than bigger new airline or private planes could subtract.
So, net environmental effects
are unknowable and unenforceable.
But counting just airline planes' impacts,
small fraction of all our flights. The county's official forecast plunks all
six of the specific environmental goals that it's claimed to deliver or align
with. Rather than falling at least 30% by 2030 in yellow, the red data show that
noise would rise and then fall imperceptibly. Noise damaging nitrogen
oxides would just keep rising and CO2 emissions would fall little or could
rise with proposed new east coast routes.
The other three goals are also missed.
The environmental benefits of the county's plan have been quietly dropped from the modernization
plan online and yet are still advertised as what it would do.
These goals may however be met within a decade, then far surpassed by super quiet and
Clean Plains, whose $118 billion global order book now has more electric than fueled planes,
but the county has refused for two years to learn about them, and they're not in the forecast.
They will leapfrog even the best fueled planes, like the 220-100, leaving our new airport
potentially not fit for purpose, overbuilt for fueled planes that can no longer compete.
And they will not need wider wingspans, as was thought until four years ago.
New technology can reach any U.S. airport, even London, yet fit today's airfield.
There's also a public health sleeper that worries me.
Jet engines blast quintillions of dangerous nanoparticles toward the kids' ski school
at the base of buttermilk and scatter them also onto the flight path.
Nanoparticles are not regulated.
Their levels added around the airport have not been measured.
But our citizen science measurements of air quality last year concern me
and should concern everyone because new medical science implicates nanoparticles in many serious
conditions not previously described air pollution. How many more visitors can our communities
value and values accept? The county forecasts 31 percent more business
jets flights and airline passengers in the 20 years from 2022. The FAA forecasts three-fourths
more airline passengers in 2050 than we strained to serve now and then forever more, it's pretty scary.
That future threatens ever more queues, sign-ups, limits, blackout dates for all our activities
that we need for a good life of viable workforce and strong families.
And that's just the airline passengers, not the unknown and uncontrollable numbers arriving
by the dominant private planes, especially forecasted charters with up to 60 seats that may or may not be used depending on market conditions.
Are we full yet?
See, if you don't think bigger planes will come, why build for them?
If you think they will come, do you really think our elected officials will suddenly become able to halt the growth in STRs and other lodgings that really drive it?
If not, why enable airport overgrowth so we can find out, irreversibly?
Why create big permanent problems when we don't need to?
And speaking of the community with deep gratitude and admiration to all the citizens who work so hard on ASE Vision,
I'm sorry to report that it did not yield the robust consensus officially claimed.
Three-fifths of its nearly 160 initial volunteers quit, many feeling herded.
only 30% endorsed part and a handpicked 10% endorsed all of its findings.
Nearly as many citizens opposed them, including two previous airport directors,
former county commissioners, and top local pilots.
So it's that basic lack of consensus despite tightly controlled information and process,
that's why we are arguing now.
Many folks assume we have no choice because the FAA has originally mandated
a new airfield for very planes. That has never been true.
Of course the FAA would like bigger planes for what it calls greater access, more planes and more kinds.
A goal curiously not in its mission or objectives.
Purocracies love standardization.
The FAA likes to retire layout exceptions where it can.
It rarely makes new ones, but there is no mandate to eliminate them and we couldn't.
Aspen has 85 of them, any unfixable.
The aviation mantra standardization equals safety is valid for and borrowed from operations,
but it doesn't fit our airport layout situation.
Our airport is necessarily unique.
The FAA is constrained by both law,
including its own rules and politics.
Legally, it's on thin ice.
It can choose to modify design standards
when justified by unusual local conditions
and acceptably safe.
It must conform to local laws and regulations
which are themselves an approved basis for modifying standards.
Bittgen County citizens may soon clarify those rules.
Aspen is United's most profit-intensive airport nationwide.
It's the state's third busiest airport used by many of our nation's most wealthy
and powerful individuals, vital to a community with exceptional political influence.
With the FAA then really choose to block runway reconstruction
to achieve trivial business jet access gains not requested by our airlines,
offering no material safety benefits and inviting a potent political and perhaps legal backlash.
I think rational adults would rethink.
There is ample discretion and rationale for a reasonable resolution,
much as occurred three decades ago,
when the FDA wanted to abolish our night curfew but backed off.
A reasonable resolution was reached.
Of course, we had different commissioners then.
Now, much does depend on the attitude of the powerful FAA, although we learned in 95 that
its edicts can bend to political realities.
18 months ago, the regional manager, John Bauer, addressed the BOCC in his sole public
appearance here.
And I asked him, if the county stops asking for bigger planes, can it keep the present
airport layout modification standard, 95-foot wingspan limit?
He twice said yes, but we would lose future discretionary grants.
Well,
I meant to play the other one first anyway. What do you want me to do?
What? This one?
What does that do?
Sorry, I'm going to have to repeat those because we didn't have the sound on in your system.
So what you said before, could you keep it the 95 foot wing span restriction as a rule that I think I've been fairly clear that we would probably at that time set your funding to, that it's not a rule.
So if Chicago decided that it wanted to wait.
So could you keep it the 95 foot wing span restriction, absolutely, but I think I've been fairly clear.
So what you've said before, could you keep it the 95 full weeks ban?
Why are you going on to the next slide?
And what you've said so far is that could you keep it the 95 full weeks ban?
I think I've been fairly clear that a lot of the cases we would probably have done.
So that if the county decided that it wanted to wait
and not go straight away for bigger than 95 foot, less than 118 airplanes, we could keep
what we've got and continue the MOS. Is that correct?
Yes, but there's caveats to that, right? I mean, we've talked about it. We're not
going to provide anything other than your entitlement for any of that. So, yes, those
are all decisions that are the county's decision to make.
Thank you, and I'm afraid the two were playing on top of each other, but at the beginning
of the second one, I talked about are you going to revoke our modification of standard?
He said no.
I said that was good.
Now, in a later visit to FAA headquarters, John Peacock asked more senior FAA officials
what they wanted, but he left out the if part of my questions.
That of course elicited the opposite answer and deceived commissioners into assuming that Mr. Bauer's double offer here of FAA policy was wrong or overruled and they've dutifully ignored it ever since.
But before I explain why we don't need his grants, let me briefly address the scary threats we hear of what the FAA could do if we resist.
Expansionists threaten clawed back old grants, a downgraded airport that punishes us for not allowing bigger planes by restricting us to smaller planes, and a prohibition on simultaneous use of the runway and taxiway.
That would dramatically cut peak capacity. Those threats are all fake.
Mr. Bauer specifically dismissed the first two in the same recorded BOCC remarks.
The third one is an indirect way to achieve the same aims as the second.
It's even more hostile to the FAA's own core goals of safety efficiency and especially access.
Now, any of these extraordinary actions would require an elaborate process triggered by an egregious violation of law or rule that no one is proposing.
Importantly, the FAA has made none of these threats, as the county and its surrogates falsely imply.
They were all made up by the county and its consultants to scare people.
The FAA is powerful, but it's not unconstrained and it has rules.
I think the way you tell it's fake is that the FAA is not making the threats
and it's the only one that could carry them out.
But doesn't our airport still need the discretionary grants
it would lose by not letting in bigger planes?
No.
And that free money from all federal taxpayers comes with significant costs and risks.
Each grant locks in another 20 years of the FAA behavior that's so troublesome now.
And now the imminent billion-dollar FBO deal comes in time and in size to make that substitution work.
In March, our financial analysis found that the proposed $100-plus million or more of FAA grants being urgently sought
and now driving frantic county policy are not actually needed.
Our April update confirmed and strengthened those findings.
But right now, as the county pleads poverty, it's about to sign this billion-dollar contract
with Atlantic Aviation for another 30-year monopoly on the FBO-serving private planes.
The county's cost estimates show that its bigger airport would cost about $335 million.
dollars, minus $195 in federal grants for a net of $130, formally $219, suddenly changed.
FBO fees could pay the $8 million a year debt service with $15 million a year left over.
On the same county cost estimates, our better airport with no grants, because no bigger
planes, and $88 million lower construction costs the county tends to ignore, would cost
$247 million, with annual debt service of $16 million on the same bond terms.
The $29 million of annual FBO fees that Mr. Peacock revealed September 10th could aptly
fund either approach.
And then, of course, Atlantic's 54% higher offer than we assumed, plus lower interest
rates made our findings even more conservative.
Now the county is hoping for this 29 million a year of average FBO revenue, plus nine figure
FAA grants.
If they get both, then even if total cost rose to say a half billion dollars, debt service
would become only 13 million a year on their plan, and the expected FBO fees could pay
it with about 20 million a year left over.
But airports are not allowed to accumulate a big surplus, and their income must all be spent on the airport.
So they drown in money and have to slash fees, promoting still more growth.
Perhaps that's why the county is now lobbying to remove that federal restriction,
so those airport surpluses of about 20 million a year could be spent elsewhere.
That makes this an awkward time to claim they can't afford to patch the runway.
Now the county's five attempts to discredit our financial analysis showing the grants aren't needed,
cited in the readings page in your packet, all crashed when they ran out of truth.
We use their own numbers. Arithmetic is not an opinion.
Their fifth strikeout on September 10th claimed FBO revenue could support only a third the bonds that our better airport would need.
We're about to publish a response to that.
They reached this conclusion by assuming it.
Without logical evidence, the consultant assumed high-risk, high-cost, tightly restricted junk bonds,
as if not adding bigger planes somehow must add huge financial risk.
They ignored the airport's dozen risk-reducing attributes, many of which the county touts for its bonds.
They ignored the nine proposed credit-enhancing measures that our five expert advisors thought adequate to achieve investment grade.
So the county would structure its bonds for a 5% rate and probably a double A rating.
Its hit job consultant assumed high risk and bad design to make our bonds unratable in up to 8.5%.
Mr. Peacock at all also seriously misrepresented many other aspects of our analysis.
I think all involved in that exercise should be embarrassed.
So what should the BOCC do?
The 8 April update and strategy letter in your packet suggests a sensible way
forward. It's like this. Except Mr. Bauer's offer that you sort of saw
just now on videotape basically they keep their grants we keep our layout.
Propose a new layout plan to rebuild the runway where it is at our own expense
as soon as they let us making the FAA responsible for any delay. Move ahead
briskly to design a great new terminal and all the financing, offer to resubmit the valid
original forecast if needed for a consistent record, stop the disinformation campaign,
and start rebuilding public trust.
We can then thank the FAA for continuing to keep it safe and politely decline its
undesired services as Aspen's developer in chief.
Could they refuse?
Yes, but they're also bound to respect local laws and rules.
So if the voters change those, the FAA must change too.
And our commissioners who all say they don't want bigger planes could make it so.
Investing our own money at our own pace would regain planning independence
from a vitally safety-skilled federal agency that cares only about aviation
and seeks to impose its one-size-fits-all growth ambitions on our valley
without regard to any of our constraints' needs or conditions.
Preserving our half-century of thoughtful growth management would be a giant step toward protecting our home, our community's character, and values, its real estate value, and our quality of life.
One last thought. When we choose is as important as what we choose.
It's unwise to make big airfield choices in this decade because urgently seeking those
expiring federal grants risks building the wrong thing when we're in the middle of aviation's
greatest revolution in history.
Rushing airfield decisions is like accelerating your car into a snow squall.
It's really prudent to slow down until you can see where we're going.
United's recent order of planes that we were told didn't exist has secured commercial
service now for decades fitting our airfield and with better avionics that's
good so there is no need to rush and every reason to wait while we rebuild
the runway at the terminal we have plenty of time to let the aviation
revolution unfold and learn what we really need and now thanks to the
vast FBO windfall but just in time we have the solid revenue to afford
especially if the people and elected officials like you get informed and
way in. Thank you.
Thanks, Amy. Chuck, do you have a follow up?
Can you hear
me? Yes. Good. I'm also going to do this for myself. All right. This should work. My name is Chuck Butler. I am a Snowmass Village resident. So I have attended a number of these meetings virtually and I can't thank each one of you
enough for what you do and your time here today, especially as it's campaign and election
season.
I don't envy any of you now that I've gotten a taste of what we're doing here.
Thank you.
I am one of the founding members
of our airport, our vote.
This started as a conversation over a year and a half ago with meeting some of our
friends at Aspen Flyrite and suddenly getting sort of a new generation of locals politically
interested.
You know, we are, I'll say long time locals, I think that's very fair, you know, the core
group that was involved with Citizens Against Bigger Planes and then ultimately, you know,
stuck with us and are now in it for the long haul with our airport, our vote, are part
of a grassroots movement that had like true organic growth.
I say this, we volunteered our times, time, you know,
not one local involved in this is being paid for their time,
you know, their boots on the ground.
And I think this is about people care, people are interested.
You know, we got involved because it didn't feel
like the board of county commissioners.
We're hearing what we were, what was being said
at meetings and we were strongly encouraged
from people on both sides to get involved.
And so that's why we're here.
here. Some of you may have met me in the streets as over 30 of us circulated petitions in July.
And we came back with over 1,200 signatures. I think it was 1,203. Might have been 1,207.
Thousand on the nose were verified by the county clerk. And we very proudly were able
to put this on the ballot. The first ever citizen led initiative of a change to the
do want to bring up the homeral charter for one second.
Some people in the community have criticized why we went that path,
why we went that route on legal advice from numerous legal sources
and in doing a lot of research. No up or down vote
that we could come up with was legally enforceable.
So changing the legal charter to put this in, put a matter into
the hands of the voters was the best path forward.
Excellent.
Thank you. So where we stand on the airport? I think this is important for
me to clear the air on this. We are for every positive change at the airport. The airport
layout plan checks every box except for this agreement we're talking about is about the
separation. So it's clear and on the record for this council and for anyone listening.
you know, we know the runway is failing and we want a new runway, you know, we want to
receive the FAA.
If that conversation can be had and if the Board of County commissioners can represent this
community the way that many think it can. If that's not the case, I'll defer to what
Amory said and a lot of his research and studies and findings and presentation for, you know,
breaking down those numbers. The elephant in the room and part of this conversation is the
billion dollars that is set to come in and it's plus minus but I'll say a billion dollars
that's set to come in via Atlantic over the next 30 years.
We are for a safer, cleaner, better modern airport.
Nobody, it's an incredible amenity.
We're lucky there's another ski town in this country,
to my knowledge, that has an airport less than half a mile.
End of a runway is less than half a mile from a ski resort.
That's just incredible.
So we're lucky to have that.
And to say for people to say that we want this to go away,
we want commercial service away, it's simply untrue.
We want the best for the community.
And I think what really got a lot of us passionate about this
is that we want the community to have a say.
That leads us to the ballot measures.
So there's two ballot measures as you know.
We represent 200 and 200, I can tell you,
I've been walking, I've been going door to door.
I've been part of our street team.
And last night I spent my time just near your neighborhood
and behind the rodeo in a stallion circle,
I guess it's the neighborhood.
What we are hearing and what people agree with
and the reason we did this is that question 200,
it blocks out the noise.
This has nothing to do with the runway growth.
But this is everything to do, question 200 does,
about giving a voice to people on runway decisions
and what the future of this valley might look like.
That's the question.
That is what it says on question 200.
And this empowers, and we believe this,
this empowers the board of county commissioners
to speak on behalf of this community with the FAA.
And I know there's been a process.
I will credit to Jackie Francis
and to everyone who involved in that,
But we've heard now time and time again, whether it's from Mayor Tory and Aspen or any of a number of members of that group, of that board, the vision committee, sorry, that it was flawed.
And I will leave it at that.
I'm aware of our time so I do want to, you know, I'll be quick and I'll hand it off to the next group.
one C is reactionary and problematic and it would have been great if it was
simply a discussion over 200. We are now talking about one C and we have a
position asking people to vote no on one C. This is asking the residents of
Pickin County to vote away their right on the airport on airport matters. This
is a historical right. Aspenites are the residents of Pickin County have
voted on this airport four times.
