The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Results in ideas for new business association, film commission idea and better protocols
Some angst obviously remains in Crested Butte over the Whatever USA event that took place earlier this month. The Crested Butte Town Council held an hour-long work session on Monday, September 15 concerning the issues that arose during the event. Chief among them was the wristband limit, some language in the final contract on how the $500,000 gift would be used, whether to leave one blue lamppost on Elk Avenue as a reminder of the event, and how to give the public a chance to voice their feelings about what the event represented.
Councilperson Jim Schmidt said the town and council received a lot of heat about running out of wristbands that allowed people onto Elk Avenue for the bulk of the party. But he said the town and council had no input into the decision and in fact were not told about any limits on wristbands until Thursday.
“I heard bad things about how they were distributed,” Schmidt said. “There was never talk about limiting the numbers. I don’t mind taking heat when we deserve it but this came out of nowhere.”
“There was some inherent communications issues with that,” admitted town manager Todd Crossett. “When the security team came in they made that call. They wanted to manage the wristbands to 4,000. Mosaic, the event organizer, was also surprised at that. The Patriot Group security team answered to Anheuser-Busch.
“Friday was horrible as a result of the wristband situation. People were upset and rightfully so. We tried to reserve some for employees of Elk Avenue businesses,” Crossett continued. “We negotiated to get more wristbands for Saturday and handed about 420 of them. The Saturday solution helped but clearly it didn’t go well.”
Crossett said the lesson learned was that if a similar event came back through, the town should be given the money to hire the security team that reports to the town. “The town worked well with Patriot in terms of policing the event but the wristbands and some access issues could have been done better,” he said. “Had we known the limit, we would have set up different protocols.”
“If we do a special entertainment district in the future, I wouldn’t want to restrict it to people over 21 years old,” added Schmidt, “but I can’t imagine another event like this happening here anytime soon.”
“I agree we probably won’t see something like this again,” said Councilperson Shaun Matusewicz, “but I’d advocate that a key lesson is the town should be less involved in security, for example. The event organizers need to figure out the details, not the town. If the staff is less involved they can see the big picture and react to details.”
“Someone knew the number of the wristbands,” said Councilman Glenn Michel. “In the future that information should be part of the permit.”
“I think we all acknowledge that the wristbands and access could have been done better,” said Mayor Aaron Huckstep.
Time for a local film commission?
“I think we also have to think hard about if we ever want to fence off Elk Avenue for something like this in the future,” said Crossett. “That caused a lot of trouble.”
“While we might not see an event like this soon, we might see things like film and commercial shoots,” added Councilperson Chris Ladoulis. “We could use a film commission in the county to deal with inquiries that impact the area with film shoots.”
The local Tourism Association has in the past acted as a film commission.
“This was a Herculean effort at great speed,” said town attorney John Belkin. “When you do something this big, this fast, there will be problems.”
“Going forward, I’d suggest the town needs a final application deadline of 45 days before the event,” suggested Councilperson David Owen.
“I’d suggest a minimum of 90 days,” said Belkin.
“We need to treat everyone the same,” said Crossett. “There is always a lot of back-and-forth with all the big events.”
“I’d say with these major special events there needs to be hard timelines for set-up and teardown,” added Owen.
“This event pushed a lot of people’s comfort level with the branding and messaging sent out,” said Councilperson Glenn Michel. “I think we need an opportunity to get the people’s perception.”
Citizen feedback…voice for retail, democracy and the lone blue pole
Some residents were at the council meeting Monday to offer their perception during the public comment section of the council meeting.
Local gallery owner Shaun Horne told the council the retail community in town felt somewhat disenfranchised from the event, so he was planning on starting a new Downtown Business Association. It would essentially be a free group that would communicate electronically but would be able to discuss and evaluate special events and share their opinion with the town.
“It would be different from the chamber of commerce, which seems to represent the bigger businesses in town,” he said. “This would give a bigger voice to retail.”
Horne has polled downtown retailers. Most did not do well during the Whatever USA event. “I am hoping the council will listen to us as a source of information on the front end of these special events,” Horne said.
David Rothman said that while he was glad the event came off well, he still had concerns about how the process, was handled, which he felt went against segments of the town charter “The process was rushed and democracy ended up in trouble,” he said.
Kimbre Woods reminded the council she asked for an environmental deposit at the public hearing but no one followed up. “No one even addressed that except to say that the paint would be okay. But it wasn’t true,” she said. “So I am appealing that we deal with it now. This company came in and didn’t care about the environment like the locals do.”
Citizen Mel Harper asked if the council had decided to leave the one lamppost blue. Harper said the people she had talked to didn’t like the post blue. “They said they’d return the town to 100 percent the way it was. That’s not 100 percent,” she said.
Amanda Furman of the Tobacconist said her business saw no positive impacts from the event. “My beef is the excessive shutdown of Elk,” she said. “It’s really hurt us. The secrecy aspect is also harmful. No one has come to talk to us except for [Shaun Horne]. My patio space that is shared with other tenants was used, but only the restaurant received compensation. We didn’t even know it was going to happen. I’m really upset we weren’t notified about anything. It’s been very difficult to get answers.”
Contract issues over the money
As reported in last week’s paper, some councilmen were very upset with a clause in the contract that slipped by them on the Thursday of the final vote: the determination of how the $500,000 gift from the event organizers would be spent.
The council indicated a desire to give the public an opportunity to comment on the ramifications of the Whatever USA event in a broad way. They expressed some desire to dovetail the discussion into perhaps future talks on issues like transportation. No date was set but they asked Crossett to come up with a plan to accommodate such a discussion.
