The Steamboat Springs City Council is preparing to move forward with a lift tax to be referred to voters on the November ballot if ongoing negotiations with Steamboat Resort do not yield an agreement by a June 12 negotiation deadline. 

During the public comment period at council’s May 6 regular meeting, Steamboat Resort Director of Social Responsibility Sarah Jones, often the resort’s public-facing negotiation representative, emphasized their continued commitment to supporting local and regional transportation. 

“We support existing and innovative transportation,” said Jones. “That is why we currently contribute $1 million annually to air and why we are proposing to increase our funding to include RTA at a minimum of $1 million annually, and to SST for a minimum of $1.5 million annually.”

“We have also committed to paying our fair share,” Jones continued. “We don’t believe fair share means funding SST at more than 100% of its current annual budget. Being responsible to balance the city’s budget, being responsible for the city’s significant capital needs, a request so large that it sacrifices our ability to support our commitment to our annual contribution to the RTA.” 

“We ask that you consider a request that supports SST while not laying the entire burden of costs on one entity: the resort,” she concluded. 

Charlie MacArthur, longtime community member and president of Native Excavating Inc., warned council at the May 6 meeting not to jeopardize decades of partnership with the resort.

“This doesn’t look like a negotiation. This looks like extortion. This looks like trying to fix a hole in the budget by laying everything on one employer at the expense of 60 years of positive negotiations,” MacArthur said, urging the council to avoid adversarial tactics and maintain Steamboat’s industry-town character.

At council’s May 13 regular meeting, City Attorney Dan Foote gave a presentation on how a lift tax could be structured if negotiations fail. Foote recommended a business and occupation tax, a model authorized by Colorado state statute and supported by the city’s home rule authority. 

The tax would be imposed directly on the business, not the customer, and would be designed to offset the cost of city services provided to the business — in this case, the transit services heavily used by resort guests.

Foote explained the proposed tax would be a flat rate based on skier or rider days, assessed when the skier or rider arrives at the lift, versus when they purchase their pass. Operators would be required to submit monthly tax returns reporting skier or rider days for the preceding month. 

While the tax would technically apply to all lift operations, including the city-owned Howelsen Hill, Steamboat Resort would bear the overwhelming majority of the burden due to its much larger scale.

Council discussed how Steamboat’s circumstances compare to other mountain towns utilizing some version of a lift tax. Snowmass, Foote explained, uses a skier day-based payment system tied to new base-area development, while Vail and Breckenridge rely on sales tax not linked to skier days. 

“(The town of) Mountain Village (in San Miguel County) has referred a lift tax to their voters. They’ll vote on that on June 24th of this year, and they are proposing to structure it similarly to a sales tax, and it will apply to not only day tickets but also to Epic Pass transactions,” Foote explained. “We could potentially go down that road, but there’s a little bit of uncertainty in that we don’t really understand how the Ikon transactions work.”

Discussion also turned to the Local Marketing District, which currently levies a 2% accommodations tax to subsidize air service. Some council members questioned whether LMD funds could be reallocated to support SST, or whether the district’s boundaries could be expanded, something Foote said he would look into — but would ultimately have to be voted on by the LMD board. 

Councilor Bryan Swintek challenged the notion that Steamboat Resort’s parent company, Alterra Mountain Co., could not afford a larger contribution, pointing out the company’s vast portfolio of resorts and the city’s long-standing provision of free transit for resort visitors. 

“The mountain is part of Alterra Mountain Company. Alterra’s owned by … billion-dollar entities. They own A-Basin, Blue Mountain, Deer Valley, Mammoth, Snowshoe, Snow Valley, Solitude, Palisade, Steamboat, Stratton, Snow, Tremblant, Winter Park and more,” said Swintek. “And they are pleading that it’s unfair – that the amount that we are asking for support is unfair. And we’ve been providing them with free transport for their visitors for years.” 

“We do not have a property tax, we don’t have a real estate transfer tax, and most likely parking, and the plan is to push more individuals onto our buses, not for them to provide parking for the visitors they’re inviting here, but for them to include paid parking and push them onto our transit,” Swintek continued. “So I just want council to keep that in mind that them picking out that F.M. Light or franchised Holiday Inn should also share the burden, is a strategic tactic. It is not reality.”

Staff also prepared a community survey to gauge public support for both a lift tax and a proposed vacancy tax, sent out to Steamboat voters on Thursday. The survey includes draft ballot language and seeks input on the most important issues facing the community, including cost of living and community character. The goal is to have raw survey data available by the end of May, with a council review tentatively set for June 10.

With only two meetings left before the June 12 negotiation deadline, the outcome of the survey and discussions with the resort will determine whether council refers a lift tax to voters and, if so, what form that proposed tax will take.