So again, you're asking to turn away this right,
historical right, and ultimately hand this off
for the rest of time.
This doesn't get undone.
Our group thinks that this puts special interest
and growth ahead of community input.
And I have a legal memo here,
which I'm gonna hand to each of you for review later.
We won't be reading this together.
But I do have a memo from a legal team from Mark Ruskin and one of his partners, Nate Bruggeman.
One see the way it's worded and if ultimately put into place, it risks violating the home
rule charter as well as the U.S. Constitution and the Colorado Constitutions.
So I'll hand that out here in a second.
I want to leave you with the thought, you know, we appreciate it as a hectic time of year.
The election is a time of year that, you know, tensions are high.
Half of our friends and family are on vacation.
We got spring fall break coming up.
People are in and out of town.
You know, this is an incredibly challenging time to be engaged, active.
I appreciate everybody's time.
I hope everybody gets out and votes.
And I hope that they can take a moment to read and understand what these ballot measures
are truly about, what they're saying, what they're asking people to do.
And if 200 prevails and we then go to what would probably be a special election or an
election at some point in the near future with specifically an up or down on the runway,
way, if the people speak, we win or lose, that's all we're looking for.
And so I appreciate your time, I appreciate the community's time, and yeah, thank you
so much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Amri.
I have a few questions.
Yeah, I think everyone's going to have a couple of questions.
Thanks, Chuck.
So,
I'm curious to know how you see the process happening.
So, there was clearly a citizens advisory board that was, has been involved for over
the last couple of years, and it was an extensive effort.
If
200 prevails, do you see that process happening again?
We will then create another visioning committee to sort out the future of our airport.
And so we're on the same page.
He cannot answer any questions about the ballot, about either ballot measure.
So if 200 prevails, I would envision that the existing airport layout plan,
The current the one that is currently on its way through the approval process that that would get put to a vote
So that they they are calling for a 400 foot separation. That would be what?
With our verbiage would get put to a vote
Does that make sense? Yeah
Okay, yeah, no, so I do follow the airport advisory board
I and two of my director colleagues sought membership on it, but we're turned down
and I continue to follow it.
It is notably not reviewed, not discussed,
the major critique I did on the forecast.
They simply voted without paying attention to it.
And the same has been true for other sizable pieces of careful evidence submitted to it.
I don't think that's wise.
I don't think it leaves the members as well informed as the BOCC needs them to be.
And I recently had to actually admonish my friend, Dan Bartholomew, for saying some ridiculous
things about advanced airplanes.
I had just, as it happens, lectured on that subject at Stanford where the two top aero
professors were there and found no errors.
And I really was embarrassed that the AAB members, many of whom are dedicated and very competent,
are receiving wrong information and the public is unable to correct it by process design.
So I think in principle it could be a very valuable organization, but it's not there yet.
it needs to be more independent and follow a really proper process of weighing all evidence.
So, Amy, you're a consultant. I heard you say the other night you've been a consultant for 50 years.
The county brought in a number of consultants on this project as well.
You just don't agree with those consultants. Is that right?
Not generically, some of them I think did a good job and are very capable. Some others
I was not impressed with and I would not have hired them. But I think these matters should
be settled by reason based on evidence and documentation. That's what we provided. And
whenever we criticize the consultants or anybody else's findings, if you go to
are thousands of hours and hundreds of pages of research all online, you will find them
laid out in proper scientific fashion. I'm a scientist by profession. I hope it's not
immodest to say that Stanford's scopus analysis just placed me in the top two percent of
the world scientists. I take my professional obligations as a scientist seriously and
And when I see error, I try to correct it.
When I see truth, I support it.
That's my job.
Okay.
Tommy, you had a question?
Yeah, I have a couple questions.
I fully appreciate how complex this is.
I spent 18 months on their airport vision committee, endless meetings.
So I understand the basic technology that we're talking about.
I'm also an architect, I understand how things lay out.
So I have a couple of really simple questions, Amory, for you.
And if you give me simple answers, it'd be really helpful.
So say we build, we all agree the runway has to be rebuilt.
The ground under the runway is failing.
It has to be rebuilt.
And the only question is whether they bill it where it is, 320 feet of separation or move
it 80 feet, center line 80 feet.
That's the only issue we have here.
So and I think it was unexpected but wonderful that they found the Embraer 175 and they juiced
up the engine so it can operate here and they're coming here in December and they're
going to operate for 15 or 20 years, whatever the lifetime of that is.
So, if we build a new runway in the current location and commercial aviation will be using
the E175 for 15, 20 years, whatever the lifespan is,
the runway will last 40 or 50 years.
What happens if when the Embraer can no longer operate here and the new planes that come out,
and I know we don't know this but the new planes come out and they don't have
smaller wingspans but they have larger wingspans than the 96 feet that we're
allowed today would be allowed at the runway. Where are we at then? Then we get
to revisit the question based on the actually longer than 20 normally 30 or
40 plus year development of aviation since then. Now my own professional opinion
closely following that world is that by then it will be a completely moot
question because the very efficient electric planes not necessarily with
longer wings will be cheaper to buy and cheaper to run. And I didn't hear what
they're going to be shorter wingspan to longer wingspan. Some will be shorter
because some might be longer. Some will be longer. Longer is the classical
design solution. Until about four years ago that was thought to be the only design
solution. We now know it's not because of actual flight testing and further
development of other types that can have shorter wings, can fit our airport
and can have comparable capacity and range.
And those are emerging incredibly quickly,
on roughly the same time scale as a whole new airport, by the way.
So, because the new planes by very wide opinion in the profession
will be generally cheaper to buy and to build than fueled planes,
including the better ones proposed here like the 221-100.
I think the fuel planes in the timeframe you're describing will have been really struggling to compete
and will be well underway in getting replaced by planes with enormously lower noise emission and pollution
than any fuel plane can be.
So that was you're really speaking don't exist yet right they're not nobody's
come up with a prototype yet no that's not correct there 80% of the world's top
25 aerospace companies are involved there are many prototypes I was just
looking at one in Sweden a couple of weeks ago just the day before its
hang a roll out. That one does happen to have longer wings. Some others do not. Some
I can talk about, some I can't. But it is a whole petting zoo which is featured in my
latest Stanford lecture that's online. If you go to our essays, essay five, go two
things later, you'll find something called fossil free flight that gives you a lot
of the supporting detail. It's moving incredibly quickly, but you're speaking
I'm thinking correctly to the last point I made about it's important not just what we choose but when we choose.
We don't need to make that decision now about whether to bring in bigger planes.
And I'm saying it's unwise to do so and we have time to make that decision.
So now we should rebuild the runway where it is, taking much more care with the geotechnical stuff.
Any of the old cowboys would tell you that's a wet meadow with three streams in it
and it wasn't designed to build properly for that.
So that's got to be done right. I hope the FAA can help us with that.
But then we're set on commercial traffic for decades.
You can argue about how many decades.
Meanwhile, the aviation revolution unfolds,
the fog clears, the mud settles.
And we get to make wiser decisions based on what we then were.
I want to move this along just because we have got a lot to do tonight.
Let me ask also a simple question.
If we do move the runway, what are, in your mind,
what will be wrong?
I mean, what are we worried about a year after it's completed, five years after it's completed,
15 years after it's completed? I mean, what is it that we are so worried about if we build this
bigger runway? Because we know we're not going to have larger commercial planes for 15, 20,
or 30 years, as you said. We're going to operate the 175s. So just tell me really
simply one five fifteen years what is what are we worried about just to be
clear many of the super efficient and electric planes are being our anteric
service in this decade and even some in the next few years the smaller ones so
that they are not 20 or 30 years out no but up but I think that I can't speak
for Sky West they've just invested in all these new embryo 175 they're not
going to throw them away in five years they're going to operate them here unless
there's some really strong reason not to. I'm saying there there will be strong
economic and impact and other reasons to seriously consider whether to keep
operating let alone. Well that's great. I mean they bring in more efficient
quieter planes that's all better. They could operate down either
runways. But what's wrong with moving the runway? Let me take it on
First of all, risk management is about minimizing regret at what you did you wish you hadn't
or what you didn't do you wish you had.
So you're asking me to look back from that perspective.
And I would say one of our regrets could be that we wasted $88 million in a lot of
hassle building an airplane, excuse me, building an airfield design for airplanes that are
no longer the future of aviation but will be getting phased out.
But let me just stop you there, because I don't mean to interrupt, but moving the runway
80 feet, centerline, is not going to change the operation of the runway, just slightly
slightly larger planes but other than that it's not in any way changing as you
said the operation of the airport as opposed to if you keep the runway or
according according to the county's budget estimates it actually does incur
an additional eighty eight million dollars or so of course of airfield cost
of other kinds moving other stuff around okay I didn't want to get into the
costs. I'm trying to talk about the practical, physical things.
So there is significant money involved. Secondly, by moving the runway, we would have opened
up the airport to all kinds of airplanes up to a 118-foot wingspan. Anything that can
get here, there might be a weight limit, would be able to. We couldn't stop it.
we couldn't ensure any of the outcomes we wanted.
There are arguments about what the net effect is, and the answer is nobody can know, but
we do know that under the county's plan, that is the airline planes that it expects to operate
and not counting any private ones.
Yes, the A220.
It certainly is, yes.
And later the two planes.
Was it designed for the projective planes, the A220, whether or not it ever shows
up?
the 300 we're designing around, including all those and looking at how many fly in
which year according to their approved forecast, that's the environmental table I showed showing
that all six of the environmental goals in the core community thing flunk. They are
not satisfied as the advertisements say. And that's why I think the posted airport
modernization goals drop those 30% drop goals. They're not in there anymore. There's only a vague
goal, so any improvement is a win and sufficient. I don't think that's what the community had in mind.
I'm still not hearing just sort of a clear answer that if we build a bigger runway, we're going to
get 27, 37s landing here every week or so. We don't know because we can't tell. There are
many hundreds of, shall we say, offensive or unsuitable big old dirty noisy planes in
private ownership. Some of those owners would like to come here. It's not just the 737.
There are quite a few other types, but all those types were lumped together in one category
that the forecasters did not detail. So we couldn't tell how many they expect to
come. So it's on the private side. That's all on the private side. Because you couldn't
operate a big plane fully loaded with commercial passengers, they can't operate
here, right? Well, probably not. But if you have six passengers on it, you can land one.
Probably not, but I think one of the points missed in Bill's comparison, which
has 13 slides on airline 737s nobody's worried about, and one really sketchy
slide on the private ones that everyone should worry about. He didn't
mention that the private ones are usually much lighter. Yeah. And that
that means more kinds can come in than could if they were commercial. Thanks for spotting that.
And I think just to tack on to that, we're talking about
widening a runway for a handful of newer cleaner planes and leaving the back door open to these
dozen hundreds of planes that will be dirtier, older and louder. And I think from a commercial
side we know that A220, Delta has those. You know, SkyWest United American do not,
from what we know, plan to fly those in anytime soon,
I will defer to someone like Bill
or someone else who has maybe a little bit more expertise
on that, but that eight to 20s, I think it's 109 seats.
There's also talk of more directs from elsewhere.
So that could, we could see a game there.
I don't wanna linger on that too much.
I do think to simplify it, more planes,
a wider runway means more planes.
no matter how you look at it means more people and that that will then add to any
of a number of the challenges that we've talked about whether it's you know
you know traffic housing and so there were a switch to the 220 instead of the
Embraer 175 so we have a lot quieter less polluting planes. There's no
question we can get some like 220s quieter and in some respects
environmentally better, but not NOx planes. At the same time, however, unavoidably, we
would get other private kinds of planes we don't want that are worse, and nobody knows
what the balance will be.
Okay. Thank you.
He did touch on it.
We need to move on. Thanks a lot.
Yeah. So, I mean, I guess to your point, Chuck, there's only a certain number of
operations that can happen in an hour, right? So we're not guaranteed to have more
flights.
And may I just one last thought then?
So I think the number one threat to commercial service is widening in the runway, which allows
for more planes.
We have 83% private service right now.
Commercial planes don't get priority on landing here.
I think with more private planes landing here, coming here, this runway being available
to them, we risk seeing that commercial service go down to, I don't know what the numbers
are.
But thank you.
I want to make sure that we're keeping an eye on our time here.
So I mean, I think it's safe to say
there's a fair amount of speculation going on here.
There's a lot that we don't know.
Amy, you provide a lot of important information.
There's a lot to unpack there.
And, Chuck, I appreciate what you had to say as well.
So thank you guys for coming.
I think we need to provide the other side
with an opportunity to present their case.
But again, I appreciate you guys being here.
Well, thank you for asking and let me compliment this group because this is actually a more
substantive discussion than any other elected body in the valley has held with us.
Thank you.
Thanks for that.
You're here.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming.
Thanks.
George and Michael.
I could start while Michael's setting up.
For the record, I'm George Newman.
I'm a former Pickett County Commissioner.
actually George why don't you just hang on a second so we'll make sure everybody
can hear what you got going great
thanks George go ahead I'm a former
Picking County Commissioner has been involved with the airport for the 12
years that I served I was involved with the runway extension in 2009 the reason
that runway was extended safety I was involved with the 2016 airport layout
plan and also the latest one. So I just want to go back to the future for a few
minutes here.
2016 we approved an airport layout plan submitted to the FAA and
it was approved. It went through the normal public process just like public
process that you go through with any issues that come before you. At the
end of that process we started to get some feedback from the community
saying that they did not really understand what was happening and they
wanted to be able to take a step back and get more involved and get more
information.
We asked the FAA if we could do another process to look at a
community-based process to develop a new airport layout plan. This was
really unprecedented. The FAA had never heard of any community doing such a process just
in terms of trying to update an airport layout plan. But they gave us permission to do it,
which was great. So then what we did was we sent out information to anyone who was interested
in serving on this new process to get involved. Some of you were involved. We had over 120
citizens representing a cross-section of the entire, not only the entire art community,
but also from the Valley, Burlington Valley. They worked hard diligently for over 16 months.
They were able to learn, to ask questions, to educate themselves from a variety of experts
that we brought in from around the country concerning all types of airport operations.
In addition, we also have one group, we have five different groups, we have one group that
just dwelled on the idea of community character and how would the airport layout plan that
they were discussing impact, effect, be positive or negative for the community.
That was an important component.
So unprecedented for the FAA, unprecedented for I think for any elected body in the
Peking County, whether it be Snowmass Village, City of Aspen, or the Board of County Commissioners.
We have never, I've never seen a process, a community process that involves so many people,
took so long, has so much information provided to them.
And out of that process came over 50 recommendations that were labeled the common ground recommendations
that were presented to the Board of County Commissioners.
I was on the board at that time, and we accepted those recommendations and passed that airport
layout plan onto the FAA.
Now as what was discussed already, some of the main components of those over 50 goals
led to four or five top goals.
We've heard it, but I'll repeat it.
Safety was number one, improved the safety of our airport and our airfield.
Second was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants by at least 30 percent.
Third was to reduce noise by at least 30 percent.
Fourth was to develop an interconnected mass transit system between the airport,
Aspen and Snowmass that would take vehicular trips off the highway.
way. And last was to manage employment by our values from our community. So this was
not a county plan. This was and is a community plan. Build up from the bottom up by the community
and for the community.
Michael will sort of, Michael will talk about a lot of the things
that went into that plan and certainly will be able to defuse some of the statements that
you've heard today.
And the last one I just want to say because there has been a lot of misinformation presented,
whether it's been on purpose or not, I'm not going to say.
But that last slide was really indicative of how misinformed they are presenting to
the community.
So the last slide talked about
the that that the Peking County Board of
County Commission's ballot initiative was unlawful, went against a home road
charter, and even unconstitutional. Well if some of you saw today's Aspen
Daily News, Peking County Commissioners refuted that statement and I'll just
read that to you if you haven't seen it.
