Marti Prohaska, the mayor of Mountain Village, resigned Wednesday night after the town council told her they would be investigating her late-December visit with Telluride resort owner Chuck Horning, which included an offer to buy the ski area.
“I understand their intent is to uphold the integrity of council, and I respect the reasoning behind their request. However, I feel strongly that now is a time for this community to heal and do the hard work of rebuilding,” Prohaska wrote in her resignation letter. “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.”
Prohaska and Telluride Mayor Pro Tem Meehan Fee flew to Horning’s office in Newport Beach, California, in late December as the Telluride ski patrol launched a strike and Horning closed the ski area. The two said they were not working as elected leaders, but local residents. They had enlisted investors willing to pay Horning $127.5 million for a 51% share of the ski area.
They spent three days working with Horning and his representatives on a deal that would keep Horning as a chair of the board while Prohaska and Fee organized investors into a board that would make financial and structural decisions for the ski area.
Prohaska said in her letter that she “will stand in truth that our actions came from our deep love and commitment for the Telluride and Mountain Village communities.”
Fee told The Sun on Wednesday that she and Prohaska went to Newport Beach as private citizens, not elected officials and they did not inform their councils of the Dec. 27-30 visit. Fee said the two were being completely transparent about their discussions with Horning and, as single members of town councils, they could not deliver any promises regarding town policy. They vehemently denied that their effort was connected to the ski patrol strike.
Fee was unavailable to comment Thursday. Telluride Mayor Teddy Errico said he supports an investigation, saying the contract signed by Fee indicates “some involvement for sure and we have to find out what it is through an investigation.”
“Certainly this fiasco has caused a loss of trust in our government among our locals and we are going to have to prove to them our lack of involvement in this scheme to buy the resort and build that trust back so we can focus on important tasks at hand like affordable housing, wastewater, our gondola, and getting skiers back on track to visit Telluride,” Errico said. “And more importantly, it’s really valuable for us to do all we can to protect our sense of community here. We have to get back to what is good about Telluride and that has taken a hit.”
Mountain Village Mayor Marti Prohaska in her ski patrol uniform after work on the mountain on Saturday, April 5, 2025. (Kelsey Brunner, Special to The Colorado Sun)Prohaska and Fee said it appeared Horning was ready to sell majority ownership until earlier this week when the proposed contract — signed by Prohaska and Fee — was published anonymously online. Horning also filed open records requests with local governments seeking emails and correspondence, saying in a statement that the ski area was not for sale.
The 13-day ski patrol strike that ended Jan. 8, Prohaska wrote, “exposed the vulnerabilities of a destination dependent on a company that lacks leadership.”
“Until this moment, many in this community have either been too complacent, or too afraid to discuss this fact,” she wrote. “The events of the last weeks have brought this reality into clear and painful focus — but the cracks have been showing for some time.”
Prohaska has lived in Mountain Village since she was 12. Her father, Jim Wells, owned the ski resort with Ron Allred. The two purchased Telluride Ski and Golf from resort founder Joe Moline in 1978. Wells and Allred built the resort and shepherded the development of the town of Mountain Village in the 1980s. They sold the resort to Sony scion Joe Morita in 1999, and Morita sold to Horning in 2005.
Prohaska said she has spent much of the last 25 years working to make her hometown better.
“It is heartbreaking to me and my and Meehan Fee’s personal decision to face current circumstances head-on, and offer actual, workable solutions, would be seen as untoward by anyone who knows us,” she wrote.
The town of Mountain Village on Thursday announced the resignation, saying Mayor Pro Tem Scott Pearson and the council would soon vote to elect a new mayor to fill the vacancy. Prohaska was elected to her second four-year term on town council 2023, and she was elected mayor by the town council in July 2023. The town limits council members to two terms and she was set to serve as mayor through June 2027.
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