Is the ski resort model dead?

Wow, this forum is the land of "NO." Against my better judgement in getting involved in pointless internet arguments, I feel the need to comment. From the handful of you that actually contribute, it seems that the majority of you think that the MRA model is ridiculous. I guess they should give up on this hopeful and forward- thinking concept and build an amenity filled, real estate based "resort" utilizing the cheapest power -that being dirty coal- that caters primarily to wealthy skiers from the Big City. The MRA concept may fail because of the economics of energy, from poor weather, from another economic meltdown, or from any number of other reasons, but then again it may succeed and become a model that others will follow. Perhaps it will even revolutionize the industry and make skiing more affordable and thus more popular among those not fortunate enough to be able to afford a $8000 week of skiing at Vail. I would assume that you are all on this forum because you love the sport, the mountains, the lifestyle and the freedom that you get from skiing, so I wonder why you aren't offering more constructive criticism to help MRA succeed instead of simply bashing it, and Soul Skier's posts. He is excited and optimistic about the project and he has a lot of ski industry veterans that are part of the MRA team. What is so wrong with that? None of you are being asked to invest against your will or are being forced to ski at such areas, so what is the harm in giving them some support.

On the ski bums issue, those of you that haven't lived -and I mean in long-term sense, not just a season- in ski towns have scant knowledge of what it is like. Saying you do is the equivalent of me saying I know all there is to know about living in Manhattan or L.A. because I spend two weeks a year there visiting family. "In Search of Powder" explores the impacts of those of us that made our living in these towns and finally had to give it up because it became to difficult. The ski bum metaphor is a convenient and colorful way to illuminate this and I recommend reading the book (I finished it this week) so that you will have a better understanding of these forces. I know something about ski towns and ski town culture since I grew up in them and have spent most of my life in them and working in the industry. I've also been called a ski bum quite a bit, but I've never considered myself one since living in the mountains was much more to me than skiing as much as possible for as little as possible. In fact, I always thought that my life's work would be in the industry, but now people like myself; professionals, skilled workers, families; all those people that make communities -well, communities- are being driven from ski towns by the economics of the current "company town" resort model. Most of you on this forum don't know, or don't care, as you only go for a week or so a year, but there are many that do, just as you care about what happens in your community.

The resort model that many of you defend has resulted in both social and environmental losses. You can't have a healthy community when the majority of the homes are unoccupied 70% of the year, the average age of the population that does remains is in the mid-50's, your school enrollments decline 10-20% a year, the majority of your public employees live in towns 45 minutes to 2 hours away, and those folks that want to raise families cannot afford to do so without winning the lottery. Economic factors such as those that face Lake County, south of Eagle County and Vail, threaten communities that don't even have ski resorts. Since a significant portion (upwards of 40%) of Vail's lowest wage workers live in Leadville (a 50 minute drive on a good day), Vail gets the benefit of their labor and the tax income that results from that labor, while Lake County, the poorest (or 2nd poorest depending on the year) county in the state, gets none of the economic benefits and has the burden of providing public services for these laborers and their children. Thus the Town of Vail spends somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000/year on flowers for the roundabouts in town while Leadville struggles to provide the most basic services and education.

The comment that someone posted about not caring if workers have to commute an hour to the resorts totally overlooks the environmental externalities of high-density urban sprawl in fragile high-alpine environments. On the I-70 corridor through Eagle County, one enters the urban zone in East Vail, and doesn't exit it until Wolcott (with the exception of Dowd Junction where the highway fills all available ground), a total of 25 miles of high-density development, including buildings in excess of 10 stories in height, all in a valley that never exceeds 2 miles in width. Areas on the valley walls are developed up to the elevation of 9500 feet and the only relatively flat ground left is taken up by golf courses. This same "down valley sprawl" is occurring everywhere there is a ski resort in the West. The impacts of this development on wildlife have been profound as they no longer have places to winter. When I was a kid and in my first year in Vail, in 1987, it wasn't uncommon to see a few hundred head of Elk in the meadows of Eagle-Vail, Edwards, Bachelor Gulch and Beaver Creek. Now all of that land has been developed and the last time I saw any Elk was 6 struggling animals on a steep hillside in Dowd Junction in 2004. They are gone, not moved elsewhere, not hiding in the woods, they simply have all died out. I can go on: habitat destruction, air pollution, water pollution, traffic jams... the impacts of the single industry, single company ski resort reaches far beyond the immediate environs of the ski area itself.

