The Telluride Town Council on Tuesday launched a third-party investigation into the town’s Mayor Pro Tem Meghan Fee, following the elected leader’s proposal to buy the Telluride ski area from resort owner Chuck Horning.
“It seemed like there was some impropriety there and Ms. Fee acted beyond the scope of her authority and that is a break of the public trust,” said Telluride Town Councilman Dan Enright on Tuesday before voting to approve an investigation by an outside, independent group. “How do we as a council work to rebuild and regain that public trust?”
Marti Prohaska, the mayor of Mountain Village, resigned last week after her town council indicated it would be launching an investigation into her late-December trip with Fee to visit Telluride resort owner Horning with an offer to buy the ski area.
Prohaska and Fee flew to Horning’s office in Newport Beach, Calif., on Dec. 27 as the Telluride ski patrol launched a 13-day strike and Horning closed the ski area. The strike and closure of the ski area over the New Year’s holiday crushed local businesses dependent on visitors.
The two said they were not working as elected leaders, but local residents. They had enlisted investors ready to pay Horning $127.5 million for a 51% share of the ski area.
The women negotiated for days with Horning and signed a contract outlining the plan, which would have left Horning as chairman of a board controlled by themselves and the investor group.
The women told The Colorado Sun last week that the proposal could have ended many years of contention between Horning, who bought the resort and surrounding real estate in 2005 for around $45 million, and the local communities.
“Really it was a conversation about what options there would be to create a better future for all of us because our businesses were suffering. Long before the strike our businesses had been declining because of a lack of tourism and a decline in visitation,” Fee told The Sun last week.
Prohaska and Fee said they believed Horning was close to signing the contract when it suddenly appeared online. Horning, who has repeatedly expressed a distrust of local governments and what he feels are onerous proposals around a lift taxing the cost of water for snowmaking, filed open records requests with the towns of Telluride and Mountain Village, seeking correspondence between elected leaders during the patrol strike.
More than 100 merchants on Jan. 7 marched on Telluride’s main street chanting “End it now!” urging the ski patrol and Telluride Ski and Golf to end a 12-day strike that has slowed traffic in the community. Sally Puff Courtney, a local real estate broker seen here, urged the merchants and workers to reach out to patrollers and company leaders. “Make those hard calls so we don’t go down the tubes,” she said. (Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun)“I think like many in our community I was hurt and felt great disappointment,” councilman Enright said of seeing the contract signed by the two elected leaders.
The Telluride council approved a motion that directed the town attorney to enlist a group to conduct “an unbiased and neutral third-party investigation” of Fee’s interactions with Horning. The motion also asked Fee to step back from the council during the investigation.
The council planned to ask that investigation group to provide a cost estimate and that spending would be open for public comment at a future meeting. Several residents spoke in support of the investigation.
The council also discussed a motion that would ask Fee to resign her position on the town council. They did not vote on a resignation motion.
Fee agreed to suspend her participation from the council during the investigation.
“I am happy to step back and I also want to say I am grateful for the support of our community,” she said. “I do look forward to the results of the impartial investigation.”
Councilwoman Kristen Permakoff said the two women making promises to Horning “was pretty egregious. … Our town does not deserve that.”
“I think this investigation will hopefully prove to everyone this was not an act of the town council or staff,” Permakoff said.
The two-week closure of the resort during the patroller strike strained tourism-dependent businesses and residents. April Montgomery from the Telluride Foundation said the community’s Good Neighbor Fund has raised $750,000 since the end of December.
The fund has fielded 170 requests from residents seeking $337,741 in assistance following the strike and resort shutdown. For comparison, the Good Neighbor Fund reviewed 85 applications from residents and paid out $53,000 in assistance in all of 2025.
“Almost all are rent and mortgage relief,” Montgomery said of the recent requests for assistance.
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