Jan. 25 for Zoning Board of Appeals hearings

Tue, 01/17/2017 - 2:30pm

Lynda Clancy

CAMDEN — The Select Board wants to know how the costs and revenues associated with the Camden Snow Bowl redevelopment unfolded over the past four years, who wrote checks for what and how the money was tracked. As such, the board is expending up to $12,000 on an independent audit of the municipally-owned Snow Bowl finances since 2012. The board has also agreed to negotiate with Cold Toes Tacos and Sidecountry Sports, two businesses that want to lease space for respective ventures on the mountain. Both are now on the Zoning Board of Appeals’ Jan. 25 agenda to begin that process.

Andrew Dailey, co-owner of the Rockland-based Sidecountry Sports, and Brian Beggarly, co-owner of the Camden restaurant Boynton McKay, and its auxiliary enterprise, Cold Toes Tacos, are determined to reposition themselves at the Camden Snow Bowl, and want all vendors who do business there to be treated with parity.

The Jan. 25 ZBA meeting begins at 5 p.m. in the Washington Street Conference Room. The meeting is to be televised on Channel 22, and streamed live at town hall live stream.

How Cold Toes Tacos and Sidecountry were sent off-mountain

On Thursday, Jan. 5, Beggarly and Dailey had received calls from Snow Bowl General Manager Landon Fake asking them not to set up their respective business tents on the mountain that coming weekend (read Camden, Rockland entrepreneurs told not to set up shop at Snow Bowl this weekend).

Beggarly had planned to repeat his pop-up taco operation somewhere on the slopes, per the written agreement he had signed with Fake earlier in the season, and sell tacos to skiers and boarders.

He had already done so over the weekend of Dec. 17-18.

Dailey had planned to take demo skis and fat bikes to the mountain from his Rockland Sidecountry Sports shop, so skiers and bikers could try them, for free. He had been doing that for three years.

Fake asked them to stand down, pending Select Board review and approval of their presence.

The town’s attorney, Bill Kelly, had concluded, at the request of town leadership, that both businesses required a special exception from the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals to set up shop in the town’s rural recreation zone.

On Tuesday, Jan. 10, the Camden Select Board convened for a regularly scheduled meeting, and supporters of both Beggarly and Dailey filled the Washington Street, urging the Select Board to find a way to keep the two businessmen on the mountain. (Read Following public outcry, Camden Select Board moved to help put two entrepreneurs back at Snow Bowl).

The board voted that night 4 to 1 to ask the town manager to determine if it was possible to allow Cold Toes Tacos and Sidecountry Sports back on the mountain. They amended the motion to have Select Board member Marc Ratner work with the town manager and the town attorney to explore the possibility of getting both businesses back at the mountain this season.

The setting of the agenda, and getting both men on the meeting schedule was finalized Tuesday morning, Jan. 17. On Friday, Jan. 13, it was unclear if Beggarly could even get on the ZBA agenda, because both business owners did not get officially notified until 2:30 p.m. that they could proceed with scheduling a ZBA hearing, and the deadline for getting the 10-day public notice in the Camden Herald was 1 p.m.

However, as of Tuesday, that issue was straightened out, and the newspaper ad was amended, according to Camden’s Code Enforcement Office.

Audit and Select Board granting of standing

At the Jan. 10 regularly scheduled Camden Select Board meeting, Camden Snow Bowl Manager Landon Fake delivered a financial report (see attached PDF). The report indicated that the Snow Bowl, which operates as an enterprise budget and is separate from the town’s municipal budget, had earned $403,000 so far this season (as of Jan. 6), and spent $318,000 on operating costs.

Fake said in his report that the, “financial performance at this point in the season is approximately as expected, or slightly better than expected.”

He added: “It is important to note that costs and revenue do not accumulate uniformly through the season. Estimating performance at any point midseason is only a rough approximation. The final performance will depend greatly on the weather for the remainder of the season.”

