The mayor of Mountain Village, near Telluride, has resigned as the small Western Slope community continues to reel from the effects of a 13-day ski patrol union strike, the temporary closure of Telluride Ski Resort and the ensuing economic turmoil.
Mayor Marti Prohaska, who is also a Telluride ski patroller, announced her resignation “effective immediately” late Wednesday night, saying “the Mountain Village Town Council has requested a private investigation” into conversations she had with ski resort owner Chuck Horning in late December, as the strike was underway.
Mountain Village spokesperson Kathrine Warren said the council received legal advice about whether to pursue an investigation during its regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday, though it has not made a decision.
Earlier this week, Prohaska detailed her conversation with Horning in an interview, saying that she and Telluride Town Council member Meehan Fee flew to California to meet with him. She said that the two women wanted to discuss the patroller strike with Horning in hopes of finding a resolution not just immediately, but also long-term.
“Our intention was to try to talk to him about the underlying challenges of the current leadership structure and gauge his appetite for a change with the understanding that there were people interested in both purchasing and partnering,” Prohaska said, a few days before her resignation.
On Thursday, the town of Telluride also announced that it plans to discuss whether a third-party investigation is appropriate to review Fee’s “private dealings” with Prohasaka and Horning. That discussion could take place at a Jan. 20 meeting.
Prohaska said she was in California for several days starting on Dec. 27 — the same day that the strike began — and spoke with Horning and some of his associates face-to-face about the resort, its challenges and more broadly about business governance. They also discussed alternative ownership models for the ski resort, Prohaska said.
The former mayor confirmed she and Fee presented a purchase offer intended to transfer a 51% stake of the resort into the hands of an entity called the Telluride Ski Resort Fund. The purchase price was listed at $127.5 million.
Telluride Ski Resort spokesperson Nancy Clark confirmed the offer, but said, “The ski resort is not for sale. There will be no ownership change and was never going to be.”
Clark also shared a Colorado Open Records Act request that Horning’s lawyers sent to the towns of Telluride and Mountain Village seeking government correspondence and information about the entity that was listed as the prospective buyer.
But the goal of the trip, Prohaska explained, was to meet with Horning as private citizens – not elected officials. The two didn’t use taxpayer funds to do so, she said.
Prohaska, who has been a ski patroller for 25 years, said part of the union’s grievances were related to a lack of leadership on the mountain. The Telluride Professional Ski Patrol Association walked off the job for 13 days seeking higher wages and a pay structure that incentivizes retention. They achieved the former, but not the latter.
“There’s just been these building frustrations,” she said in the interview before her resignation. “It’s not just the CEO, it’s also that there hasn’t been a mountain manager, and it’s difficult for middle management to fill in some of these roles.”
The purchase proposal suggests that Prohaska, Fee and Horning would be managing partners of the resort and that the trio would identify investors to be part of the Telluride Ski Resort Fund. A sale would direct local officials to help broker an end to the strike and address municipal projects such as workforce housing, future water needs, infrastructure upgrades and generating more tourism to the area, according to the documents. They are signed by Prohaska and Fee, but not Horning.
In a statement Thursday, Mountain Village Mayor Pro Tem Scott Pearson acknowledged that “in the course of these discussions, certain written comments appear to have been made.” He did not mention any pending investigation.
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In her resignation letter, Prohaska said she believes stepping down will allow the community to begin healing from the fissures caused by the recent strike and mountain closure.
“I feel strongly that now is a time for this community to heal and do the hard work of rebuilding. It would not be fair for Mountain Village staff or taxpayers to shoulder the burden – both financial and reputational – of said investigation, when the focus right now should be on finding a path forward,” the letter said in part.
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