The Pickett County Commissioners reject the recent claim by the group, our airport, our
vote that the language
of the ballot question 1C is unconstitutional. The language of 1C, which reaffirms Pickett County's
authority to implement a plan to make safety and other improvements to the Aspen-Pickett County
Airport, was thoroughly researched and legally vetted before it was placed on a ballot. The
Language is legally sound, and the county stands behind it.
The public should know that the argument that one see
is somehow unconstitutional or violates the county home
room is without merit.
That's just one example of the misinformation
that's being presented to you.
This is a simple presentation.
It's not a lot of mumble jumble, it's not a lot of numbers.
It's just straightforward, factual, and we'll be able to respond quickly and efficiently
to any questions.
So, I'll turn this over to Michael now.
Is your microphone on?
Green light?
Oh, it was a light green, and now it's a break.
Okay, all right.
So, I'm Michael Miracle, I'm here on behalf of a whole lot of people for a better
airport.
And there's some redundancy in some of what I'm going to flash on the screen and what George said,
so I'm going to try not to repeat things.
But as Amory pointed out, we are all in agreement on many things.
And I want to try to speak to you as elected officials who are responsible for managing the well-being of A-town.
and you've been elected to do so, and I think you do an excellent job.
This is fundamentally a conversation about failing infrastructure,
and I'm sure you know that fixing infrastructure is not easy.
The last major airfield and terminal upgrades were over 40 years ago.
Our part is out of date, and we all agree, all parties agree on that now,
but I want to be clear about something.
That was not always the case.
This idea that everybody is agreeing on everything
except for the runway widening and the runway taxi separation
is not true.
I was on the community character working group.
Tom, you were on the vision committee.
This attrition and this lack of faith
and this criticizing of the process that you're hearing,
there's a reason for that.
That's because there were a lot of people who were part of that process, who were dug in at a hard no to everything on day one.
No new terminal, no new runway. CRJ 700 can continue into the foreseeable future, and by that they meant decades.
Not forever, but decades.
Over time, everyone, more and more people became aware that, oh, actually we did a terminal tour.
The terminal needs to be replaced. Then it became, do the terminal not the runway?
This has been a slow evolution to this level of consensus that we're at now,
where there's only one point of disagreement.
But the reason that there was attrition during the common ground process
is because people realized that the know-to-everything position was untenable,
so they dropped out.
And I want to speak to just a couple more things in the process.
One of which is that this fleet mix, the forecasting has come up a lot.
So the FAA requires that you do a forecast, a defensible forecast.
Amory questions the validity of it. That's fine.
The thing that I think is being confused here is that the forecast is in many ways
is being presented as if it's a goal,
like that we are striving to achieve
the FAA's accepted forecast numbers.
As a reminder, the community proposal was a 0.8% growth.
We went, as a community, as low as we reasonably could,
and the FAA said, that's too low,
that's indefensibly low.
So what the forecast is, it's not a goal,
it's a forecast, it's a tool
that allows you to plan in a reasonable and responsible way for the future that could potentially come.
But to represent it like we are all striving for that level of employment increase,
and it's attempting that the FAA is forcing that down our throat,
and there's some degree of inevitability to it, is not true.
It's not a goal. It's a tool to plan responsibly with.
On the question of funding, this is a reason to do this now.
There is an urgency here because big federal funding sources are expiring.
It's not about chasing money, it's about being financially responsible.
You have to do this, everyone agrees, you have to replace the terminal in the runway.
Why not take free money to do it?
And I'll speak to the FBO as well, but just to be clear, the county brought in consultants
to analyze various financial plans.
I think it's a bit outrageous to imply that they're all lying or wrong, because why would
they do that?
What is their motivation?
Again, I think as elected officials, I would hope that you would hear those kinds
of accusations against your fellow elected officials with a bit of a cringe, because I
think that you bring in consultants to try to understand things all the time, and you
probably, you may ask questions, but you take them on their merits.
And then on the idea of funding this via FBO revenues, first of all, the consultants
analyzed that and said that the county does not have the bonding capability to
use that revenue to bond at the dollar amounts that they need to to spend the
kind of money that you will need to spend on the terminal the runway I think
that the second more perplexing aspect of it is that it is a using the FBO as
your as your principal funding mechanism ties your funding source to the
thing that the opponents say they want less of which is private planes so
So if you're saying let's fund it over here from this source that is the thing we want
less of, it makes it a lot harder to kind of pursue getting less of it, which you really
can't do in any way because the FAA has a strict non-discrimination clause.
So on this funding, because this is a critical component, and Atami brought that up I think
in some of your questions.
The FAA has categorically stated in writing to the county that without an approved airport
layout plan they will no longer provide any grants for current needs or future needs for
the airfield or the terminal period.
The contract that the county is currently working with with Atlantic has some big
numbers.
however Atlantic has in that contract written that if the county does not
abide by the FAA's rules in terms of standardization those dollars will be
reduced substantially substantially I just clarify ask a question for
clarification you say standardization does that mean moving the runway is that
requirement for the FBO? It's a requirement for the county to receive
money and it's a requirement that the FBO has put in there that if the county is
not in accordance with the FAA's standardization measures that Atlantic
will reduce the amount that they're contract to arrange with the county.
I'm sorry, I don't want to disrupt you, but you said we need to get an approved airport
layout plan.
Will the FAA approve an airport layout plan that does not move the runway?
Do we know yes or no on that?
Let me take this, just because here is a direct quote from a letter sent by John Bauer
this summer, not going back to April 2023, a more recent correspondence.
The FAA will not approve any future ALPs that do not meet the 400 foot runway taxiway separation standard, period.
Pretty clear.
Yeah.
And if same correspondence, if ASC, the Aspen Airport, chooses to reconstruct the runway in its current location,
the modification of standard will be terminated and the county will no longer have an approved ALP.
So it's pretty unambiguous, I think. That is me reading direct quotes.
Sure it sounds that way.
And the reason that they are so dug in on this is because of safety.
This idea that they're trying to force bigger plans on us is simply not true.
They're doing away with modifications to standard because there actually is an aspect to standardization that is good.
You know, I liken it to a basketball hoop.
You go to every basketball arena in the NBA and the hoop's 10 feet tall and you can go
through your free throw motion and hit a free throw.
By being fully to ADG3 standards, we will have the dimensions of other ADG3 runways
and it makes it more predictable the pilots know what they're doing better.
They're landing on an airfield similar to the one they've landed on elsewhere.
A 150-foot wide runway is safer.
There are less excursions off the side than a 100-foot wide runway.
We are now, these Embraer E175s have 95-foot wingspans.
That's 95% of the 100-foot wide runway.
And when we go to 150 feet and we have a 118 foot maximum, that is a smaller percentage
of the runway that that plane will be taking up.
And the same is true for the runway taxiway separation.
They want more room for the planes to land on, and they want the planes to be further
apart so they don't bump into each other, which happens.
It happened in Atlanta a few months ago where a plane's whole tail got knocked
off because they ran into each other like this.
And, you know, Amory mentioned that there are 85 modifications to standard at the airport.
That's true. And there are some of them that won't go away, despite the FAA wanting to get
rid of the modifications to standard. But their number one and two priorities,
their sort of non-negotiables, are safety and access. So those are the two things
they're not going to let you do. They're not going to let you violate their safety
standards. Amri is right, the airport is not currently unsafe, but it can be made safer.
And the access question, you know, the community produced a recommendation that really did try
to limit growth and limit future fleet mix in a way that the FAA said, that's just
too obviously discrimination, but as it turns out we don't need to worry about it that much
anyway and I'll explain why.
So these goals George mentioned that reduce greenhouse gases, net zero terminal, greener
planes, and then a few more direct flights.
Something that hasn't come up today is, and again, Amory took the time to figure
this out in detail, and that is to recognize that there is a 98% correlation between bed
base and inplanements. So it's fairly understood and accepted that bed base is the ultimate
governor of tourism volume. And on this managed growth question, you know, he asks
If jurisdictions are going to be able to regulate short-term rentals, that's a question for you guys.
And I think if you want to, you can.
The city of Aspen has done it.
Glenwood Springs started digging in and regulating short-term rentals in 2012.
And in two years, they reduced the number of short-term rentals in their community by 30%.
It can be done. Communities do it all over the place.
We are having sensible conversations about bed base in this community and the idea that the
Airport modernization will lead to a proliferation of short-term rentals that no jurisdiction can control is
Speculated and it's demonstrably false because jurisdictions have regulated them
on
the question of plain size both both commercial
and private. So we know that the immediate term future plane is going to be the Embraer
E175. It doesn't meaningfully move the needle on climate and emissions. There's a slightly
better on one, slightly worse on the other, but it doesn't move it towards our goals.
That A22100, Tom, that you mentioned, that's the plan that the whole common ground
recommendation was aiming at. Delta is all in on this plane, so it will come here.
They'd be flying it here tomorrow if they could. The 109 passengers is nine
passengers more than the BAE 146, which served this market for a long time.
You want to explain what that plane was? That was the plane before the
So it was coming to this market, so nine more passengers, but this Airbus A22100 is the quietest
plane flying in the United States, quietest commercial plane, excuse me, flying in the
United States today.
I won't pull it out and read it to you, but the mayor of Newport Beach, California in 2019
sent a letter to Delta Airlines. This is a community that suffers from quality of life impacts from
its airport noise and emissions and have been trying to figure out how to deal with that for a long
time. This mayor woman wrote a, she wrote a letter to Delta Airlines profusely thanking them for
bringing the A22100 into the community. She said it was a cause for widespread
celebration and that they would be sharing the news far and wide. That may
not be a perfect direct quote. On the big private question, you don't actually
have to engage in wild speculation as is being done on this because there are
other airports that have very wealthy communities that are currently fully
Airport Design Group 3 that these planes could be landing at. So if they
were out there and the numbers you're being told they'd be showing up at Jackson
in great numbers and they'd be showing up in Vale at great numbers but they're
not so the same thing that is happening with the commercial aircraft is
happening with the private aircraft which is over time they are going to
get quieter and cleaner and then in terms of like no one is really arguing
that the big commercials are going to come because they just don't make
economic sense for this market, but you could get the occasional, you could get some direct
flights from East Coast cities that are currently aren't served from us, say New York and D.C.
But from a climate perspective, that is a big win. New York is one of our top two markets
already. They're coming here already. They just take a two leg flight from through Chicago
through Denver to get here. By eliminating one of the takeoff legs, which burns
a disproportionate amount of fuel for a flight, you reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of
that total travel substantially.
So this does sound like a really shocking kind of worst case scenario.
This could happen.
But this, so, Emery put up a few things that, you know, the downgrade to airport design
group 2 could happen if we don't have an approved ALP or this sterilization.
But again, John Bauer said, if you choose not to reconstruct the runway in its current
location, the modification to standard will be terminated.
That then could set off a sequence of events because the 95-foot wingspan restriction
is no longer enforceable because it's tied to that modification to standard
which allows you to have a 320 foot separation between runway and taxiway
versus the 400 foot. So it could go away. And John Bauer has alluded to this.
He has said it to the county. It has come up in multiple public meetings.
Bill Thompson and Dan Bartholomew talked to you about it when they
presented here that that would mean that any design group three plane up
to 118 feet could land at the airport, but only if the taxiway, the airfield is sterilized,
which would mean no planes on the taxiway, and it would dramatically reduce the air traffic
volume, and it would really do real demonstrable harm to any aspect of your community that
depends on regular visitation.
And just, do you want to take this or may I keep going?
You're on a roll.
If 1C passes, it just reauthorizes the county commissioners to be able to do the thing that they do.
And Bill, you asked a great question of, okay, well, if you get 200 and not sit 1C, what do you do?
Well, you would say, okay, well, how do we get something that the community would be okay with?
and that the FAA is going to potentially agree to.
You would do the best way to do it would be to do the exact same thing that we just did.
It would be to bring people together, roll up their sleeves, try as hard as they can
to come up with a values-informed proposal and then do your best to see it through.
So there is, to me, I'm sorry to say, but this is kind of a stop-the-steal sort of thing,
which is a very public process unfolded.
It was, as George said, incredibly community informed.
All of the concerns were raised. They were addressed.
I was in the meetings. I watched it happen to say that they were just dismissed
or that some corrupt consultant just gave the answer that whoever wanted to hear,
the commissioners really tried hard.
They all ran on slow-to-no-growth platforms, right?
Nobody's banging the drum for growth here.
And then the airport opponents did not get the outcome that they wanted,
so they said we want to do it again on different terms,
and we're going to go a direct democracy route.
But you're going to have to get an approved ALP somehow and if you want it to be community informed
You know, it would be smart to support the community informed one that is trying to make its way through the process right now
So so the idea that was presented. Well, why don't we just pause this?
You know, why don't we just start a whole nother process like Michael says?
Why don't we try to figure out how the county is going to try to pay
for a new airfield because it won't be coming from the feds, from the FAA.
Bonding, the county's going to be limited. They may be able to come up with a
way to bond long-term just to restructure the airfield, but that's
it. There won't be any money for ongoing maintenance. There won't be any,
certainly no money for a new terminal, modernized terminal, which the entire
community wants. All of you flying in the flyout, you've got family flies in the
flyout, you guess. You know what it's like in a winter time when when flights get
canceled, what that terminal looks like, it's completely outdated, needs to be
modernized. We have the ability, we have the ability right now to to be
able to utilize some additional money that the FAA has another bucket of
money from Biden's Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act.
There's money there that could fill the gap between the 10%
that the FAA will provide for the new terminal
and the cost of that new terminal.
Those funds go away in 2026.
The county has already lost the opportunity
for the first round.
And in fact, this past year, last May,
when the county had to do some bandage work,
They couldn't utilize FAA grants.
That came out of the airport revenue fund at a cost of about $7 million.
Next May, the airport's going to be closed for an additional week longer to, again, do some band-aids.
That money has to, at this point, come out of the airport revenue fund because the FAA is not going to fund it.
So it comes down to safety.
It comes down to modernization.
It comes down to funding.
and it comes down to timing.
Snowmass, you've got a growing, thriving community.
Your bed base is growing.
The airport is a key gateway to your community,
for yourselves, for your friends, for your guests.
It's, you know, the airport is an integral part
of the economic and social fibric of your community.
Why wouldn't you want to look towards the future
and ensure that your community has that ability to maintain, continue to thrive, and continue to grow.
It's not rocket science. You don't have to be a national physicist. It's just common sense.
And I think, you know, some of the, maybe some of the instinctual pushback that you hear on the airport,
Chuck kind of spoke to a little bit, which is just, we don't need more of anything that it's going to lead to more.
And as I said, bed base is the established, understood governor of visitor volume.
But then let's ask ourselves, how could things maybe be made better by the airport?
George alluded to this idea of transit connectivity.
But for me, this has been the one that I've been most excited about all along,
which is currently fewer than 5% of people who use the airport
use public transportation to get to and from Aspen and Stomass.
There's a reason for that.
The buses are luggage incompatible, it's out on the highway, it's poorly signed, right?
But we know, you all know, Alyssa really knows because she works as an ambassador helping
people find their way, getting off the buses, that we have a highly transit-cultured visitor
base.
We have an incredible head start on people's willingness to get on public transportation,
possibly for the only week in their lives while they're here and get to the scariest.
We know that they do it all winter long from front to get to and from the scary is it is not in any way
Unreasonable to think that if we had a great transit system that was luggage compatible
Or that where you could check your luggage all the way through to the hotel
Which is in the common ground proposal that is one of the many many
Excellent ideas that is in this community generated document
Then you just get on to the bus with a carry-on and you get into Aspen
You might need to take a
Down-Towner to get to your Airbnb or whatever, but that's we're thinking 20 30 years into the future
You know, there's going to be autonomous vehicles. This is
The future we want and to to try to say let's let's slow it down
Let's let's hold off on embracing the future is is the very definition of short-sighted
Thanks guys appreciate it. It's
I think one of the really important keys to this is both the funding and the safety.