On Wednesday, Jan. 11, at 6:30 p.m., the Select Board convened again in the Washington Street Conference Room for a scheduled closed-door meeting. That topic of that executive session had been classified as personnel-related; thus, not open to the public.

After an hour of discussion, the board exited executive session and voted 5 to 0 to to spend up to $12,000 from the board’s own contingency account on an audit of the Snow Bowl finances, from 2012 to the present.

“We want to get a handle on what’s been done, and get a good sense of the money trail,” said Select Board Chairman John French.

He declined to comment further on the need for an audit, saying only that it would be commissioned for later this month. He also declined to talk about the reasons for a personnel discussion.

At that same meeting, the Select Board amended its agenda to add the discussion of Cold Toes Tacos and Sidecountry Sports. Because that amendment had not been publicized prior to the meeting, the public, including Dailey and Beggarly, did not know their businesses would be under discussion.

Dailey was in Rhode Island, on a buying trip for his business. Beggarly was in Camden, tending to his restaurant.

The Camden Select Board wanted to move quickly and help the businessmen start the ZBA process, the members said, after the meeting.

“We felt it important to get the two vendors moving forward,” said French. “I felt bad it happened that way, that night [at the Jan. 10 Select Board meeting], but rules are rules.”

After discussion Jan. 11, the Select Board voted 5 to 0 to sign a letter of intent with Dailey and Beggarly to negotiate a lease for space at the mountain for their business ventures. (See attached PDFs for their individual letters from the town)

That vote gave the two businessmen “standing,” which allowed them to go to the Camden Town Office, each write a $330 check, and apply for a hearing with the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals.

Then, the town’s code enforcement officer’s office was to schedule a meeting 10 days post-application filings to hear the two individual requests for special exception permission to set up a demo ski and and bike tent, as well as a taco stand, somewhere at the Camden Snowl Bowl.

The letters, both similar in scope, were composed by Town Attorney Bill Kelly. The letter to Beggarly said it was provided so that Beggarly could “meet standing before the Zoning Board of Appeals in anticipation of a license agreement that would be executed by and between the town and the vendor [Cold Toes Tacos]. The town is the property owner of the Snow Bowl and as the town anticipates entering into a license agreement as a party, it hereby nominates Beggarly Group LLC to be its agent for the purpose of making application for a special exception use for a ‘fast food’ restaurant.”

Snow Bowl Project

In 2008, Camden voters approved a non-binding measure that positioned support for borrowing up to $2 million for Ragged Mountain Recreation Area improvements, if matched by a minimum of $4.5 million raised via private money by the nonprofit Ragged Mountain Foundation.

Following that vote, project proponents commenced soliciting contributions, as well as holding public fundraisers.

The Foundation met the $4.5 million mark, with a cushion of almost $300,000.

The matching funds — $2 million of town funds and $4.5 million in donations — were to be expended together, not one before the other, and expenditures were planned to match the cash flow of donations over a two-year period.

Voters in 2014 approved moving forward with the $2 million expenditure for the mountain. The cost of borrowing $2 million to the taxpayers was average $110,000 in annual interest payments for 30 years.

The redevelopment entailed making mountainside improvements in 2014-2015, with a new lodge to be constructed when another $2.5 million was raised.

The intent was to “provide the capacity to accommodate up to 600 skiers per day with adequate parking, lodge space, uphill lift capacity, and ski terrain serviced by snowmaking and enhance year-round trail use for hikers and mountain biking,” according to the plan.

The Redevelopment Committee, a municipally appointed group of citizens, has built a detailed finance and budget analysis of the Ragged Mountain Recreation Area through 2016, incorporating the entire mountain upgrade.

Camden had hoped additional revenue would derive from the increased numbers of daily and season ski tickets, ski school enrollment and new lodge rentals.

Instead, recent warm winters, and project over-costs dampened budgets and shrunk revenue.

Because of over-costs, the $6.5 million redevelopment increased to $8.5 million, with the new lodge left in blueprints while another $2.5 million was to be privately raised.

