Say Anything Blog

Seattle Weekly has this article about local non-resort ski schools:

It sounds like the plot for a bad Jason London movie: A ski mogul with an eye on the bottom line takes over a local resort and cancels contracts with the community-based ski schools that have traditionally served the slopes, then asks the ski bums to join the corporate ranks. Lessons double in cost. Longtime skiers and snowboarders are outraged. The National Forest Service washes its hands of the matter. Will the underdog community schools yield to big business? Can snow-loving families afford the increased cost of lessons? Will the feds step in?…

In a letter sent two weeks ago to a handful of schools that have served the resort since its inception (Crystal refuses to comment on matters directly related to the decision), Kircher states that cutting ties is the result of tough times in the ski industry, with problems including increased fuel costs, lack of qualified staffing, low customer-retention rate, and erratic weather. Herein, Kircher writes: “In times like these we are forced to come up with new and creative ways to manage our business,” later adding that the change, “will allow us to create standards of excellence based on specific skiing/riding models and customer service models.” The letter concludes by inviting schools to ”become part of our family and share the Crystal Mountain experience,” an offer the now-unemployed instructors took as an invitation to work for Crystal’s in-house school…

For Kevin McCarthy, president of the White Pass ski area (located west of Yakima on Highway 12), which cut ties with its concession schools shortly before he started running things in the early ‘70s, consolidation is simply good business. “Why give business that’s occurring on your property to someone else? You need every penny you can get. They’re making a good call.” he says.

It is akin to owning a movie theatre and letting someone set up a vending boot inside your theatre and sell popcorn and soda without giving you a cut.  Resorts make a huge portion of their money (and an even larger portion of their profits) off of their ski school.  Ski schools have little long term fixed assets associated with them meaning that most of their cost model is variable costs as opposed to fixed.  This allows flexibility to increase or decrease costs according to demand.  In short, this is a necessary and smart business decision, but it hurts locals that don’t want to make the $9 an hour that most resorts pay their instructors.

Something that really bothers me though is this:

Further complicating matters is the fact that Crystal is located on government land and operates under a “special use permit” issued by the National Forest Service. In addition to a percentage of Crystal’s profits going to the National Treasury, this means that the NFS has a significant say over business decisions that are made at Crystal and other local slopes, to the point that the resorts must seek approval for details as specific as the color and style of their buildings.

But in the case of the spurned schools, the NFS has chosen not to interfere. “Things we do have say over are safety and what kind of services are provided,” says Washington’s Forest Service director, Rob Iwamoto. “Obviously, ski school is one of those—but how business is arranged isn’t one of those. In general, who provides [the ski-school service] is a business decision. We just expect a level of service to be provided. We are not there to micromanage a business.”

You mean any time a business makes a decision that someone is unhappy about the government must choose whether to interfere or not?  Well, it is on forest service land that the ski resort has a special use permit for.  So surely the special use permit gives the government the right to choose whether to interfere with business operations.  The article should have mentioned that the government also chooses not to interfere with ticket prices or food prices in the cafeterias.  Typical Seattle type attitude.  Before the government concerns themselves with local ski instructors, we need the government to choose to interfere with the price that I pay for a latte from SBC or Starbucks or choose to interfere with how much Windows or MS Office costs.  (SBC, Starbucks, and Microsoft being Seattle based companies)

No, the only thing the government needs to choose to interfere with is the amount of THC that is soaking in to this man-ponytail wearing, latte sipping, Seattle based, hippy brain.  Damn, dude, put on a flannel, put on some Pearl Jam, and either chain yourself to a tree or protest the World Bank’s next conference bro.  You gotta be somewhat objective and the use of a single word detracts from the point that the situation sucks for the folks involved.  But no business has a “right” to exist.  The government does not have an obligation to sit as the judge of which of the two competing business models should be allowed simply because the ski resort happens to be on public land.

Cross Posted from http://www.ski-blog.com.