Dollars And Good Sense

When Ski Bluewood co-owner Stan Goodell first began operating the ski resort in 1983, he wanted to raise lift ticket prices. He first contemplated a bump to $14 from $13, but he settled on $13.50. His staff quickly pointed out that resort cashiers would have to stock up on a boatload of quarters with that ticket price. This was before the popularity of credit cards, and many skiers paid in cash.

But Goodell had a better idea. Instead of quarters, which quickly melt away in the money-change circuit, he got a boatload of half dollars to give his customers in change, so he could track where his skiers spent their money locally.

Sure enough, the unusual half dollars ended up every­where in the county - from bars and restaurants to gas stations and grocery stores, thus underscoring the deep-rooted connection between the ski mountain and the local economy.

Now is a good time to remember the economic ben­efits Ski Bluewood bestows on the economy of Columbia County and list them here.

The County Commission has been asked to consider taking over a 9-mile stretch of road to ease the financial burden on a possible new owner and will be engaged in a cost-benefit analysis for the next few weeks.

Commissioners have asked county public works direc­tor Drew Woods to conduct a feasibility study. At the heart of the matter is the cost to maintain the road and pay the fees Bluewood currently pays to the U.S. Forest Service, a situation Commissioner Reeves calls "unfair," as other ski resorts in the Pacific Northwest no longer pay this user fee.

We urge the county to look carefully into two possible scenarios. The first is the possible elimination of the Firest Service fee to put Bluewood on an equal footing with other regional resorts. However, failing a change in that we recommend the county give very serious consideration to the idea of taking over the road. Here is why: It has been estimated that the cost to the county for doing so could be as much as $50,000 annually. We understand that this money would have to come from somewhere in the county's budget and that the commissioners are cautious in adding to county residents' tax burden in any way. However, it's important to remember how much the county already receives in direct fees from Ski Bluewood, not to mention the indirect income through the payroll and consumer dollars that flowinto local businesses every season. Let's look at the direct income to the county. According to the county treasurer's records, Ski Bluewood has paid an average of $13,656 per year in real and personal property taxes to Columbia County during the past four years. Ski Bluewood itself estimates it has generated $80,000 - $120,000 in sales taxes during the past four seasons. The county receives 1.4 percentage points (or 17 percent) of the 7.9 percent sale taxes collected locally, which means it got between $14,176 and $21,264 back from the state.

So, the property and sales tax income from Ski Blue­wood alone ranged from $27,832 to $34,920 annually, covering at least more than half the high estimate of annual maintenance costs associated with the county's takeover of the road. The money that flows indirectly from Ski Bluewood into the county's coffers is much harder to pin down but also represents a much larger amount. The resort has a payroll of about $500,000 a year, employing 120 to 130 people.

Many of the mountain's workers are local or local dur­ing the season at least, spending a good portion of what they earn in the county. Many of them probably pay taxes in Columbia County. Add to that the "half dollars" that roll on into the tills of local businesses, and the ski resort is unquestionably one of the pontoons that keeps the county economy afloat, helping bring additional county revenue through business sales and property taxes. Although a precise cost-benefit analysis is hard to do given the absence of hard numbers from this so-called trick­le effect, it would seem that when it comes to the "road" equation, taking on the cost of maintaining it in the interest of Bluewood's survival clearly comes out on the plus side.