I mean, Emery gave us some good numbers, but from what we've seen from John Peacock,
he's very clear about the bonding and how much funding we can actually get for the airport.
You know, it's clear we could either do the airport or the terminal, but not both.
The runway or the terminal.
Sorry, the runway or the terminal.
And so, and I think it's really, I hate when anybody wants to make a decision based on fear,
like if we're just afraid of something because of something that could potentially happen.
I don't think we're making a rational decision coming from the right space.
At this point, to mean what kind of, my question is if the county commissioners are and the
the original community-based process was so valuable
and really willing to listen to all of the community voice,
why there's concern about having a vote by the people
to accept the airport layout plan.
Well, they're not.
I mean, the public has the ability to vote.
The Board of County Commissioner has put that on a ballot.
But it's to give them the power to do it themselves, not for the community to actually look at the plan and approve it or not.
The community has had a chance to look at the plan and they have the opportunity to vote on it on one C.
They can support one C or they can vote against one C and the community then has had that opportunity to vote.
It seems like that if you vote on 100, then that gives the community the right to vote and that 1C gives the commissioners just more power.
It doesn't give the commissioners more power. It reaffirms the power they already have.
As a sponsor of the Pickin County airport, having received hundreds of millions of dollars
and grants over the last 40 years, they have obligations because of those grant assurances.
And they are liable legally if they don't fulfill those obligations.
So it just reaffirms.
Now if the community doesn't like that, they can vote down.
They can vote down on it.
Frankly, the commissioners had put the ballot on first.
We would have only had one up-and-down vote, I'm sure.
The opposition wanted the commissioners to put one on, and frankly they didn't do it.
They should have, in my view.
200 says we want the ability to vote and so you passed 200 and now you still have
another vote. One seat gives the public the opportunity to vote up or down right
now. And just as a reminder which may not be all that public they
had to call them in the espantines but the Pickham County Democrats, you know
This is voted, their board of directors voted unanimously to say no to 200 in very strong
terms because they don't view it as particularly pro-democracy and that there is no alternative
plan on the table.
It is not about giving the people the right to decide on the airport.
It's about slowing this process down.
It's about saying, I don't believe in representative democracy to arrive at a...
Good answer to a complex question that a very large group of people spent a tremendous amount of time working on.
Can I ask a question?
I mean, it's all pretty simple. We all know we need a new terminal. We all know we need a new runway.
It's a question of where the runway is. I mean, that's what we're talking about.
Now, can you shed a little light on, I mean, Henry says, you know, the FBO contract over
30 years is going to generate a billion dollars, and we can pay for everything.
And the county is saying, well, we can pay for the FBO revenues would pay for the runway
or the terminal, we can't do both.
No, personally, I like to hear what you say, but personally, I mean, I like free money,
you know, why would you use all your money when somebody's going to give you money?
But just explain to me the difference, clearly, you know, right people on both sides, what
is the discrepancy, you know, Emery's group says, yeah, we can fund it all in counties
saying we can't.
So where is the discrepancy there?
Well, I'll start. The discrepancy is that, again, I have not seen a contract. They certainly
have not seen a contract. The county has just given Atlantic an extension to work out the
contract and see what this vote is going to be, because if the vote goes in favor
of the opposition, Atlantic is going to reduce the amount that they're going to grant
to the county substantially.
So the county staff, the professional staff, the finance
committee, the airport aviation consultant group out of Chicago have gone through the
numbers, looked at all the alternatives and told the county this is what you're able
to do and this is what you're not able to do. I don't know those exact numbers but
But I know that the county's airport revenue that they generate could not cover the debt
service on a bond for the amount that is needed.
Yeah, I mean, I defer to the analysis that was done, right, by real professionals who
I am not going to sit here and call corrupted.
I mean, I guess it really comes down to representative government.
I mean this is a this is a complex issue and there's been a lot of people who
spent a lot of time on it and the reason why we elect officials is so they can
dig into it and really get the best solutions for the community and so I
think that it's important that the commissioners have that opportunity to
represent the people. You represent your constituents, your
constituents of the Board of County commissioners. The Democratic Party when
we talked to the chair they were not as concerned about the airport what they
were concerned about is representative government and to start to put a wedge
in a homeroom charter by adding an amendment to sort of work their way
through legally in terms of trying to get this petition forward they didn't
buy it. And I don't buy it either. You either have a representative government elected by
the people, for the people, or you have a direct democracy where every issue just throws out
on a boat.
Did the local Republicans have an opinion on this?
They are supporting 1C as well and opposing 200.
So they're the same as the Democrats.
it.
It's like the one thing both parties agree on.
And no surprise, of course, the Aspen Chamber Resource Association representing the business
community is supporting 1C opposing 200, Snowmass doesn't really have a chamber.
So I don't know how you can get the business community to provide that input, but I'm
assuming that the business community is as concerned, whether it be the lodges, the retail,
even the service, because they will all be either positively affected or negatively affected.
I just want to add on ACRA, you know, that people might hear that and be like, well,
of course, they're supportive. They did extreme due diligence on this. You know, they did
not come to this decision reflexively in any way. They did a member survey,
They went and did door-to-door meetings, and if you look at their release that describes
their endorsement, why they're no-on-two hundred-
I'm sorry.
What are you talking about?
Acra.
And there's a data set that's attached to it that is all the survey results, including
all of the comments made by their businesses.
You can see that they did not arrive at the decision reflexively, but it is overwhelming.
It's like 80% in favor of moving forward with the approved ALP.
Well, we're going to have a presentation that we're going through our budget,
and Snowmass Village spends about $9 million a year to attract people to this village.
So we're heavily invested in the tourist-based economy.
So it's, you know, there's a lot of people out there saying they're concerned about growth and we are as well.
We want to make sure that Snowmass Village is inviting.
We have just one more question about growth.
I think when you were mentioning that the growth projections were not goals,
that the growth goal was actually like less than 1% is that yeah so that so
that the there was a growth goal that came out of the original common ground
the citizens product that was then and that goal was 0.8% per year per year
and then the FAA basically said that that is an unrealistic goal based on
your your past growth rates so just for your forecasting tool it has to be more
realistic and I think it ended up being 1.3 still on the low end of what they
considered their acceptable range but but I again I want to emphasize that it's
not a goal it is a forecasting tool so and they just said you know it's like
if you're gonna buy a house for your daughter you say like how big you think
your family is going to be like you're going to have at least one kid we hope but probably
not ten and like so let's get you a three bedroom right like it's just it's just responsible
thinking about the future looking at the past as a kind of a you know to identify some
trends lines for what you might see but it's not a goal.
And was there any conversation about how to keep it to that lower percentage?
Yeah, sorry. Thank you. We should have mentioned that.
So one of the pieces that's in the plan, the common ground proposal, is this idea of flexible gates.
So currently the airport has eight gates, but the new terminal would have eight that could flex down to six
so that if a larger passenger plane came in, a gate would effectively shut down,
which would sort of help keep that employment number at a lower rate over time.
And it was, again, in terms of really taking this growth question and this sense of overwhelm that people are feeling very seriously,
basically they said, how many ways can we come at attempting to control growth via the airport?
And there are certain aspects or certain tactics that the FAA just would not allow for, like the blatant discrimination on aircraft side or proposing a growth rate that just didn't meet their standards.
So the flexible gates was one that's making it through.
And it's a win for people who are concerned about growth, which is everyone.
There's nobody banging the drum for lots more people, there just isn't.
Well, that's interesting because you hear about that the FA will won't let you limit the number of
Flights, right, but they will let you limit the gates
It appears to right right the county has the ability in the terminal to limit the gates and the gates is a misnomer because right now
There are no gates. There's just some painted lines
The new airport layout plant has real gates just like you would see a DIA
So then the county then has the ability to either remove a gate, close it down, or expand a gate.
So that is an important guardrail, and that's part of the airport layout plan that's in front of the FAA right now.
Interesting. Thanks.
Okay. I want to be fair to both parties, so we provide the same amount of time.
Just one last closing comment.
Go ahead.
We have got support from our elected – from all of our elected officials up and down the
valley.
Every mayor has supported this except one who is still spooing lies and misinformation.
So we ask that you join your other fellow elected officials and pass a resolution supporting
1C.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, George.
Thank you.
Thanks, everybody.
Can I make one quick comment?
So, I am so grateful for all these conversations and we're so blessed to be in a community
with so many individuals that are engaged in intentional organization and just engaged in
the thought process and reading everything that's out there and available.
And I do highly appreciate all the elected officials and their input and all the individuals
that have put in time to, you know, create these informed organizations around this topic.
What I really look forward to seeing from everyone is the healing process
after this ballot issue goes one way or the other.
So I look forward to seeing how we're all going to come together around that.
That's a wonderful note to end on. I promise you I'll be part of that.
All right. Thank you. Thank you.
Okay. So great conversation. Good information. Appreciate
all that. We do have the Aspen City Council, the Pickham County commissioners, the mayor
of Glenwood, Carbondale, and Basalt supporting 1C.
I would like to see the
Snowmass Village Council also support 1C. I don't think we can do that today, though.
We're a work session, right? You can't vote. If you want a direction to
prepare a resolution, you can do that. What I'm suggesting is we have a
Resolution drafted for consideration at the next council meeting. I'm
willing to have a resolution drafted
I but I would like to take the next week to really think about the statements that were made tonight and hear from others in the community
Great. Yeah, I agree. Got more to process now. Okay
Please do send us an email and you can find that at to SV under the government section contact the council
You should have a recording available directly as soon as tomorrow, right?
It's less than 24 hours.
Before next week.
Monday.
Sorry.
Week from today, yes.
Four.
Four o'clock.
Yeah.
Well, probably before that, to get it in the packet, right?
Well, if you would like your public comment included in the packet, I would need it by
Wednesday afternoon at the closed business so that I can include it in the packet on Thursday.
first day.
All right. Thank you all very much. Thank you. All right. Moving on our next topic
on the agenda is we're going to have a discussion about our mall transit center and some potential
improvements there. Sam, welcome. Hi.
Can you share my screen?
All right. There we go.
Let's come up. Hi, Sam Guarino, Transportation Director. We've also got Alex Jock with SEH
on the line. If you all remember this summer, we came to discuss going to the public with
the designs that we had so far, some strategies around how we might engage the public to
get some feedback on what we had. During that meeting, Mayor Madsen brought up a thought
for another design for us to look at. Council agreed that it was worth us
taking a look at, so we took it back to SEH to make sure that it was something
that would be possible for us to work with. This design here, as you see, is
the existing Lot 6. The green buses are village shuttle buses. This would
allow us to have six village shuttle bus bays with exterior loading. They would be
going in through that lower entrance and out through the upper entrance. It would
also have two spots for buses to be staged. The turning movements work.
It is a possibility that we could look into this design. There would be some questions, of
course, around pedestrian flow, if it was a direction that we'd like to go. There, you'll
see this drawing here has a pedestrian underpass suggested that would go into where the elevators
had been shown in previous plans to get people across the street without having to interact
with vehicles.
So I'll stop there and ask if you guys have any questions about
this design. Just two questions. Yeah go ahead. And this assumes you're leaving
Raftal owner doing the incremental improvement. This assumes the incremental
improvements. And the second question is what do you do with the 54 cars from
Lot 6? Well and I so I think and this is a question that we had not yet
answered on the two-level design either which is I think why we wound
up with coming up with this Lot 6 design. If this is a, the spots in Lot 6 are a challenge
that we're going to have to meet, whether it means they go away or they need to go somewhere
else, both the two level design and the Lot 6 solutions have that same problem, so that's
what we thought would make sense to bring to the public.
So what are your, you guys' recommendation?
We had a, I'm sure the public would like to have those.
Yeah, probably, huh?
So, I mean, where are the options?
You know, we haven't delved too far into
what a design for more parking spaces could look like.
I mean, the obvious first option
is to not replace the parking spaces.
But like you say, public probably
wouldn't be super happy with that, right?
We'd lose our heads.
I think that you've-
And the drawings that we received from you, Councillor Fritztein, you had some suggestions
for some covered parking in Lot 5 with that lower section covered, and I think that there
was even one that had covered parking in Lot 4 as well.
So that's a possibility, although it does add structures to the numbered lots.
That's as far as we've gone, I don't know why.
One thing I would add to this is this lot six plan versus the two-struck the two-level plan are kind of apples to apples
They don't they both lose the same amount of parking and so I understand but I just question what
Yeah, so we're I mean that's why I mean our initial recommendation was start start with the rafter and
That then melded into the two-level which molded into this one
And so we haven't solved it and in order for what we're recommending tonight
is let's take this out get public feedback and see how much that matters the loss of the parking.
And then you know whether it's the two level plan this plan or just the initial plan we can get that
feedback and see what how y'all want to proceed but that's we haven't solved both all three or two
of these three options lose the same amount of parking. Yeah I think that uh I mean I'm really
not wild about anything that we're looking at right now. My initial reaction was that
maybe this could be another solution if we're okay with giving up the parking. But the more
I looked at it, I'm just like, geez, the pedestrian access is not great. The intention
when we started this whole process was really to try to answer some goals, right?
Reduce the duration of construction, reduce the impact for sure. How do we put all
the pedestrians and the buses in one place so that getting on public
transit is easy? And how do we build it so that you know it's a pedestrian
and first type of infrastructure.
Some of the thoughts that I had as I was looking at these different designs was, should we
be prioritizing RAFTA?
Should RAFTA be at the upper station there, or should that be for the village shuttles?
I mean, we have about equal number of transit uses on each, right?
And 6040 would be a better 6040?
6040.
60 or after 40, yes.
That seems fair.
I mean, that's off the cuff, but probably close.
So there's somewhere in the vicinity.
So, I mean, the village shuttles can operate in a much smaller space than the raft of buses.
buses. So if we were going to turn buses around, maybe it's better to focus on turning the shuttles
around and have the raft of buses go through lot six.
The turning radius is just looking at it. I think it would be a real challenge for the raft of buses.
I don't know that specifically, but it doesn't look like it's going to work.
So, you know, and I kind of thought the same thing, but in the design for the two level design, we have the road going down and around and through the bottom a lot six.
So, is that a better use of space if we have, you know, public transit raft to getting picked up lower, you know, maybe.
And I'm just kind of throwing it out there to think about because I just want to make
sure if we're going to go about this, we can do it in a way that is really,
it kind of
tackles all those goals that we wanted to achieve.
And I think we kind of got there with the original plan, but we got clear message from
on the planning commission that it was too big
of a piece of infrastructure.
So,
I don't know, I don't feel like we're there yet,
but I think there's something that we can do.
And I think that's kind of where we're saying,
let's start with input.
I mean, because I don't know.
And I mean, if that idea, the raft idea
comes out in lot six, then let's hear that.
I mean, I don't want to speak too much
for Sam or staff, I will.
I guess it will take the pleasure of doing that for things like something, I mean that's
what, that incremental step of something and then the now, and then the, in my mind the
question is, and then in light of what's next after that is not known yet.
I think we all agree something, but is it in light of the next step being the two
levels of the solution or the lot six solution or some solution we haven't heard from yet.
But we want to make sure whatever gets designed for that first step accommodates such
two and three.
I would suggest before we went to the public that we would really think all
these through and have an answer like to the 54 cars of lot six and things like
that. It's number one number two because if you go with you know incomplete
information you're not gonna get clear answers and things are gonna spin
around.
We're gonna have some different makeup of council in three
weeks and I would say this is sort of our aspirant airport issue and I would just suggest
that we it's good to see all this but I was just we don't take any action until we know
what the new council is and there may be some new opinions and I just don't think we should
jump into something now because we're going to have a new council that's going to be
in place for two years that'll have to deal with whatever this is.
I
mean, I'm concerned about going too deep into another study even though without a study
we really don't have the information we need to address what you're suggesting the user
experience and the opportunities to try various options.
