The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“It sounds like we are a clandestine organization”
The Gunnison Crested Butte Tourism Association (TA) is examining its roots this fall as it reevaluates several aspects of its structure. A specially created subcommittee is exploring a series of possible changes, including allowing elected officials to serve as voting board members. The towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte have expressed frustration that their elected officials are not allowed to vote.
But the organization is also considering changes to its membership structure and ways to make itself more transparent to the public. Members of the TA board met with the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday, September 11, in front of a packed audience, including representatives from all of the municipalities. Their intent was to get the commissioners’ take on possible changes, but confusion arose right off the bat.
According to TA board member Carolyn Riggs, when the bylaws were last updated in 2009, the removal of certain language made it difficult to know what steps would be required to change board composition. She said the original bylaws dictated that a vote by TA membership, comprised of local businesses, was required. The omission of that language, however, was apparently by accident.
“That was what was omitted in oversight, human error, by the committee that reviewed the bylaws in 2009,” Riggs said.
“Was this adopted without that language?” asked County Manager Matthew Birnie, referring to the 2009 bylaws.
“Correct,” Riggs said.
Birnie wondered if that made the revised bylaws official, but TA board members thought the old bylaws still needed to be followed. Attorney Jim McDonald said, “You can’t just go back and say there’s a voting requirement that you do it this way … and then say oops, now we’ll do it the other way because we changed it without following the protocol.”
TA executive director Jane Chaney added, “There was no purposeful action taken to delete that.”
Confusion also resulted over how much of the TA membership needed to vote. After unofficial consultation with two attorneys, Riggs felt that at least 51 percent of the TA membership needed to participate in the vote in order to make changes to the board composition. But Commissioner Hap Channell and Birnie interpreted the language to mean that no matter how many members voted, a majority vote would allow changes to be made.
The group finally agreed that formal consult with legal counsel would be required, and the commissioners turned their attention to weighing in on the actual make-up of the board. Commissioner Hap Channell, who once sat on the TA board, said adding four elected seats seemed like an easy way to appease the municipalities without giving them a majority vote.
“I always thought it was a bit of a non-issue because … the electeds still won’t have a majority vote on the board. In fact, it would have a significant minority, four at most on a board of what would grow to 15,” Channell said. But he later added that the crafters of the TA structure had clearly documented their desire that elected officials not be that heavily involved. He rounded out his opinion by stating that he personally did not feel that strongly about it one way or the other.
Commissioner Phil Chamberland spoke against adding four positions to the board because allowing a board to get too big seemed “weird.” He compared being a non-voting member to his tenure as a non-voting alternate on the Gunnison County Planning Commission. “If you’re not getting your input in that’s your fault and not the board’s, frankly,” he said.
He did not have a problem with keeping the board the same size and allowing elected officials to run for the board through traditional channels, and Commissioner Paula Swenson agreed.
“I would like to suggest to the TA that because we are a small community and many of us wear several hats, it might be cutting your nose off to spite your face by limiting the valuable people on your board,” Swenson said. “But I do think it’s presumptuous to push council people on the board if they’re not elected to the membership the same way others were elected to the membership.”
Swenson also felt measures being considered to ensure more transparency in the organization would ease some of the concerns coming from the municipalities at the north end of the valley. Chaney did take issue with the idea that the TA had ever been anything but transparent. “It sounds like we are a clandestine organization,” she said.
Swenson clarified, saying, “I don’t think you have been nontransparent,” but added that the possible creation of new subcommittees could help change that perception. The TA is considering the creation of five committees in addition to the elections and executive committees that already exist: marketing, lodging, governance, finance and a miscellaneous category that could include things like staff performance reviews.
The third structural change under consideration by the TA committee is the creation of a membership option for businesses that do not belong to either of the valley’s chambers of commerce.
“We met with both executive directors and talked about the potential of offering TA benefits to non-chamber members. As it stands, only chamber members are marketed through the TA. We felt as a subcommittee that it was important to be as inclusive as possible valley-wide,” Riggs said.
She acknowledged that it was opening a can of worms, but the current thought was to charge non-chamber members $600. That’s more than the cost of a membership to either chamber, which maxes out at $435, and would hopefully act as an incentive to join the chambers instead. But that logic didn’t sit well with the directors of either chamber of commerce.
“If someone didn’t want to be a chamber member but wants to advertise, but the money still goes back to the chamber, it doesn’t make sense,” said Dan Marshall, executive director of the Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte Chamber of Commerce. He added that it created competition with the chambers.
Swenson, who also sits on the TA board, felt that it sent a confusing message when so much had been done to improve relationships between the TA and the chambers. No official decisions were made at the meeting, however, as Riggs reminded the group, the subcommittee is simply collecting information. “We’re just gathering as much information as possible so any feedback is good,” she said.
