The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Grant fund projected to grow to $1.8 million in five years
The Mt. Crested Butte town council divvied up $40,000 at their regular meeting Tuesday, March 1, spreading admissions tax revenues around to four local non-profits. All but one walked away with what they’d asked for.
The town tacks a 4 percent tax onto event ticket sales on the mountain, like lift and concert tickets. That money goes into a fund, 25 percent of which is used to pay for transportation operations and the rest goes to marketing events that will bring people and money to the mountain.
Already the town has promised $20,000 from the fund to support the Quizno’s Pro Challenge bike race coming to the valley in August. The council needed to trim the remaining $57,000 in requests down to fit the $40,000 budget.
The Adaptive Sports Center asked the council for $5,000 to help pay for “outreach trips” planned for this summer to New York City, Atlanta, and the Washington DC area. Development coordinator Melissa Hobkirk, told the council that Adaptive is in the middle of its “biggest winter ever,” tallying as many as 2,100 ski lessons this year to disabled guests and their families. Hobkirk said the marketing mission they have in mind has the potential to make that number grow.
“Last year we put more of an emphasis on outreach trips and this year we have five new groups from across the country,” she said. “So we know this is an effective use of the admission tax revenues.”
Councilman Danny D’Aquila asked, “When you get those folks here, do they participate in our economy?” Hobkirk replied, “They sure do,” and listed a few facts to support it. The council granted Adaptive the requested $5,000.
A return on investment is something the council had a collective eye toward in looking at all of the applications. One of the guidelines mentioned in the application is that, “All marketing programs need to have a measurable return on investment and assist in increasing sales tax revenue for the Town of Mt. Crested Butte.”
The Crested Butte Arts Festival, which was applying for money from the town for the first time, brings several thousand generally well-heeled people to the valley and asked for $20,000. For the first time last year, the town played host to culinary arts events. Executive director Diana Ralston said the money would be used to “expand upon the successes of last year’s events that were held on the Mountain.”
Although councilman Danny D’Aquila pointed out “people in this town love good food,” the council granted the group $5,000, a quarter of their original request, and encouraged the Festival to keep a line of communication open with the town.
“Please understand that we do have history with these other three applicants,” mayor William Buck said, “We’re always looking for new ways to spend the money.”
The Crested Butte-Mt. Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce put in two requests for $10,000 and $2,000 to help bring in a big name band for the Fat Tire Bike Week (FTBW) Concert and back the printing of another summertime round of Butte Bucks, respectively.
Speaking about the funding request for the FTBW, Chamber events manager Scott Still told the council, “We’d like to…build on the momentum from last year and continue building on the reputation of the event as being the only major cycling festival in the nation with a major music component.”
Still said the Chamber is planning on a “move toward sustainability” for this year’s concert and he wasn’t talking recycling.
“Instead of having a free show like we did with Karl Denson last year, we’d go to a ticketed show,” he said. “The idea would be to take all of those proceeds from the ticket sales and put them into a separate account and that would be seed money for next year’s event.”
Chamber director Richard Bond explained that they are considering a $10 charge only for people who go to the concert and just bundling the extra charge for the music in the regular ticket fee for racers. “In effect, it would be free admission for the participants in the racing, so we get more people coming for racing.” he said. The council granted the full $10,000 request.
The Summer Butte Bucks program is coming up fast and Still explained that the added incentive to buy locally can provide local businesses with a much needed shot in an otherwise slow time of the year. This summer, 40,000 Butte Bucks will be spent at participating businesses.
“We change the program up a little bit every time to take advantage of what we think will be the down times when the program will be most effective,” he said, explaining that the exact timing of the promotion is still up in the air.
But he talked about the possibility of making some of the summer Butte Bucks available to participants in Ride the Rockies that will come through in early June, so they could take advantage of the promotion while they’re here. “There a lot of different ways it could go,” Still said. The town agreed to put up $2,000 to support the program.
Another two requests came to the town from the Crested Butte Music Festival, both for $10,000 to support the marketing of what managing and artistic director Alexander Schierle says is shaping up to be one of the premier professional music festivals in the country.
Scheirle told the council that in the last four years, the festival has grown in size from an initial 35 applications to take more than 500 auditions this year for the student programs, and in duration from three weeks to six.
“We’ll have top level students from all over the country coming to us this summer for six weeks,” Scheirle said. “We also renamed the program because we were able to attract one of the best opera tenors in the world. He agreed to try our program and be a mentor for the students…What he does for our program is add an international flair…We’re already well-known in this country and now we can go out and audition internationally and carry the name of Mt. Crested Butte. This is great news for us.”
This summer the Music Festival will bring in about 150 top tier musicians from all over the world with names like The Kingston Trio, The American String Quartet, Boston Brass and Ralph Stanley. “Some of them are really well known,” Scheirle said.
The Festival will run from July 3 to August 14 and in the last three years the Festival’s budget has doubled to be $1.1 million this year. The town council agreed to grant the Music Festival $10,000 for Bluegrass in Paradise and $10,000 for the Music Festival sponsorship.
And town councilman Dave Clayton says the town is positioning itself to be an even bigger contributor to local marketing efforts in the next few years.
“Our projections [for admissions tax revenues] are doing very well, very close to our actuals,” Clayton said. “In December we took in more money than we had anticipated and I think we’re doing very well at projecting what we’ll be able to provide in the future.”
Clayton also said the town was able to put about $7,000 in Admissions Tax revenue away in reserve for the first two months of the year and possibly a little more in March “because it’s a big month for admissions tax money,” he said. “At the end of 12 months we’ll have $100,000 reserve built back up to be able to deal with timing and any special requests that come in.”
This round, they dipped into the reserve for just $2,000, leaving what should amount to almost $20,000 in reserve at the end of March.
Clayton says the amount of money the town will be able to pump back into local marketing efforts is going to grow over the next five years. “The one thing I was really amazed by when I totaled it up: If you look at five year projections, we’ll be able to give out marketing support funds of $1.8 million,” he said.