But I wonder too, if it isn't worth sharing just these very preliminary concepts with
perhaps planning commission in the interim as opposed to getting another
study going and just see what they might think because we've got some good minds
in the room and they've looked at many transit options for many years so
perhaps without spending money on another study they could kind of look
at this and because it's a new idea and it's it's worth merit and it's
worth exploring and while we're you know looking at potentially a new makeup
above council.
I would say planning commission and the public. I mean I
don't know what else we need to be able to what other information we need right
now to get public feedback honestly. I mean because I think they're I don't know
but probably going to look at it in a more big picture scenario and and so
So they're going to weigh the things that we already know, like it's going to, you know,
a plan will shut down the road for a period of time.
We kind of know how long that's going to be.
We know, we know a lot of stuff because we've gone through this and these are just some
some tweaks to, to some previous plans, I would say.
So I would be fine with going ahead with what we have and talking to the public.
I would just add to that, because if I was the public,
the first thing I'm going to ask is, where's lot six?
And I think we have to have an answer.
We need to have a few.
What's the first thing you're going to answer?
Where's lot six?
What happened where I parked my car?
Oh, the parking.
So we need to have an answer to that,
or we may have some options or something.
We just can't go and say, oh, we haven't thought about it.
I think we have one more step.
There is no federal money to build a parking lot.
What's that?
There's not federal money.
I understand.
So it would be you guys, us as a town,
saying we're gonna put that money towards it I just don't see how we can can
you park where the village shuttles are now could you do parking there you could
I mean I think I mean you guys can correct me if I'm wrong that one of the
ideas of moving the rat or the shuttle out to the lot six is provide for the
redevelopment of the mall so yes you could but I don't think that's gonna
achieve that goal can I ask a question Susan just a thought and so public
outreach versus like business and stakeholder meetings and I kind of see
those as different I mean I agree we need both for sure but perhaps business
and stakeholder meeting could happen first yeah because that's a little more
big picture and and maybe they've thought through some of these things and
we're not putting it right out to the public without in front answers to a
lot of imperative questions well and really that those were the I feel
like the voices that we heard about the previous transit center plan were
planning commission and the businesses. So I think that's logical. A lot of the
businesses we didn't hear from till the 11th hour which is why you know getting
that buy-in now or at least opening that conversation now I think it's a
great way to start. I think what differentiates lot six from the
rest of the lot is the fact that people can easily park in those lots and then
go into grab something at a restaurant or at a store and so you lose that sort
of timed parking which okay you could put it down a daily for a very short
amount of time possibly till it gets redeveloped but that's and then if you
turn the other lots into the time parking then you create just
pedestrians coming further up more frequently so I don't know that it's
like solving a lot of the problems and I do think that it is going to be a
question and I know that we might not have a perfect answer but I think we
have to at least have some options of what we would do to replace that parking
because that is that is so well utilized. I would really recommend that we
We have some options for that, for discussion at this group, before we go to the public,
and we do it when the first meetings, when we have whatever the new makeup of the council
is, because some of us aren't going to be here, and some new people be here, and they're
going to be there for two years, and they're going to be dealing with it, and I don't
think it's something, because if we're three months out, I wouldn't be saying
this, but we're three weeks away from the election.
So, I think we should just make that an agenda for an early meeting.
Yeah, I mean, I think we should really try to think out of the box on this and try to figure out, you know, how do we meet all those goals?
You know, I realize there's no money for parking lots, but, you know, Tom at one time said, well, why don't we just, you know, do tier parking?
So what if the tiered, what if people could park underneath in lot six and
There's a platform there and maybe it's Jay Shoemaker's idea that he presented for the mall
But maybe that shifts out to the to lot six. I mean, I don't have the answers
But I I'm kind of seeing that we don't have the answer yet
and so
I was going to put it back on you, Sam, say like, what can be done here?
Our answer remains, do the raft to start there, see what it looks like, and then the question
for you guys is, what's next?
And if the answer is, this group's not going to decide what's next, hold your horses,
we can hold our horses.
I'm just saying for three weeks, hold your horses, hold your horses, be my technical
turn for the night but I mean we're happy to hold the horses but we're going to need direction from
you all on what that looks like because I mean I hope what I said was there's no federal money
for parking lots because if the council said hey protecting those 70 spaces was a priority there's
money.
We just rearranged the capital plan. I mean, we could, you guys just have to say, that's the priority.
And when this plan was discussed, we said you're going to lose 60 space. I'm just going to say 60, I don't know the number.
I thought it was 54, but...
54, sorry. I keep running my number.
But I'm...
We know how people party.
I mean, I...
60.
Just...
I'd be hesitant to just go ahead with the raft incremental without even thinking about the next steps,
because to me that's not a plan. The ground might be part of a plan, but I think we need
to think the whole thing through and know what we're doing.
But the next council, I might not be here. The next council might have different views.
And if the next council wants to be super supportive of redevelopment of the mall,
that might make one decision. If the next council does not want to be, they may make
a different decision. So I'm tracking with you. But if there are the three options,
We just wanted to start talking about it.
Why don't you just flip through them since you got them up there?
You've seen the other ones before.
Let's just remind us.
I just don't be surprised if you don't see anything new and exciting here.
Not that it's not exciting. Everybody loves transit.
I was told that somebody here.
This is the RAFTA Depot incremental improvement plan
with the five RAFTA buses, three along the...
Let me just ask you, has Raft have seen this and said,
yeah, we can do that?
They have seen it.
Those tones are so tight.
They have seen it and said, yeah, we can do it.
They've said, give us as much space as you possibly can.
OK.
I see a lot of bent up buses, but you know.
And that, I'll move on to the next one.
But I do think that one of the things that
would be really good for me to start doing now
would be to have some more show some of these drawings
to some to people like Rafta and at least get moving absolutely at least get
their feedback I'm so David they say from no that doesn't work for us there's no
point in wasting our time with it because I hear the three weeks it makes
sense I do want to keep it moving in that direction because the faster we
can get something moving forward the better chance we have of keeping some
money I totally agree but if it I mean if those tolerances are really tight
and Rafta needs more space and we could run the road through the bottom a lot
six and open that up for Rafta you know maybe that's helpful. Now you're talking about big
money right to move the road, move carriageway. Yeah that doesn't, yeah I'm
concerned that that's not quite as incremental as this could be. Well that's
I mean, I don't disagree with you, but the thought is how do we improve, like how can
we make that a pedestrian area?
And if the road as shown there doesn't go right by the front of the mall, we can take the
pedestrians out of it, I think that would be really helpful.
I mean, we know that we're going to have the most, we already have the most pedestrian
vehicle interactions right on that corner of Lot 6.
The
scheme that solves most of the problems is the two-level scheme. It really resolves a lot of issues.
Well, except for the parking.
No, you can double-deck lot five, and you're right there, you know, and you're done.
Can I ask you a question, Sam?
Sure.
And the Rafter Transit slide you had before, where it says, you know, Bay Four.
If it's in use, Bay 3 will not be able to leave, Bay 4 can pull into Bay 1.
Is that a fact or is that someone's going to have to know which goes first?
It's similar to how it is now where if you have those first two buses are the only ones
that can move and until they move, none of the buses behind are going to go anywhere.
So it would require busier times if you actually had buses in all five of those positions,
means, a road supervisor to be there to help direct buses into bays.
But again, it's essentially the same situation as they have now when all of those bays are
full.
Buses need other buses to move before they can get out.
They do, but I think my concern still remains, it's like sometimes you have people getting
on bus four and bus three or two is trying to leave and those people are crossing
diagonally.
I mean I've seen it happen and I know you say some people say well
Oh bus four is usually just the down Valley bus
But there are times when it's not just the down Valley bus
There are also times that I have seen Rafta pull up where that bus is like drawn in like at this really weird angle
And let people off in the middle of the road. I think what would be great for for me
Bring it to Rafta operations and say how would you use these five spaces if you had them?
and and and get that feedback from them because we don't have that feedback at
this point we know that they've said yeah we could we could do this this we
could work with this but I don't know is for always going to be a loading spot is
it only going to be an unloading and go is it I don't know the answers to those
questions Sam why don't you take them all the schemes we have for the
rafter to them as a double the double that one this one right and get their
feedback. That is the next step that I'd like to go down. We hadn't done that yet. That
was part of our public outreach process, but I'm saying if we're going to wait for the
rest of the public outreach, I would like to go to them.
Rectify a technical response. Give them dimensions and have them say yes or no. There are buses.
And again, I mean how, Alyssa, our council member, Shank, has some very pointed questions
about how they would use these areas, and I think that would be a fair question.
Well, I mean there are times when it's busy and there's a RAFTA supervisor there and there
are times when there isn't and a lot of these drivers are new and it can just get really
messy.
So I think one of the reasons why the old plan, I mean obviously the actual design
of it and the amount of service space it took up was one thing.
but I think safety, and Jay's sitting back there
and he commented a million times,
you're having people cross in front of buses.
This plan still has people crossing in front of buses,
which is what I know it's an incremental plan,
but that is one of the top priorities
that we wanted to make was the safety
of the pedestrians and the buses.
So I think we just really need to make sure
that Rafta feels comfortable with or without
a supervisor there that this can be executed
in a way that's not going to put anyone in harm's way.
Okay.
Easy.
Always is.
All right.
What's that?
That's, we got our direction.
Yeah, I think we got our direction.
Okay.
Unless there's any other questions or anything else you guys.
But we'll keep inching something for, we'll feel free to show some of these things.
There'll be nothing formal for feedback.
And we'll wait for you guys to tell us when you want to schedule it.
sounds good and we're not yet scheduling any public
I mean we'll we again we might do something informally but it's not going to
be a formal anything well I mean well what do you want to do that well I'm
sure we'll talk to Rafta we'll talk to Rafta we want to talk to Rafta I would
assume we I mean this is in a public meeting so we will get contacted by
people to see this and that was but we're not going to have a hey be here
at 3.30 or here's a formal survey but I'm confident we will be contacted. Let me see these please.
There's a number of people that are one all the time and so that's.
Yeah and I think that I mean I just I'm excited to have an open house and kind of a meeting
form out of stakeholders because those one-on-ones that's where information gets confused and
you know ideas aren't tossed around and sometimes mistakes get made when we misunderstand
each other. So when we're all in the same room it's better. We will stand by for you
all to tell us when you want this re-engaged. Okay. Thanks. Hey Sam. All right,
moving on and we're gonna take a look at the 2025 budget and we're gonna look
get the tourism, the EAB request, the GID.
Sam, don't knock that box over.
I'm having an issue.
That's everything there.
Cameron, help me again.
For some reason, I cannot stay on.
Why bumped up?
We're doing this again twice.
Yeah, this new version of Granicus is not great.
I hate that the screen is smaller like you can't even get full screen on it.
I thought he was going to start us off.
I'm just going on the website.
Is that what you're doing?
Thank you again.
I just find it a much easier flow.
And then I just take my notes and open them, and I couldn't make some crazy, and gave it up.
So you just...
I take my notes in like a word document.
Yes, you're having a go.
So Julia, take your time.
Oh my god.
I'm just kidding.
No, I'm kidding.
I was making a time jump.
I was just kidding.
I was making a time jump.
It's totally funny in my own way.
I just told that you were going to start it off.
I apologize.
I'm sorry.
I apologize.
I'm so sorry.
Thank you.
So this is our second series of free budget presentations.
Tourism department makes two verbal presentations to you in a year, two written presentations.
We always kind of roll this budget presentation into one of their presentations to you all.
So with that, I know this is Julie's first budget presentation to you.
She's prepped, she's ready to go, and I'll shut up.
I think you all know what we do, but just for the people who don't, Snowmass Tourism
positions Snowmass Knowledge as the world class resort that it is.
We also just got last year's, you know, number one resort in the U.S. and Canada, so we've
got some great accolades making our job easier, but we work hard.
We do that by leveraging creative marketing strategies, hosting special events, and coordinating
group sales efforts, which are really important to our tourism economy, filling in those need
periods. We work to attract visitors to resort and give them memorable experiences to keep
them coming back through our guest services, and ultimately our goal is that we are bolstering
and supporting the local economy through our efforts. I'll do the numbers very quickly.
Some of you may have seen these recently. Looking at how we have fared through May
through October, so what we call summer season, our paid occupancy is at 39.4 percent.
I just ask you before we go, what is the database?
Is this lodging?
Does it include short-term rentals?
Does it include condos?
I mean, what is here?
This is lodging, which would include condos, and it's anybody who participates in our
desk to metrics that measure occupancy ADR, which is the average daily eight and
rev par, so it's anybody who participates.
So probably not short-term rental, people do it with online services.
It's a good question.
99% sure STR is not in there.
Yeah, I don't think so.
I'm 99% sure there's no STRs.
Okay.
Yeah.
Fine.
Are there other major hotel or developments that are not included in deaths and metrics?
I mean, there are other agencies like AIR DNA that would measure specifically short-term
rentals, which is a program that we could look at if we felt like that data was really
valuable to us, but des dimetrics, who we pull from right now, will measure any hotel
or condo that's participating, which should be most of them, but I don't actually know
that answer off the top of my head.
So we should have most of the hotel and condo properties, but not the short-term
rentals.
So looking at this, you can see we're just a couple percent up on, you know, not
huge numbers there for summer, ADR, average daily rate, what a visitor pays for a hotel
is pretty flat, and the revenue per available room, the total revenue is up a couple points.
This is as of the latest report.
Jumping with any questions as I go, by the way, this graph that I look at every month
shows us how we're faring per month, and you can see here where the growth opportunities
are.
June and September and October are pretty low, July and August are looking pretty
strong, which is typical of our summer pattern. And so when we look at this, we look at what
strategic initiatives we can do to help fill in those more need periods. And that's where
I mentioned things like group sales and special events that complement and try to bolster these
occupancy rates. In terms of winter, this is how we are pacing as of the latest report,
which is August 31st. So it's certainly not how we're going to finish, but looking
at November through April. We are pacing a couple points ahead in our year-over-year
occupancy. Our average daily rate looks pretty strong at 4% ahead and total
revenue is 6.2% ahead. Again, we look at these every month, so this is just how
we're pacing. You can see there what a visitor at this point is paying for a
room per night. We're at 7.43.
Is it a 2% variance? Like it's a
0.6% variance. 0.6 is the total revenue and the 4% is the variance in what the
rate is the 714 to 743. At the top right number 2.1% is that something's not right
right 29.6% projected over 29.0. That's yeah we're just yeah we're about 0.6
266 is 2.1% over, yeah, not huge numbers there, but we are pacing ahead, which is good.
And again, looking.
You can see December is not super strong month for us, which is typical in resort communities
because people wait until the holidays to come. January, February look pretty strong, and you
can see that we are pacing ahead of last year, but you can also see we have quite a ways
to go to reach kind of our average occupancy. The gray line is the historical occupancy
we've seen, and the one on the right is where we usually land, which is about 56
percent for the winter season.
And are you still seeing people waiting longer and longer to book?
We are.
We're doing some things to incentivize bookings.
So we just did a flash sale in collaboration with the Aspen Skiing Company in Accra and
Snowmass was the clear winner in that.
So we're incentivizing people to book in September.
And out of, I think it was 28 bookings we got, 26 of them went to Snowmass.
And the reason for that is because we incentivize people to book for longer stays
and snow mass winds that formula for visitors because we have more condo
properties and more ski and ski out. So we're working on people booking earlier
particularly was very strong for international market the strongest
market for that flash sale was actually Argentina that was partially based
on the way it was promoted by ski company to their international tour
operators but we are working to get earlier bookings and I would hope at
the next report we'd see, you know, some of these numbers fill in earlier than, you know,
the last-minute bookings, and certainly international visitors tend to book earlier than a domestic
visitor who might come up for a shorter stay from a closer destination, but trying to close
in that booking pattern by some of the strategic initiatives we're doing.
