After a second consecutive disappointing season, Eaglecrest Ski Area officials are staring down a $100,000 revenue shortfall, and they\u2019re not yet sure how they\u2019re going to balance their budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo make ourselves whole for the FY \u201816 budget, we\u2019re going to need approximately $100,000,\u201d Eaglecrest Director Matt Lillard told the Empire after the ski area\u2019s finance committee meeting Monday evening. \u201cWhen we have to address our shortfall this year, we\u2019re going to rely on our endowment and any sources we can band together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eaglecrest is owned by the city and operates as an enterprise fund, but it is not a true enterprise fund because its revenues and expenses don\u2019t match, City Finance Director Bob Bartholomew said by phone Tuesday. In a situation like this, the city typically picks up the shortfall provided the Assembly approves, he said.<\/p>\n
As a part of the normal budgetary procedure, Eaglecrest will be meeting with the Assembly in April. At its meeting Monday, the ski area\u2019s finance committee decided that Eaglecrest will be asking for an increase in city funding for the coming fiscal year. In FY \u201816, Eaglecrest received about $660,000 in city funding, which is down from what it received a couple years before. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe went from a high of $750,000 a couple years ago to what we got this year,\u201d Lillard said. \u201cNow we\u2019re asking to get some of those reductions back.\u201d <\/p>\n
Eaglecrest will be asking for $700,000 in city funding for FY \u201917, but that doesn\u2019t address the ski area\u2019s current budgetary woes. The $100,000 revenue shortfall will likely also be addressed when Eaglecrest officials meet with the Assembly in April, Bartholomew said. <\/p>\n
Though Lillard doesn\u2019t yet know how the ski area will make itself whole, relying entirely on Eaglecrest\u2019s endowment isn\u2019t desirable, he said. Pulling $100,000 from the endowment would leave it only about a third of the size it is currently. And in an industry that lives or dies by the weather, it\u2019s not a bad idea to keep a rainy-day fund.<\/p>\n
Still, Lillard and other members of the Eaglecrest finance committee are hopeful that the mild winters of the past two seasons are outliers, not the new normal. Though it\u2019s nearly impossible to predict what the weather holds in store for future ski seasons, the fact that that the past two seasons were exceptionally bad is certifiable. In terms of snowfall, the past two seasons are the worst on record for Eaglecrest.<\/p>\n
The ski area was open for 69 day this past season, but it still struggled to escape the ghosts of the previous year\u2019s miserable five-day season. Lots of skiers were justifiably hesitant to buy season passes heading into this year after they were not refunded last year. Few people were surprised when this season got off to a rocky start, failing to hit its previous season-pass sales mark. <\/p>\n
This was problematic for Eaglecrest because season-pass sales typically make up 70 percent of its winter revenue. This meant that the ski area would have to rely on its daily ticket sales in a way that it never had before, and for a while it was working. A couple good snowstorms in November and December led to a couple days that saw record-setting sales for daily passes. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe hope was that given good snow, we\u2019d make up the revenue with ticket sales, but then the weather turned on us and as the snow dwindled, skiers stopped coming,\u201d Lillard said. <\/p>\n
After closing portions of the mountain due to a lack of snow, the ski area closed for the season last weekend. The past two seasons were certainly bad for skiers, but they \u201ccould\u2019ve been worse\u201d from a fiscal standpoint, according to Lillard. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not always the nicest thing to say, but it\u2019s true,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The last time Eaglecrest saw a couple bad winters in a row was from 2002 to 2004. The snowfall was still better in those years than in was in the past two years, but during that time the ski area went almost $1 million into the hole. <\/p>\n
The way Bartholomew sees it, \u201cit\u2019s always a risk\u201d funding a weather-dependent venture like Eaglecrest. But he\u2019s glad that the ski area officials have been more frugal of late than they were in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point I think Eaglecrest and the board have been pretty prudent in managing their resources,\u201d he said. He added it\u2019s worth at least allowing them to try and have a successful season even when the weather doesn\u2019t seem to want to cooperate.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a second consecutive disappointing season, Eaglecrest Ski Area officials are staring down a $100,000 revenue shortfall, and they\u2019re not yet sure how they\u2019re going to balance their budget. \u201cTo make ourselves whole for the FY \u201816 budget, we\u2019re going to need approximately $100,000,\u201d Eaglecrest Director Matt Lillard told the Empire after the ski area\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19054"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}