The GAC is suddenly the hottest seat around

GILFORD — When Rusty McLear came forward and offered to serve on the Gunstock Area Commission two years ago, his was the only application which the Belknap County Delegation received.

“I wasn’t interviewed,” McLear recalls of that May 2020 meeting when he was appointed.

“They looked at my resume and saw that based on my 40 years experience in business they felt that I would be able to make a real contribution,” said McLear, who has been credited for helping to turn Meredith into a tourist destination.

Now, McLear is applying again, but this time he considers his reappointment a long shot.

So, what has changed in two years? Some say it's the political climate, where an effort to change the operating philosophy for the county-owned facility has resulted in hard-ball political maneuvering. Others say anxiety over some aspects of the resort’s master plan which critics consider far too grandiose and risky has changed public sentiment.

McLear and Gilford businessman Doug Lambert were the first two to apply for the position. The deadline for submitting applications was Friday. Late in the day, the county received two more applicants, both with professional experience managing ski areas: John Lowell, of Center Harbor, and; Cindy Creteau-Miller, of Meredith.

The five-member Gunstock Commission, which oversees the operation of the four-season resort – which makes most of its money during the ski season – has been in turmoil for almost a year since it sought, and failed, to get the delegation to remove Commissioner Peter Ness who now chairs the commission.

State Rep. Mike Sylvia, who chairs the delegation, denounced the move, saying it was based on groundless, defamatory allegations about Ness for conflict of interest and verbal harassment against Gunstock employees. The relationship between certain members of the commission and the delegation grew more acrimonious when a divided Gunstock Commission voted to file a legal action against the delegation to stop it from trying to remove the three GAC members who voted to initiate the lawsuit. Those three were McLear, Brian Gallagher and Gary Kiedaisch.

Of those three, one — Gallagher – has since resigned, citing the growing controversy, and McLear’s seat was declared vacant last month. That leaves Kiedaisch who now finds himself in a minority of one, and often at odds with the other commissioners: Ness, Dr. David Strang, and Jade Wood, who are seen as closely aligned politically and philosophically with the delegation’s Executive Committee, particularly Sylvia and state Rep. Norm Silber.

McLear was appointed in May 2020 for what was then advertised as a five-year term, a tenure that was reaffirmed later that year by Sylvia. But last month Sylvia said he was wrong in his understanding of the law that created the GAC and that McLear should have been appointed to serve just the six months remaining in the term of Stephan Nix, who resigned due to work commitments.

McLear said when he appears before the delegation on Tuesday he will point to Gunstock’s financial success in recent years.

“The place is on the right track, and Tom is the right guy,” he said, referring to Tom Day, Gunstock’s president and general manager.

Silber has brushed aside Gunstock’s increasing profitability since Day took over two years ago. Its success, he has said, is due solely to good luck — the COVID pandemic which steered more people into outdoor recreation coupled with abundant snowfall. Business skill had nothing to do with it. Take those two factors away and Gunstock’s record of success evaporates, he believes.

But McLear believes the Gunstock’s balance sheet proves otherwise. He noted that while Gunstock had between $700,000 and $800,000 in the bank three years ago, it has $10 million in the bank now — an increase of more than 1,000%.

“And with all that, we have also put $2.5 million into improvements to the area this year,” he added.

This will be the second time the delegation has considered Lambert’s application in recent months. He was one of three people who applied in February to fill out the 10 months remaining in Gallagher’s term. He also applied to serve on the GAC in 2013 but was not selected.

Lambert, a longtime Gilford resident and owner of a family metal fabricating business, told the delegation when he was interviewed in February he is a longtime supporter/user of Gunstock.

“It’s three generations of our family,” he said, pointing out that he, his children, and now his growing grandchildren ski there. He said that he also uses the area at other times of the year as well.

He said he sees Gunstock as part business and part public service. A longtime advocate of greater openness in government, he said he would push the GAC and Gunstock management to make transparency an absolute priority.