In terms of our budget, this is – I believe you have these numbers in front of you.
revenue. Our total projected revenue is the $14,907,000, and our projected budget for tourism
is $9.4 million, which leaves the $5.4 million for the housing fund. But as you've probably
heard for 2025, the housing fund is actually looking at a $7.1 million allocation, which
which would be the 5.4 million you see there when you minus the tourism expenses from the
total revenue and then the 1.7 from reserve funds to total the 7.1 going to housing.
Of that 7.1, 3.35 million is allocated for future housing opportunities, 3 million for
debt service for the draw site and 750,000 for debt service for the snow mass center.
You'll see at the bottom of this budget summary, we've got very healthy reserves, 30%, which
equals 4.4 million is put away for emergency funds.
The funds that are restricted for tourism prior to the 2023 vote is at 7.5 million,
which is a very healthy reserve for our organization and then the housing fund
or the funds available are being spent down to get to that 7.1 million for
housing allocation. Can you just pause for a second? What's that other what
3 million in housing Clint? I mean I understand that the reserve for the
draw site and for buying the center site but there was another 3 million for
Housing CIP so we that in the tourism fund we we the way I think about it is there's I can't see that for I'm sorry
But there's 15 million coming in the first nine and a half goes to tourism
Everything else is set aside for housing. And so we've got three million for draw seven fifty four
The land behind the center what's left over was towards the capital goes goes towards the capital for any kind of future housing projects
The 3.3 million is a transfer into the CIP fund and then any housing projects that are
in the CIP fund may be funded from that and if not, then it goes into a separate reserve
and set aside for future housing.
So we're going to be building up the reserve in the CIP fund for capital projects.
It's a savings account for future housing.
Yeah, all right.
This graph just shows you revenues over expenses
every year, the first one being the 2024 budget
and the right side being the 2025 budget,
not showing huge growth.
The next slide will-
A slight drop in revenue, is that right?
The middle one is actually the budget
versus the projection.
So the middle graph is 2024 projected
And the first one is the actual 2024 budget, and then the last graph is the 2025 projection.
All right, so budget is usually a little conservative, right?
Yeah, so then revenue is a little bit lower than what was projected in 2024 by very little.
This shows you the revenue, marketing, and lodging tax is projected to be 3% year over year,
which is a nice conservative estimate based on what we're seeing in terms of
pace which I think is smart because it's nice to you know budget
conservatively and know that the money is going to come in versus the other way
around. Also on this page you'll see under expenditures I'll basically take
you through because the marketing the funds available for tourism the budget
is relatively flat I'm going to take you just through where we've made
changes on the budget for your understanding on the variances I'm in
And one thing I wanted to call out here is the personnel expenses, which I don't have
a separate slide for, are about 4% up year-over-year for salary increases and benefit increases.
And then I'll take you through the changes on the marketing, special events, and PR
side.
All are relatively flat, but I'll take you through the changes that we made there.
Marketing is slightly up, and special events is slightly down, which I'll explain to
and PRs lightly up so what is it in the miscellaneous under revenues there's a
miscellaneous line item for 600 that's interesting come okay thanks nice to
do special events ever generate any revenue or is that no no not to my
knowledge I don't know if it would just be sales tax growth it there's no we
I kind of assumed they didn't, but I just want to know.
We pay producers to come, essentially.
We are attracting visitors and getting them to come back.
Event producers.
Yes.
It's not a real event.
And this slide just compares the budget revenues and expenditures year over year.
If you look at the expenditures, we are looking at about $369,000 more in tourism
funding than last year.
So, relatively small number in the scheme of the overall budget.
And as I said, I'll take you through those now.
This is just sort of the budget at a glance showing you kind of the numbers for 25 against
24.
I'll talk about the, again, the changes we're making on the tourism budget, the 900,000
that's coming from capital to projects in the next year.
As I mentioned, there's 7.1 million in total going to housing.
And I wanted to call out on the bottom of the slide just that the revenue or the sorry the expenditures in tourism are staying relatively flat
but what you can see growing which I think is smart is the allocation to housing over the last three years.
So it was 4.6 million in 2023 and then 5 million and then 7.1 for 2025.
The CIP of 900,000 is that for the Macedon and for the Skittles Skittles and for yeah
and I'm going to take you through those now and so here's just where we made
variances on the budget that total up well that 396 or about $400,000 under
group sales we have a hundred and ninety thousand dollar increase and that
I believe was discussed with council around this time last year or at some
point last year. It is a really unique opportunity for Snowmass to bring in one of the largest
industry events. MTS stands for Mountain Travel Symposium. It brings in about 800 professionals
in the ski industry from about 35 countries. It's ideally placed on the calendar the second
week of April, so a time when business is pretty low. And it is basically all
the suppliers and buyers of travel in the ski market.
So it's a really important group for us.
The ROI on this will be huge in terms of actually the room nights in April, but it will have
a much longer play in terms of the exposure that we're giving all these international
ski buyers.
And we are partnering with Aspen Skiing Company on this initiative.
It will be a huge event for us the second week of April, following another event that
we have in April as the DAV, the Disabled Vet.
So it'll really lend itself to a very strong April, but it is a pay-to-play to bring this group in
Under marketing as I mentioned the budgets relatively flat the only additional budget we added was $50,000
To increase some summer advertising to the build the drive markets
We are as you heard from the airport people heavily reliant on air service and our visitors coming in on direct flights
And we'd like to build
more of awareness for the drive market which we know they pass a lot of
resorts on the way to us and really it's partly in preparation for the
potential airport closure in 2026 which is slated for I believe an eight month
closure and the new runway wherever it is well if there is a new runway that
fits other guests it'll be an eight month but that's the plan summer of
I'll tell you, I'll tell you in a couple of weeks, I'll tell you in a couple of weeks.
We're waiting to plan for it, but we're planning for it.
So we do have an increase there to build the drive market business.
The ice age discovery, while the budget did decrease, that's because we have that money
coming out of capital for the project for the mastodons, and we do still have budget
there to continue the ice age story, but that budget went down from last year when
We had a significant budget allocation
for some of the projects we did this year.
And then we did slightly increased support
under public relations for the international campaign.
We currently are working in the UK and Mexico
and seeing great success in that.
We are looking at some strategy
for potentially adding a market
or co-opping with the Colorado Tourism Office
and the Aspen Skiing Company
for some additional PR in the international markets.
It's, did you have a question?
No, because they're really important to us, so.
Guest services, this was more of a money move
than a money ad.
We didn't actually have a budget for guest services.
It was under special events,
and I wanted to more accurately reflect the budget
and have guest services have its own line item.
A bulk of that is the S'mores program,
which really is a huge signature touch for our visitors.
I would encourage all of you to go down
to the s'mores in the season and see the delight on the visitors and locals faces that that
program brings.
And so I really just move that out of events into guest services, which is why the events
budget looks like it went lower, but it was kind of a money move, and there's, you know,
just some very small changes in the events program.
Are the s'mores about half of that budget?
The s'mores are about $75,000, so it's a big chunk of it, yeah.
Yeah, it's not Jeep and marshmallows have gone up a pair of them.
Question about the S'mores?
Yeah.
I mean, I've witnessed it.
I know how the line, especially after Ski School, gets out.
TNM.
TNM is Travel and Meetings.
So it's just for the guest services department, you know, to have meetings, to, you know,
experience.
They go around Snowmass and experience new restaurants and things.
So it's just a very small budget.
it, like I said, the bulk of that is the S'mores program.
So I feel like when we first came across the idea of the S'mores
and doing that, I don't know that it was intended to last
as long as it's lasted.
I mean, do we feel that there is a timeframe for this?
I know it's wildly popular, but then I've also
heard from people that own businesses
that it is taking away from their business opportunity
after skiing. Yeah and I've heard the same. Well I will say that I think from my
six months here it seems that the s'mores are like other destinations who
have that signature thing that makes guests feel really special it's it's an
important part of our brand and I kind of had the same question when I came
into the job and then I started hearing some of the testimonials and
feedback from visitors and the guest service staff about how this little
touch, you know, in the scheme of the budget and the overall efforts really makes them feel
really welcomed and really special. I do understand that some businesses feel like they were doing
s'mores and we took that away from them. But the other goal around this s'mores program was to
keep people in the village versus like taking off from skiing. So it's just like a nice feel
good for people to hang out, you know, kids and adults to have s'mores. And the idea was
is that people would spend longer in the village
and not that they would take business away.
The SMORES program also is right now contracted
to a local business.
So there is somebody providing that to us
and making the cost, covering their costs for that.
So that money is going back to a business.
And I think the question's been asked,
are we gonna go to RFP and be able to open it up
to another business at some point?
I personally wouldn't say it needs to go away,
but I'm open to hearing those conversations,
which I understand some businesses are against it.
And at those businesses, that's why we have a tourism board.
Come and tell them that there are concerns about it,
and let the tourism board discuss it,
because I would venture to say the vast majority
of the tourism board is very supportive
of the program and likes the way it operates.
And so if an individual business had that issue,
that would be the place, I think,
to start that conversation.
Yeah, I mean, listen, in a place that's so expensive
and nothing is ever free, like, you know,
between the hot cider, which they don't do anymore on top of the mountain and the bars and
Having this I mean I I it serves the need. I see the kids. I think it's great
And I personally feel like it's added that sort of special touch.
And I think the people that actually serve this more really like it, like the interaction with the kids is really cute.
It's just more of, you know, is there a longevity to it?
Because I don't know that when we started it, it was intended to be that way.
I think it was more like something different.
Yeah, I think everything's open to discussion
and feedback and if it doesn't work
for the kind of majority of people,
we can certainly look at it.
I do think it's really nice to have that signature touch
where the visitors get something, people love free things
and they love, I think, how it makes them
feel really welcome, but it could be something else too.
I think if we took it away, it would be.
Yeah, it's kind of hard to take something away.
But I'm wondering if there's something,
if people are waiting in line
for the s'mores with their kids,
is there something that we could then do that we could give them to incentivize
them to then go infrequent one of the businesses like either go and sit and
have a drink or get an appetizer or something I don't know what that would
look like I just feel like I don't know I mean yeah they made a statement for what
they wait around I mean more than five minutes oh yeah they're lined up until
the door is open oh yeah it's in base village especially the line is really
yeah I've seen it on the mall I haven't seen 330 330 yeah like an hour an hour I
think yeah yeah using that to activate the next like what's next yeah the idea
was to bridge yeah the idea was to bridge you know the ski experience to you
know operate your dinner experience and have something these people from
Let's just go back to their lives, jump in the hot tub.
Or jump on a bus, and I'd say if a business had an idea like that, if they wanted to walk
up and down and give dollar off coupons for whatever, we're fine with that.
We know we do this to support them, and so if a business has got an idea on how to
attract or better utilize that line that's waiting for us more, we're all ears, but
some of the stuff we've got to rely on them to do.
To the mall's credit, they put in an extra fire pit because they want it in a certain
spot.
I mean, a lot of people understand the importance of it and are working towards it.
Yeah.
No, I think it's great.
I'm just wondering maybe if we could capitalize it on it a little bit more to benefit the other
vendors.
Yeah.
And yes, it is keeping people there, but like how long is it keeping people there?
I mean, I've seen people grab their s'more sticks and then eat them as they're walking
to the bus stop.
So I don't know.
I think it's just something to explore.
Yeah.
I'm happy to I'm open to feedback and happy to discuss it too because I really kind of came in at the tail end of ski season
So I didn't see it activated as much a big picture if it's one of those things that said
Motivates them to come to snowmass next year
Everybody wins right? Yeah, everybody does one. I mean I've heard guest services people say that people have said that's the reason
They come back to snowmass which sounds a little over the top, but it is like a thing
And it's a thing with the kids, it's a thing with adults too, I've seen it.
And there are people in this world that have never had a s'more.
And so it's very exciting.
And now we have s'more socks, so it's part of our brand.
But we're not stuck with it, we can always look at changing.
Socks.
And it is a signature, I mean like I think Beaver Creek and Bale Hand out cookies.
Yeah, I was going to use that as an example.
And they're known for that, you know, the smell of warm cookies.
It's part of their like making people feel good at that competition ours is
s'mores which are better than cookies. It was a community competition. Oh yeah
people submitted their their cookie recipes and then they narrowed it down to
have Romani and then they would come on opening day and you'd have to bake like
a thousand cookies and then they would vote on who would be the winner and
And then that person became the cookie of the resort for the year.
Is it one or two businesses that get the contract for this morse?
Right now it's going through one business, but I think that we would probably want to
rotate it to be fair.
It's been different businesses over the years.
And we have put it out at least twice that I can remember putting out the RFU process.
It's the edge has it now.
The edge has it.
I think they're in year two, if I remember it.
It used to be, I can't remember, but it's been a couple of different businesses.
We put it out, and for the first couple of years, we actually did it, and then we realized
that wasn't smart, and we started making it out.
A slow grueling was for a while.
So anyway, it's been, we bit it out.
Can I ask another question on guest services?
Yeah.
So is this where the contract for face painting, and that's not a special event.
Oh, it isn't a special event.
Yeah.
So the guest services budget just represents the SMORES program the ACEs hikes and the like uniforms for the
Staff and you know
They're a small budget for them to go around and have meetings and try things and you know
Experience snowmass so that they can fully talk about it and they go try something new
So this really all of these funds were in the budget existing
I just moved them out of special events to guest services so that we can accurately reflect what we're spending on the guest service experience
Because I mean I kind of feel like that is a guest service as well.
The face painting?
Yeah.
I mean I'm just, if you're moving things around, probably to explore.
I mean this is literally, there's nine, nine or thirteen.
I can't remember any guest service employees we have.
I think nine.
This is those people that sit in the trailer, I mean it's very specific to this one
thing that, you know, where's the bathroom, well I don't want to, where's the bathroom,
How do they catch a bus?
Where to lift a good office, that kind of stuff.
These are just the things to me that made sense
to put into guest services as a guest service initiative.
And they also manage these things.
Special events manages the face painting
and the other activations like that.
So that's in their budget.
The last change is another new line item
I called industry relations.
And it is for, I'm gonna talk to you today
about the destination management plan.
So it's covering the cost of facilitating that.
There's also budget in there to facilitate new ideas that come out of the destination
management plan because we don't want to come up with great ideas and have zero
budget to implement them in year one.
And also I know when I came into this position there was a goal to have more
community engagement.
So we've, you know, putting some of the tourism talks in person,
some of the business after hours so that we can engage with the community
and other industry events.
There wasn't a specific budget for it.
So I called it out in this industry relations line item.
And so these things I just went through represent that $400,000 change in the budget.
So unless there's any questions, I was going to move into the capital projects that represent
that $900,000 budget allocation.
I don't think there's any breaking news here, but the first one is the Macedons by
artist Jen Lewin.
There is $250,000 between this year and next year's budget for the design, fabrication,
and installation. I'm super excited to bring this project to them all. I think it really
brings the Ice Age discovery story to life for the visitors with life-size mastodons and
also meets the Council's goal to engage with the community and to really have a sense
of place in everything that we do. So I think you've seen the renderings. They're going
to be really pretty amazing right outside the view line there. And also a pretty
cool story. The artist is a very hot name right now and the fabrication of them is very
interesting. The mama is made out of recycled ocean plastic. And as you can see here, I
think you can see visitors will be able to walk into the mastodon. And the inside of
the mastodon will be featuring infinity LED mirrors. And those mirrors will feature
the flora of the Ice Age era.
So it's gonna be a very interactive, cool exhibit
that I think, again, will really create a sense of place
and bring that Ice Age story to life.
Here's another one.
The interior of Mama can also be lit up
with different colors, so it could be themed
like the Empire State Building comes to mind
if you wanted to light it up with different colors.
And our goal is to have it be very interactive
and have it be a really focal point for the visitor.
And just on that one, we're still
waiting for property permission.
That's the one last thing we're waiting for,
is to get property owner permission to put it there.
Getting what?
Property owner permission.
From the view line, and then we
are going to move to final contract with the artist.
