The Lake County Board of Commissioners has declined to solicit bids for operating the county-owned Ski Cooper ski area, choosing to renew the lease of the volunteer management team that has run the rustic, community ski area for the last 20 years.
After several public meetings where vocal groups urged the commissioners to consider changes at the non-profit Ski Cooper, the county’s leaders chose to renew the lease for the existing operators who have run the ski area without debt for the last two decades. The nine-man board in charge of Ski Cooper has invested $5.5 million in improvements since 1992 without incurring any debt or asking the county for financial help.
That fiscal responsibility warrants the Cooper management board’s continued guidance, said board president and ski area manager John Clapper.
Still, the management group’s request that commissioners renew a 20-year lease was whittled to 15 years. And the serve-for-life management board that has traditionally met in private will hold two public meetings every year. And the board must provide the public with an annual accounting of the ski area’s revenues and expenses.
The modest concessions are not enough, said Leadville City Councilman Jaime Stuever. Stuever joined a few local groups — like Friends for Change at Cooper Hill — in arguing that the commissioners should open a bid process to see what changes other operators would consider at the 400-acre ski area that averages about 62,000 skier visits a year. The groups urged commissioners to at least insert performance standards, accountability and management term limits into any new lease. Stuever said Ski Cooper is a “winter gold mine” that could spark economic activity during Lake County’s dormant winter months.
“It’s the good-old-boy syndrome up there again,” said Stuever, who plans to run for Leadville mayor this fall. “This new lease has no teeth. It’s a rubber stamp process. All (the commissioners) have done is given us lip service. They told us at the beginning that we had great ideas and then they never considered anything.”
