SandBox Comments: "Aspen Times "Aspen, other resorts plan joint announcement"

Interesting to see a tight-lipped Jeff Hanle.

The day after voters in Steamboat Springs and Winter Park area ratcheted up the Yampa Valley Regional Airport with their full support and the money to back them up.

The Aspen Skico has spent a lot of years trying to sell Aspen on the destination for the elite and wealthy.

The past year or so the Aspen Skico has also put forth a lot of finger-pointing propoganda that has a great deal of disinformation about Vail Resorts and Steamboat Springs.  There are no 'fire-sale prices' in either resort.  The only 'monopoly' that either resort has is their tourism marketing foresight to wisely spend their money building infrastructure that is able to house permanent draws and very large events.

While Aspen Skico has rested on its laurels.

Unless there is some very good money and revenue ability coming direct from the Aspen Skico to either of these resorts; both should begin to rest on their own laurels and not tie themselves to a 'flat' Aspen ski market.

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"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."

SandBox Comments: Steamboat Today "Voters support tax for winter air service program "

Aspen Skico needs to be very worried now.

Steamboat Springs has been moving steadily ahead, for over three years now, to take the second place seat under Vail Resorts as the best overall value for ski destinations in Colorado.

Yampa Valley Regional Airport just got a huge boost from voters who know that.

All across Colorado,  the vote of the common man can be seen this morning.

Informed voters turned out in record numbers statewide.  They passed the ballot issues that made sense.  And soundly defeated the majority of all requests to raise taxes and to continue putting money into the apathetic and systemic failure that is our public education funding.  Only a couple of school districts, still entrenched in either cronyism or through a spurt of energy from parents who rise up only when it's time to ask for further handouts; saw bare margins of success in passing mill rides.  However, even those districts saw a complete disintegration of incumbents making their way back in to keep that cronyism alive.  A clean sweep in most all school and post-secondary seats took place in Colorado yesterday.  Statewide.

Good job, Coloradans. 

But, this effort on the part of the folks over in the Routt County area is one of the ones that feels the best.

Congratulations!!

"Steamboat Springs — The sales tax rate in Steamboat Springs will go up a bit after voters here resoundingly approved Referendum 2B on Tuesday, a 0.25 percent tax increase that will help fund the winter air service program at Yampa Valley Regional Airport.

Referendum 2B passed with 61 percent of the vote.

Donning pilot hats and inflatable airplanes, about 40 supporters of the tax initiative celebrated its passage at Old Town Pub on Tuesday evening.

“We knew from the beginning that if everyone understood how important this was to our economy, then we had a good chance to pass it,” Yes 2 Air campaign manager Bill Stuart said. “It was a nonpartisan issue. People from all spectrums of life supported it.”

Referendum 2B was conceived by a group of community leaders to reverse the eroding ability of the business community to attract commercial airline flights to YVRA during the ski season. Without those flights, advocates of the tax fear the resort community’s ability to bring in high-spending winter vacationers would be compromised, further eroding the local tourism economy.

Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. President and Chief Operating Officer Chris Diamond praised the air tax passage Tuesday night...."
(Scott Franz, Tom Ross)

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"Truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."