And so we had initially said it'd be installed in summer,
but we're thinking it'll probably more like fall,
as we finalize those agreements
so that we can give the artist appropriate time
for the fabrication.
And then, oh, go ahead.
Do you ask?
The $250,000 that's in the budget for that, will that cover, is that exactly what's needed
to cover creating the art and installing it?
That should cover everything, the design of it, the fabrication of it, and the installation.
There be anything left over for, I don't believe so.
Will there be interpretive signage as well?
That's a good question.
I don't know that we've talked about signage, it's something we could definitely
discuss.
It's necessary.
because I would think we'd want to tie it back to the story I think yeah one
it's interesting you mentioned that because that's kind of what I was
getting as their room for any little bits and pieces to be added to the other
things like signage there would be organic feature around it to bring some
warmth and yeah well and it can be added to the walk like if you scan the
QR code and it tells you the locations could be added to that yeah I
would think that'd be in conjunction with like the art map and you know
all the signage that's going around that and this will be added to that and you
know I think that'll be part of that program. Some little sign that lets you know
this is the size of a mammoth you know and why it's important and all that. I mean why
I don't have to do it through the QR code and this and that and just something
really dumb and simple. People may not know why we have mammoths in the middle of our mall.
They're gonna know now. My other question is I mean I feel like some of
art that we have around the village isn't as easily accessible in terms of like
people walking by it all the time so security wise I mean how sturdy are these
things like is it like a snowball goes into it and creates a problem are we
gonna have any sort of surveillance you know camera on it I mean I'm asking
because I I know the reality that sometimes things yeah I know we talked
about that with the bears too, like are people going to start climbing on them and I mean
I think these are made for some wear and tear, they're huge and they're super solid.
The baby's made out of chrome, they're not going to be damaged easily I don't think,
but I think it's a fair question.
I don't know that we've talked about security cameras, but we can certainly discuss security
and how to make sure that they stay protected.
Yeah, I mean I think it's a big investment, we've waited for a long time to be able
to do something like this and I don't know I think we need to make sure it
stays protected the best we can yeah no I think it's a good discussion as much as
you don't want to believe that people are going to do bad things like you know
yeah ice sculptures that we had there were amazing but you know you come back
the next day and somebody's broken them off right yeah no I think it's a fair
I think it's a fair question and we want to make sure like you said it's
good big investment to make sure that they stay and they're made already be
cameras I don't know about the mall security I don't know if there's already
cameras and something that could be adjusted I happen to know that it's been
thought about and be we will without going through the whole thing yes we
know that it's important to have that that was my main question I could help
you earlier sorry you were doing so good I didn't want to jump in on you
she's doing great I know that's why I didn't want to zip in it yeah I mean I
I don't know everything yet, but I'm working on it.
Super excited to the other capital investment
is, again, really significant.
It's our signature Thursday night concerts
that create so much engagement with the community
and visitors and locals.
It is a significant investment of $500,000
between this year and next year's budget,
but our stage for the Thursday night concerts
has come to the end of its lifespan.
It is past its kind of structural integrity and it really is time to upgrade it to past safety inspections.
I'm super excited about the new stage that we're bringing.
It's a mobile stage.
So it essentially sort of flips open versus taking days to build.
So while the investment is significant in the long term, this will require less labor to set up and less labor to dismantle.
And it will be movable if we wanted to move it somewhere.
and it is a state-of-the-art stage so I'm really excited to upgrade that. I think
it'll be great experience for not only the audience but for the artists coming
in and with that the audio system has been kind of had some challenges. The
current audio system is 30 years old and the sound isn't reaching the
second half of the hill so we're upgrading the new audio as well to
really, you know, be in line with all the modern technology we have for sound and stage.
And here's just an example of the stage.
This is, you know, branded for somebody else, but we can brand it obviously with Snowmass,
any sponsors.
And it's, you know, like I said, it's a mobile stage that will require less work
and less maintenance.
Does this thing just sort of pops up from a trailer?
I mean, I might be overstating the ease of it.
I don't know.
They're like the one that they have at Jazz Aspen, they like crank open sort of in it just
all.
Yeah, it sort of just pops open versus I understand the previous stage did take a number of days
to build and dismantle, so this will just be easier in the long run, it'll require
less labor hours and less time to put up and take down.
So if we wanted to have a concert at the rodeo, for example, we could do that.
It's not that mobile.
I don't think you can move it like daily or anything.
No, no, no.
We could move it like say after the I mean I don't want to speak because I don't know you know the details of the
Logistics of it, but it does sound like we could move it like say after the Thursday night concert series to the rodeo
Lot and do an event down there
Which is pretty cool versus dismantling it for days and then like resetting it up and these are the sort of state of the
And then the last capital project is the $400,000 annual contribution for the eventual replacement
of these Skittles. So that's just a transfer.
And then the last thing I wanted to talk to you, the most newest, exciting thing we're working
on that you've heard a little bit about, and I just wanted to take you a little bit more
through the process and what it means for Snowmass is the destination management plan.
Here's just a textbook definition of what does a destination management plan or destination
management mean.
It's the coordinated management of all the elements that make up a tourist destination
to really enhance its overall appeal, success, and long-term sustainability.
This graphic just shows you the types of things that we're looking at in a destination
management plan.
It's not just about the marketing and attracting visitors.
It's about really engaging with the community.
It's about doing an assessment of our destination, our strengths and our weaknesses.
It's taking all the data that we already have and putting that into the mix.
And I'm going to take you a little bit through the process of what that looks like.
A little bit about destination management plans, and some of you may have heard this
if you came to tourism talks or some other meetings because we have been engaging
already in the community, but it is like a really broad holistic look at assessing
and strategizing around a tourism destination.
It'll build a roadmap to support the long-term health of SNOMAS and the well-being not only
for visitors, but for the community.
It's a very participatory process, which I'll take you through kind of what that looks
like.
It'll involve all key stakeholder groups, elected officials as yourself, and key decision
makers, as well as our community residents.
And as mentioned here, it's going to be cognizant of our budget, which we have
really good resources for and our funding mechanisms and what we actually can implement
and what we can't implement.
We contracted, we put out an RFP, we got 10 proposals and we contracted with Roadmap
Consulting.
I'm really excited to work with them.
They are based locally in Carbondale, but they have put together a team of professionals,
some that are not local, that really I think did the best job at responding to the RFP.
One thing that I was very definite about is I wanted it to be an actionable and succinct
plan that's measurable.
Some destination management plans can be very long and, you know, I don't want it to be
something that sits on a shelf and is like nobody reads it because it's 100 pages.
So I really want to come up with really a five-year roadmap.
We're using five years as a baseline.
It could, you know, have longer tactics, too, that we might want to look at in the
longer term.
But really looking at sort of short, mid, and long range goals for the destination and
something that we can action and the Council will be able to measure against as well.
As it says here, it will have a defined vision and mission for the destination with specific
goals, strategies, and tactics.
And it will identify needs.
It might be things like destination development, which would mean like do we want new products
for our visitors, new initiatives, and really just looking at enhancing the visitors,
but it will also take in consideration the needs of the community as well.
And again, it will define what implementation looks like. It will have a timeline and it will
identify the budget needs. So my hope is that the plan also times really well with a five-year
budget that we put together to say that we've identified some priorities for the destination
and we can also look at budgeting against those in sort of a proactive and long-term way.
In terms of stakeholder engagement, we've already started the process and I wanted to
take you through what's already been happening and what is still going to be happening.
And some of you were, I know, part of this, so in September we kicked off the process.
We had meetings with the tourism board and with our various committees, the group sales
committee and the marketing advisory, sorry, it says the marketing advisory board, that's
actually the marketing advisory committee, and we did a community tourism talks at
the collective in September. Right now we are working on two surveys. We're just finalizing
those this week. We hope to start distribution of those next week. One is specifically targeted
to snow mass residents and one to tourism stakeholders and ask them a series of questions
about how they feel about the destination. It's about 30 questions long, you know, how
they feel about the future of the destination, what's important to them. And we're going
to have those surveys distributed from next week, probably through mid-December to really
get as much community participation as possible. Those will go out through the TOSV website
and through our tourism stakeholder newsletters, social media, and various other outlets
to make sure we get as much participation in those as possible.
And they are drafted already? Are they ready?
They're in draft form, and we're looking to finalize those this week.
Can we see them?
No, thank you.
We are also working in response to the RFP I put together.
We're working on two focus work sessions.
They probably won't take place in November, but we are putting the teams together for
a sustainability workforce and a DEIA specific workforce session.
So there should be some goals that come out of this plan that are specific to sustainability
and DEIA, and again, mid and longer term goals.
DEIA.
DEIA is diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, and it is an important part
of what the work that tourism does.
So to include things like making visitors and locals all feel more welcome, things like
accessible travel, looking at, you know, visitors with disabilities, whether they're
hidden or physical, are they welcome in our community, are there ways we can make
more welcoming diversity in our marketing diversity in our product and you know our tourism product
and things like that so they're pretty broad topics the initial work sessions will look at them
kind of holistically sustainability is also a very broad topic it could be sustainability in
terms of our environment our trails our natural resources but it's also the sustainability
of the well-being of our community and the sustainability of our tourism economy so
The plan is to have sort of an overall work session and then I see different types of goals coming out of those sessions that will require further work
Because they're both very broad topics
And then in December, we're working on two community visioning workshops
We have penciled in December 3rd and 4th and I'll send you an invite with all the details December 3rd
Is planned as an afternoon session our thought is you know, hopefully people are out skiing on some great powder by then
And then they come down and we have something at base village where we invite the community to come weigh in on these different topics.
And then we host like a happy hour, so it'd be casual, it'd be open to anybody.
It'd be sort of like an open house feeling like if you can't stay for two hours, you don't have to.
But we really want to invite the community to come in and all of you to come in and be part of the plan.
and then December 4th we will probably hold something here or in more of a
conference room setting focused on more of our tourism stakeholders and so
those two will be really key feedback loops for this plan along with those
surveys. We're also looking at about 10 to 15 individual interviews with key
stakeholders and we're just putting that list together. We want to make
sure we have a really broad spectrum of stakeholders that will have
different thoughts about the future of snowmass and those will be individual
interviews with our consultant roadmap and they'll be about 45 minutes in
length and so all of that will go into the plan. So then I assume when you do
all this then there's a draft yeah it'll be brought to us well the chance
to weigh in on it yes all this is very impactful on the community. Yes
absolutely what's not listed here is that there will be a work session with
council there'll be what I don't work sessions the right word but a session
a meeting is calling a meeting figure the format yeah there's also going to be a
meeting engaging the department heads the 10 department heads and then what's not
calendared out yet but in the new year is exactly what you said is that we will
have a draft plan that's presented to these various including yourselves and
these various committees and then time for feedback on the plan before we go
to a final plan and the final one would need to be approved by council.
Eventually.
Yeah.
And the tourism board.
Sure.
And these work sessions would be sometime coming up November based.
The sustainability and DEIA, we're working on those lists of who we want on those
work sessions.
Again, we want to have like a broad base of different people.
Anybody's welcome to join those.
And then I don't know that the meetings will actually be held in November.
they may be kind of formalized in November, sometime in November, December, avoiding obviously
the holidays.
So we're just...
And then for council, I believe post-election we'll schedule a session to come and do some
planning on that as well, and then in Q1 of next year we'll be more of a draft plan
will be presented, you know, time for review and then more of a final plan with the
of the final plan being completed sort of March, April,
but some flexibility on that if it takes longer,
we obviously are, you know, want to get it right
and want to get the input that we think is important
to this plan.
So I'm really excited about this work.
It's kind of new work and I think in the last five
or so years, the tourism industry has really taken
a different approach.
And I know some of the stakeholders have said
like why are you doing this?
and some people are like questioning the why
and it's really important that we are not just coming up
with strategy that works for the tourism board
or the tourism department,
but it's really a community-based plan
and that is I think a trend in the last five years
that the tourism industry is really looking at
like what's good for the visitor
also has to be good for the community
because you have to have that holistic look
at the community and residents and visitors
both having really good experiences
and so I'm excited to do this work
with both the community and our tourism stakeholders to come up with the plan and then bring it
to, you know, have you guys input in the work and then bring it to you.
Awesome.
That's such an influence from Snowmass's history of resort community efforts for balance.
Yeah.
I think it'll be great.
I think it'll be a great process.
And like I've told people, it should be fun.
It should be engaging.
And it should be inspiring because as you've seen at some of the, you know, tourism
talks and things, it's talking about like, what is your ideal future look like?
And that's really what we want to strive for is a place that visitors love and come back to and that community is
You know feels like that we have their best interest at heart and we're working for them, too
And I think that's the end of it unless there's any questions
Question about
Our capital projects, how much do we have in the budget for the Skittles? How much is have we banked so far?
Boy, let's see
I want to say it's something over 2 million, like 2.6, 2.8, something like that.
I'm going under. I'm going to do four.
Let's see.
They're fries.
Well, at the end of this year, it'll be 2.8 because there's about 2.4 at the ending balance,
but that assumes we spend 400,000, which we're not going to this year.
So that'll make it 2.8 and plus another four next year.
So we have 2.8 allocated for a Skittles replacement in the savings account. Yeah, yeah
And I'll be I thought we'd save more than that by now, but no no it's been four hundred a year for
five years six years, so that's
Yeah, and some yeah because in the beginning when we were transferring over
400,000 it was to pay also for any projects that tourism had
So the whole 400 wasn't set aside in those beginning years and I guess we've
spent some on it as well right we had to put a new rope on and we had some
maintenance and well that's where this is the one of the other topics is just
to run through the GID budget real quick and that's where those expenses are
and then to see if there was any other questions in the packet because next
week you know we should be able to wrap it up by doing the CIP fund and then
adoption on the 6th. And Julia just as far as the Macedon's go have you
involved the Arts Advisory Board at all? Oh yeah they yeah sorry I failed to say
that but they unanimously approved the project and are very excited about it
Yeah.
I mean, it looks great.
Yeah, I'm excited for it.
Can you pull up the jig?
Any other questions?
On one special events or just events,
how much flexibility does the budget
allow for new ideas?
If it's not scheduled now, is there
any room for events to come in?
Yeah.
Yeah, we do build some contingency in both the winter
and summer events budget.
budget, and then we do have some contingency in the destination marketing plan process
as well.
So depending on, you know, what ideas come out of that, we will probably have to prioritize
because there's not a huge budget attached to it, but I wanted to make sure we had
some monies to support ideas that, you know, were kind of a low-hanging fruit or the
shorter-term ideas.
So there's, you know, some different opportunities there.
And typically, I mean, unless it's a small event, a lot of events, if you're bringing
in a new event isn't probably going to happen in the same budget year if it's, you know,
a big signature event that would take some time to build, so it could be budgeted in
future years, but we do build contingency and all those line items to, you know, facilitate
new ideas and some innovation.
Great.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Good info.
Thank you.
It's good stuff going on.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
So we'll try to wrap this up quickly.
Let's look at the GID budget first.
It's page 165.
And this is just kind of an overview. We don't have to put our GID hats on right now. No, no
Clint thought that this might be a good idea to go ahead and get through this budget and then we'll do adoption as the
GID board on November 6th
We won't have to go back through this. Okay, great
And if there are questions, we'll be ready for them.
So the couple of things just to point out, you will be doing a GID revised budget also on the 6th.
If you look down the 2004 variance column, it's mostly for two lines down there.
The Skittles, the SkyCab operating is going to end up over budget by $13,000.
dollars. The winter hours, we were the winter operating hours were scheduled originally budgeted
to end at 9 o'clock and they actually ended at 9 30. So we had an extra half hour to pay
those same hours are budgeted for in 2025 and then the other big increase was the
snow melting for lower carriageway so that is over by 37,000 most of that is
Black Hills gas and it had to do with the work that Ann and the team were
doing on the vaults and they had to run the snow melting greater and longer than
what they had anticipated. So it's those two lines. In 2025 that one that'll be a
separate resolution that you'll be adopting. Property taxes the mills stay
the same if you recall that's six mills and it'll stay that way until the
bonds paid off, where's the town's assessed value only went up less than 1% the assessed
value because of new construction for the GID went up 12.4%.
