GILFORD, N.H. — New England’s only county-owned ski area is teetering toward a season in which it doesn’t open at all in the wake of a blowup last week in which most of the mountain’s management staff resigned.
Now local residents are pushing for two members of the board that oversees Gunstock Mountain Resort to be removed from office.
First developed as part of the Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration, Gunstock has drawn skiers to New Hampshire’s Lakes Region for nearly 90 years. A publicly owned mountain, it is overseen by the Gunstock Area Commission, a five-member board appointed by the 18 state representatives from Belknap County.
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That structure, with feuding between each level over the past several months, has been in collapse since last week, when Gunstock’s top management, followed days later by mid-level managers, walked off the job in protest. Gary Kiedaisch — a commissioner sympathetic to their cause — quit, too. Their demand, should they return to work, is the resignation or removal of two of the appointed commissioners: Dr. David Strang and Peter Ness.
The dispute erupted again Tuesday at what was billed as a nonpublic meeting of the Gunstock Commission to begin the process of replacing just-resigned general manager Tom Day and his team. Instead, Strang and Ness were greeted by a riotous crowd there to support Day and demand that they resign in his stead.
To the crowd’s delight, two other commissioners — Doug Lambert and Jade Wood — then read prepared statements explaining their position on the mountain’s leadership, presenting letters of resignation for Ness and Strang to sign.
There were chants from the crowd and passionate speeches about the mountain, as reported by The Laconia Daily Sun. Eventually, the cornered commissioners fled through the jeering crowd — only for Strang to return a moment later to retrieve the phone he left on the table.
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It’s unclear what happens next. But with Gunstock’s management office vacant and the commission that runs the place deadlocked, the clock is ticking to ready the mountain for winter.
Day, who was present for the meeting, said it was encouraging to see the show of support. Yet, he said on Wednesday, it’s harder to be optimistic for the coming winter as each day passes.
“There’s a lot of stuff that’s not happening, that’s usually happening. They’ve got to move quickly,” said Day. The mountain has $3.8 million in capital improvements planned, and a few weeks left to get the work done. Then there are the countless, routine offseason projects that need to be orchestrated.
“There’s a million moving parts,” Day said, adding that management needs to be in place and working within a week to keep things on schedule. “Maybe two weeks, but after that, there’s a chance the ski area won’t be able to open. Or it might open, but it might not be the way it normally is.”
Gunstock draws 200,000 skier visits each winter, making it a keystone of the region’s winter economy. State Representative Jonathan Mackie said a shuttered ski mountain would be “a disaster, simply put.”
Norm Silber, another legislator from Gilford, said that removing Ness and Strang, even if the delegation were so inclined, couldn’t happen in a day. It requires charges, hearings, and cross-examination of witnesses.
“To remove a commissioner, there must be due process,” he said. It could take “weeks, if not months. It’s not a process that comes quickly.”
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More likely, said Silber, the path forward for Gunstock would be hiring a new management team.
To Mike Bordes, who represents Laconia in the state legislature — and who wants the delegation to consider removing Strang and Ness — the Gunstock situation is caused by politics.
“When these commissioners were appointed, it was very political,” Bordes said, noting he felt their primary qualifications were political or personal affiliation with sitting delegates. “I just feel like we need to do a better job of vetting candidates.”
The Belknap County legislative delegation is scheduled to meet Aug. 4 to discuss possibly removing Strang and Ness. Until then, at least, barring some compromise, the mountain remains closed with winter drawing nearer by the day.