“The rightful oversight of the commission are the people,” he said.

He said he is confident that Gunstock is being well run and that its profits should be put back into the area to pay for operating expenses and capital improvements.

He said the area needs to develop a long-range plan for future growth that is consistent with what he sees as Gunstock’s mission to provide recreational opportunities in a setting that is largely undeveloped.

He opposes the Master Plan unveiled in December because it “endangers the future of the area” because “it encroaches on commercial development.”

In his application, submitted on Friday, Lowell described himself as a lifelong skier, retired businessperson and a 30-year resident of Belknap County. He pledged to bring to the GAC "positive energy," as well as experience in the industry. Lowell was a member of the ski team while a student at Dartmouth College and a ski coach at Cardigan Mountain School in Canaan. His career as a hospitality manager included Waterville Valley, Attitash Grand Summit Hotel and Mountain Resort, Mount Snow in Vermont, and Wildcat Mountain. He also served as president of Attitash Mountain Resort.

Creteau-Miller, who also applied on Friday, said she learned to ski at Gunstock and has been a resident of Belknap County for most of her life. She said, in her letter to the county administrator, that she is "passionate about keeping Gunstock open and viable as a community resource." Creteau-Miller was an instructor at Bromley Mountain Resort; director of the ski school, then owner and chief operating officer of Magic Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont, owner of the Walpole Inn, and is a certified adaptive ski instructor and guide.

Depending on the outcome of Tuesday’s vote it could make the third new member to join the GAC in less than six months.

The five-member panel was created 63 years ago in a move to have the area more professionally managed and to insulate its operation from political pressure.

Before the GAC was created the area’s management was answerable to the three-member County Commission.

Fritzie Baer, the manager at the time, openly supported the creation of the GAC, putting him at odds with the county commissioners who opposed the idea. After the bill was passed by the Legislature, the County Commission promptly fired Baer, according to Brenda Baer, his daughter-in-law.

The commissioners offered the job to Brenda Baer’s husband who quickly turned down the offer. After the GAC was formed it hired Warren Warner, who had experience in developing ski areas in Vermont.

“You could do things you wanted to do,” said Baer, who said Gunstock had long wanted to develop new ski trails and add snowmaking, only to have those ideas turned down.

“They weren’t developers or businesspeople,” Baer said of the county commissioners. “They didn’t have much vision. Everything was status quo.”

While the creation of the GAC did take politics out of the day-to-day operation of Gunstock, the law gave the County Delegation the authority to name the commissioners to staggered five-year terms.

“The delegation was very friendly and we reported to them once a year,” said Peter Millham who served 15 years on the GAC in the early years.

“Our job was to run a business — a big business,” he said. “We were the board of directors,” he continued. “The manager needed our permission to do anything major.”

During his time on the GAC from 1962 to 1976, Millham said the area bought the land at the top of Gunstock Mountain, added a double chairlift and another T-bar, and even built a swimming pool for those staying at the campground during the summer, and made repairs to to the ski jumps. Snow making was added in the 1970s, he said.

“The delegation was 100% in support of us,” Millham said.

The problem today, in Millham’s opinion, is "Free Staters have taken control of this delegation.”

Interestingly, of the 13 state legislators who voted last month in favor of a constitutional amendment to have New Hampshire “peacefully” secede from the nation, four were representatives from Belknap County — Sylvia, County Delegation Vice Chair Ray Howard, and Reps. Glen Aldrich and Paul Terry.

Looking ahead to Tuesday’s meeting, McLear acknowledges the political winds are not as much in his favor as two years ago.

Despite his long odds, McLear said he decided to apply for appointment to another term “because I have to do it.”

State Rep. Mike Bordes said and and “a few other” members of the delegation believe the delegation should have stuck with the commitment they made to McLear when he was named to the GAC two years ago. And, Bordes added, that if McLear had applied for reappointment in November 2020 he would have been reappointed handily.