So we have some additional income coming in.
Interest income will be decreased.
the expenses are like 5% increases like I said the sky cab that increases the
same hours but we're anticipating that the ski company will increase their
rates I have budgeted 7% for that and then snow melting will go down next year
and anticipates because we won't be running the snowmountain for that long. So that is
the GID budget because the vault will be fixed hopefully sometime in 2025. Any questions on
that budget? I had a question about the Skittles. I
mean all the way in 20, what is it, in
Is that what the year is?
Yeah, it shows it's like $445,000.
I'm increasing it by 7% every single year
because their payroll and their benefit costs go up
as well as any of their operating costs, so.
But I know we've talked about it before
and we received emails from Pat Kieffer about SkiCo
contributing more, contributing to the summer skittles.
Right, well so that's me and you guys
when you adopted the master plan,
the mountain master plan, they're required to come back
at the end of December with a framework for that
and so we don't have that yet.
But once we do, this will, I mean, hopefully it's gonna,
I mean, the fact is, is that it is a pinnacle
whether it's in the winter or the summer
and I don't think they can deny that
and I think a lot has changed on the mountain
and I really think that they need to be paying more
of a fair share for the summer.
Yeah, agreed.
So, three of the five of you guys got this update from me
and so I owe you some, we continue those discussions.
We expect you guys to, we expect something
to come back from the ski company by the end of December
to hit that master plan requirement,
but it's going to be, it's not automatic in their mind,
that's for sure.
There's a number of funding sources they want us
to look at. There's a lot of expansion ideas of the GID. There's a lot of different things.
And so, anyhow, that is still being worked on actively, but this budget does not reflect
the X. We don't have an agreement on place.
And it won't impact this budget, probably.
I mean, theoretically, I guess, if we struck a deal and got to work, potentially, but
I mean what point does it make sense for the GID to take over operations of the skittles?
Will we pay for it? What do you mean? Rather than having the ski company run it.
Well they're trained to do it, so the town would have to hire...
That would mean off the cup that'd be tough because I don't know how to run a ski lift
Tonight I'd have to hire someone to do that and there's just a level of expertise that
we don't have.
But would it be the town or would it be the GID?
Yeah, I mean it would be the GID funding it and I'm assuming the GID would then contract
with the town just like the GID contracts with the town for the finance department
and the town manager and legal, I mean it's the same people just a different funding
source.
And if we hired – I don't know how many employees it takes to run that, but two on
the bottom, two on the – I would imagine it takes at least six people to run that as
many hours as it does.
I mean, it would just take – we could work through that, but we've never even considered
it to this point.
And I have to go back and reread the operating agreement, the 2004 operating agreement.
But I think what it says is Key Company runs it and the GID pays for it, but I'd have to go back.
There's decades of agreements behind that.
And so I'm not even close to preparing to answer that question.
Okay.
And so the last thing for tonight is you've got a lot of information at our last budget meeting
for all the changes that were occurring in the budget.
and you know we hit some of these beginning pages in the budget which
actually you know summarizes a lot of information and if we're going to do the
CIP next week I just want to make sure that after you've looked at the packet
now for maybe two weeks and if you had any other questions on anything else in
the packet. Don't assume that we won't have some next week on this. This is it. Speak now.
And I'll ask questions to smidge differences. If there's something you want more information
on or more detail, we just need to, I mean, if you tell us in advance, we could be prepped
for you. I have one that, not directly what we've
looked at, but something I'd like you to do some research for our next meeting.
And this has to do with the rodeo.
We've heard from the community people are not happy with the way it looks.
I like to have some money in the budget for next year
to do major landscaping around it.
Look at maybe painting the stands
and having some sort of a gate at the entrance
off of the roundabout so you just don't look into the dirt field.
My guess would probably be $250,000 for something like all that, but I think we should look at it.
We'd get some money in the budget.
And I'd be curious about some kind of awnings to go over the stands.
There are good examples of organic, like, structured, structural options.
That can give it a more organic, I know it's big,
But I'd be curious to know about that because that's another way to kind of lessen the the visual impact. I think it'll make it look bigger, actually.
Well, I'll show you the example that I'm talking about. Yeah, if we're bringing that topic into the conversation.
I know the Parks, Open Space and Trails poster committee started that discussion last week. And so they have the same concept.
and so next week if you guys say hey we know there's not a solution yet but let's
plug in pick your dollar amount for and we're just taking a number I hope you
have a little more information we just started last week so I don't have a
whole lot of numbers yet but yeah we knew that's a topic of conversation and
I mean obviously you know painting is an option and for sure you can paint
aluminum but I mean that would that kind of feedback next week we don't
need to solve it but let's get some money in the budget if we all agree
As you as a council say yes, we should find some way to make that grandstand appearance
less and whatever, that's great direction and we can plug something in.
Do I like to hear what the poster board came up with last week?
Well, they literally threw, one of the poster board members told me, they just kind of
threw it out at the end as like food for thought, like start thinking about it.
So I'm sure it's probably going to be a discussion for the next time.
I know it was a late agenda item and I know that the meeting went way long and
I, yes.
It was more like think about it come back with some ideas. It is a topic that they're interested in let's think about enough
That we can put a number in the budget, you know, but I think we I think we really should
Think about like what that entryway is gonna look like because I mean
We saw some drafts where there was there was much more of a kind of a facade
When you came around the roundabout and I think even if there's like some planting on the corner of the
I think that was softening it, but I think there's, you know, I think there's some stuff
that we can do to just kind of make that experience better.
Like I said, we're doing this solvable.
Let's have a reasonable number in the budget so we can work on it next year.
We, whoever here can work on it next year.
That's a great example of those kinds of projects.
If you've got to plug them in, yes, please, let's know it's a priority.
I apologize, I wasn't here at the last meeting, so I have a question that might have already
been, I don't think it was, but with the snow mass in exterior, so there's carryover from
this past year, what was accomplished and what was budgeted for last year for the exterior
improvements on this?
$2 million total is budgeted to date.
The only thing that's been completed is the roof.
When we put the budget, which was $200,000 or $300,000.
Originally?
No, we just did the roof this last year.
Let me just say $300,000, I can't remember the number.
And so what we were hoping to do is get much further along
in the rails and the doors.
And when we put it out to bid, we learned that we didn't have
the details that the contractors needed.
So we needed to pull the bid back.
And so we were, when we put the budget together,
We anticipated having a million spent and a million to go and I don't think we're gonna have that million spent this year
And so we will end up rolling over
1.7 million or one I can't remember the roof cost but that difference we will roll over more money to next year's project
And so that's exterior improvements. Will that include landscape? Yes improvements along the pathway of the benefit and so I think we've got
I'm doing the budget from my head
It's like about 250 or 200 for that park area.
And if you've been up there in the last two weeks or so,
we have started doing this.
There's this significant clenering, whatever.
We know the water feature needs to be improved.
If you've been there before, the stairway,
of course you've been there before,
but I mean, if the stairway used to end in the cul-de-sac
and snow would always get pushed over into that
and so it didn't work,
that stairway is gonna be moved to end up
closer to the front door of the snow mess in.
And so that that stairway can become a year-round, that walkway can become year-round.
So all those kinds of things are being worked through right now.
And will that budget expand to include further improvements down the Benedict Trail, or is
that just that?
The way the council appropriated it was snow mess in, so it's just that block, call it.
And do we have anything in the budget for anything more on Benedict Trail?
Not right now.
Essentially right now it's private property, not essentially, it is private property.
So if you all said, hey, we want to really find ways to improve the Benedict Trail,
we could start doing that, but at this point it's all that property.
There's an easement that you can walk through on the sidewalk,
but we don't own anything to make improvements to besides because we bought the inn,
we own that property there.
But again, that would be another good example if you said, hey,
this is something we want to be looking at start planning for and thinking about I
mean there could be easements acquired and all sorts of ways to do things but
that needs to be a priority set by y'all I mean honestly I think it's an
incredible experience for visitors and locals alike and we used to use it all
the time and now it's not connected anymore it's disconnected and it
really I think could be an incredible walkable feature to our town that
keep you off the sidewalk from you know I agree as a kid I used to do that for the
time right but the question now is because everybody's different attitudes about
strangers and stuff that you know with the people that own those easements or
own that area that we need to walk through are they agreeable to improving
it or they saying we don't want people from our house yeah I think that would
be step one yeah well we had a walk-through scheduled I mean it's it's
a way different trail now than it was yeah it's just it really does go close
to a lot of condos there's you know it's just like some you know some stone
steps in places it's not yeah it's not what it once was but it could be I
I mean, if we wanted it to be.
So really the question would be, should we put some money
into the budget to study it, like $100,000 or so?
And so you've done that.
If you remember when we did the Connect in the Nodes, which
we put, I think, believe $400,000 to start with,
that's one of the nodes in the bank.
We have dollars for next, that will be in next year's budget?
I'm too far off the cup, but yes, I think we could.
But again, if that's something to think about,
let us come back to you with a plan and we can say,
here's what we think we should do with this.
Why don't you just, at the next meeting,
just throw out at something that is what we might consider.
And what I'm hoping is that I remember this correctly
and we've got a big chunk and we just need to execute
the next phase of that plan to get the next phase going.
Okay.
All right.
But I don't want to commit to that without remembering.
Well, in the meantime, it might be interesting to just
explore, you know, what accessible routes we even could accomplish to connect that if
it's not, you can't connect it because we've got private entities that are not going to
welcome that then it might be a moot point, but it'll be interesting.
Right, and that's why if I'm remembering a right in our dollars that first thing we
might spend money on is let's get an easement, let's do a survey, let's find out where
all the easements are, let's find out where our rights are, let's find out where
of those roadblocks may or may not be,
and that might be that first step.
I mean, like, how much request do we just get all that information?
I mean, I think I'd like to see that in the budget.
And so we'll get some numbers.
I think I just got the information.
At least we know what we got.
Loan of money in there to study it.
We'll be walking through these next week,
and Anne will be here as well, so.
But I think we need to do some outreach to those property
owners as well, because we don't want to end up
in a lawsuit.
Oh, definitely. But I think we first need to understand who owns this. Do we own this? Do they own that? Do we have an easement before we talk to them?
That's all I'm saying. Let's do our homework, whatever it takes to do that, and then we can talk to people if there's something we want to do. Definitely.
I just remember I was really excited about it until I went and started walking in and I was like, you know, not sure.
Recently you mean yeah, I mean it's just because you know what it was you end up being dropped out like in like in a middle
No, yeah, because they took out those steps and stuff. Yeah, right. I agree
I'm the agenda for tonight. It did mention the eab request. Are we gonna talk about that?
Was that tonight or I can't remember it well unless I looked at something wrong
But you were okay. I'm sorry. I was I'm got disoriented because I was not okay
It did say that on there. So let me go to that real quick and I'm gonna do that so the obviously the
EAP obviously that is obvious. They did make a request for a position to y'all
And I and it was not in the budget and so the idea that I'd like to put forward is that we
include an additional $300,000 from the REAP fund,
that's what we talked about, the REAP fund,
for potential consulting services
to help reach those goals.
The third point largely was,
hey, there's a lot of things we should be doing more of
and I think we all would all agree,
making advances towards those goals are a very good idea,
but hiring a full-time position is difficult.
And so, if we came back to you all without necessarily a plan of action, but a budget
number to say, here's a chunk that we could do, and a sustainability plan is, it's either
eight or 12 steps, and I'm blanking what it is, but there's ways to do that.
And CORE does, they focus on buildings, and that's two of the 10 potentially.
And so, maybe we do something with CORE, or maybe we do something with somebody else,
but we say, okay, what parts of the sustainability plan do you want to tackle,
and work with the AB on that and use it as a consulting service rather than a full-time employee.
I'm going to agree with that. I think it's hard to bring somebody in that role
and give them real authority into an existing organization.
Well, not necessarily have a whole department.
I mean, when you look up city of Aspen and they have like 10 people or something like that.
Yeah, but evolve over time.
Right. I mean, it's like two hours of Greg's week.
But did you, does EAB have you discussed this idea with them versus like hiring a full-time
person?
I have not.
I mean, I think one of their points when they came to talk to us is they just wanted to
make sure there was someone that was here that was sort of coordinating between all the
different departments.
I mean, that was my takeaway from what they said when they came.
Yes, that's how I understand it also, and I honestly think that would be a very difficult
position to hire for.
And I mean, to the director's credit, I mean, you can talk to Julie or Ann, when they think
about their projects, they do think about environmental issues, and that's when we're doing the
design for housing, we know that we should be going towards electrical.
These are not foreign concepts to any of us, and so I don't know if that coordination
needs to happen.
And I think somebody telling us what's the best next step would be great.
I mean, we know that our biggest carbon footprint,
the biggest component of our carbon footprint is building heat.
And so how do you get rid of that?
You green it up with electricity.
And how to do that?
It takes physical dollars to convert.
It just takes money.
Well, isn't this really what we did with CORE?
Well, they explored four buildings.
So yeah, CORE has recently, in the last month,
giving us an assessment on how to do one of our buildings in, I believe, three private
buildings, and how do you do that, and so that is done, and CORE would be happy to continue
that forward.
It's expensive, or I think there's other components of sustainability.
There's composting, there's lots of, like I said, there's ten other ways we can go,
and if CORE's the answer, then the AB can say, hey, let's get CORE to do the buildings.
If that's where we want to make that investment, they can make that recommendation and I'm
just kind of saying rather than hiring a person to kind of work through these things, this
might be the perfect chance to bring in a consultant to help us lead that effort, whatever
it might be, whether it's core with building sustainability, whether it's something else
that we find is a good idea.
It might be a good workshop session early in the year with EAB and if we want to
bring a consultant or a facility, but just look at all the things that we're doing,
all things we could be doing and set some priorities and direction instead of just sort of not quite
clear what we're doing. Maybe hear from department heads too on where they're at. I feel like part
of what they were looking for is accountability meaning you know we don't just say oh yes we
want to do that but there's some ways to measure or you know even police how we're doing things
And so, as long as a consultant can provide that I feel like then that could be accomplishing
what they maybe want to see.
And accountability, I don't know that a consultant can do that, but I mean it's, like somebody
observed earlier, we don't put a lot of staff time towards it, I mean it's just, we haven't.
And so if you all said this is going to be a priority and we're going to spend more
on it, we can do that.
That's where you guys get paid the big bucks for.
Well, I feel like they could say this is how you do accountability, not necessarily.
They would be the ones doing it.
But again, that's why after knowing that you received the presentation, assuming you'd
want some kind of way to be responsive to that request, the idea was let's use REAP
dollars and use an outside consultant.
And again, that was my response.
I love to have a work session where we just sort of can talk about all the stuff
up at VAB here unless you have a free willing sort of conversation.
And are we going to get a report from CORE on those?
We've got it.
I've got it in my e-mail.
We can forward it on to you for sure.
But let's, I think we should put it on the agenda so we can review it.
Oh, let me get it to you to read first and then a little bit.
And if you still want to do that.
It's lengthy.
I mean, I'm sorry.
Let me get it to you.
I'll email it to you tomorrow.
I just want to make sure if we're making that kind of investment,
we're getting something out of it.
And so let me forward it to you, and then once you guys want to get it scheduled, absolutely
we'll do that.
But I'd like you to look at it first before we get that scheduled.
Thanks.
Okay.
Anything else?
Yeah.
And to make an answer point, if there is other things or whatever that we try to find
that sweet spot between not killing anyone's insides and making sure you get the detail
you want.
So if there are other things, please let us know.
Otherwise, next week will be capital improvement budget.
Okay.
Alright. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you both.
Alright. We're adjourned.
We're adjourned. Thank you.
Alright. Thanks everybody.