And since the redevelopment began, the Snow Bowl incurred a $300,000 debt over the course of two years, although that deficit was absolved by Camden taxpayers at June 2016 Town Meeting, when they voted to absorb it by increasing their own taxes. The mountain, many agreed at town meeting, was integral to community fabric and economic health.

In July 2016, the Camden Select Board approved a $926,000 budget for the 2016-2017 season.

The mountain has been supported by the town in varying degrees since the town assumed ownership of its real estate and operations in 1983.

In 1990-91, Camden voters approved funding the Snow Bowl with $149,000 of their tax dollars; in 2009-2010, it was $55,000. In 2012, and following several years of good snowfall, the town contributed zero dollars.

– Lynda Clancy

The letter to Dailey was the same, although it referred to his business as retail sales.

Should the ZBA grant the special exceptions for operating a retail trade and fast-food restaurant in the town’s rural recreation zone, then the two businessmen will reappear before the Select Board to work out the details of their respective lease agreements with the town.

It is not clear what precipitated the concern over their presence at the Snow Bowl, but Town Manager Patricia Finnigan said two weeks ago that it was her fault for giving them permission on a temporary basis until they had board approvals.

Both Beggarly and Dailey had written agreements with the Snow Bowl; Beggarly had been operating his taco stand all fall at the invitation of Fake, and Dailey has been taking demo bikes and skis to the Snow Bowl for people to test for the past three years.

While Dailey is looking forward to completing the ZBA process, he wonders why the town simply did not have the code enforcement office issue a violation notice, as it would in other cases. If that had occurred, both he and Beggarly would have had 30 days to rectify the violation, while still operating at the mountain.

Dailey is also asking whether other vendors at the Snow Bowl, including local businesses that teach paddleboarding on Hosmer Pond and tennis on the publicly-owned courts, as well as who sell skis and food, have special exceptions from the ZBA.

He wants to know if they went through similar processes to operate at the Ragged Mountain Recreation Area.

And he questions municipal policy covering the Toboggan Nationals, which are scheduled for the second weekend in February. The town-run event allows six for-profit vendors to operate for three days at the mountain for a fee of $350.

Attorney Kelly has weighed in on the latter, and told Finnigan in a memo that the Toboggan Nationals are “about as well-established of a permitted ‘municipal use’ on the mountain as anything could be.’”

As such, municipal uses do not require a Zoning Board of Appeals approval. Furthermore, he said, each vendor was to have signed an agreement with with town, and produce liability insurance.

But Dailey disagrees.

“They are picking and choosing how to follow the letter of the law,” he said. “What is driving this conversation, and how did it start? Why now?”

Meanwhile, Beggarly is seeking permission from Rockport, the town in which the Camden Snow Bowl summit sits, to set up his taco stand near the top of the triple chairlift.

According to Rockport Planner James Francomano, Beggarly asked Rockport for permission to set up Cold Toes Taco in Rockport. The town said it was likely possible to do so, and interpreted the zoning to include the venture an accessory use.

But, he said, Beggarly first needs permission of the Town of Camden, as the landowner.

That topic, too, will be addressed at the Jan. 25 ZBA meeting.

Camden, Rockland entrepreneurs told not to set up shop at Snow Bowl this weekend (Jan. 7, 2017)

Camden Select Board pledges oversight of Snow Bowl spending, approves $920,000 budget (Aug. 4, 2016)

Shaping the Camden Snow Bowl budget: Spend more to make more, or rein it in? (August 4 2016)

Camden voters approve dipping into surplus to cover Snow Bowl's $297,303 deficit

Camden Select Board forms new Ragged Mountain committee to advise the Snow Bowl (June 7, 2016)

Camden Select Board chastises itself for Snow Bowl deficit, forms new committees to help

Camden leaders make plan to reduce Snow Bowl's two-year deficit

What to do about the Camden Snow Bowl’s $260,000 deficit

Sales, revenue up for season ski passes up at Camden Snow Bowl

Camden readies Snow Bowl for new season; ticket, season pass price increases included (July 20, 2015)