I'm not saying "don't go skiing," I am saying you should care about the impacts your favorite pastime can have on other people and our shared environment, and you should be concerned about the legacy that you are leaving for future generations. What ever your favorite ski area, you should let them know that these things matter to you and learn more about them and how to mitigate them. If you still don't care, then you are are selfishly making life worse for the rest of us that do...

BTW Geoff, read the book and tell me how many of the "ski bums" in it receive any form of public assistance from you or anyone else? (answer: zero, most of them even own their own homes). In all my years of living in ski towns, I can't recall a single person that received so much as food stamps.
 
Marc_C":31dbvbg3 said:
soulskier":31dbvbg3 said:
A ski area's number one cost is electricity. By including clean energy into the start up budget, and creating more energy than consumed, that expense is no longer an issue. What's questionable about that?
1. There is no way you can know that you will produce more energy than you consume.
2. There are no certainties that the power company will want to buy all the energy you produce.
3. Do you really think you'll be able to get investors to pay out X% more in increased start up costs for a technology that has a 10 or more year payback period to break even? Seriously?
4. What one electricity producing technology would you pick for this experiment, knowing that neither solar or wind operates 24/7?

Allow me to respond.

1) Why is that? Lifts require a certain amount of energy and can be calculated. It isn't rocket scientry. And it's been determined before. Mt Abram, Maine is in the permitting stage to become North America's first net negative ski area.

http://mrablog.com/2010/09/27/mt-abram- ... n-it-uses/

2) That's true, it depends on the state. At the very least, the electric company will issue a credit, thus eliminating the electric bill, which according to many besides Geoff, is the number one expense of a ski resort, especially if the area requires snowmaking like Killington.

3) You betcha Bro! Not only that, I predict we will sell many more shares because we are also in the clean energy bizness.

We are currently fighting two wars and just had one of the largest environmental disasters in US history as a result of our dependence on oil. Unlike some on this board, many US Citizens realize we need to get of foreign oil and fossil fuels yesterday.

Here's a good website for ya, Coal Kills Snow.
http://coalkillssnow.org/

"Coal is killing snow...that's a fact. Mining and burning coal is the dirtiest and most environmentally destructive process to generate power - the resulting CO2 has a direct negative effect on climate change. Our mountain regions are in the cross-hairs of climate change, yet host many dirty coal projects. Reducing our dependence on coal is the single most focused thing we can do to fight climate change and we have the collective power to do it. Coal Kills Snow is a coalition of organizations who's mission is to build awareness of dirty coal projects in our mountain and wilderness areas and to transition them to alternative, cleaner energy sources."

It is also worth mentioning that when you include clean energy into any project these days, there are many resources and grants available. We might even use some of your tax dollars to support our ski bum lifestyle, thanks in advance for that.

4) Each area will be analyzed to determine the best use. If I could choose one clean energy technology, it would be hydro as it is 24/7 and 365 days per year if the creek is year round.

If you guys need some Kool Aid to drink, I have extra.
 
Da wood":2cedx6zo said:
Perhaps it will even revolutionize the industry and make skiing more affordable and thus more popular among those not fortunate enough to be able to afford a $8000 week of skiing at Vail.

If the only other choices was that $8000 week at vail I would absolutely be confident that it would revolutionize what we expect from a ski area. However, I feel that there are plenty of products that fill that niche well already, and that it is more or less idealistic, and redundant.
Da wood":2cedx6zo said:
I guess they should give up on this hopeful and forward- thinking concept and build an amenity filled, real estate based "resort" utilizing the cheapest power -that being dirty coal- that caters primarily to wealthy skiers from the Big City.

Or we should be wide eyed naive. Or how about something in between. Seriously, this criticism is constructive, it brings up a lot of honest questions that need to be asked. Any good business should have a realistic view of what they are doing, not just an idealistic one.
Da wood":2cedx6zo said:
The resort model that many of you defend has resulted in both social and environmental losses. You can't have a healthy community when the majority of the homes are unoccupied 70% of the year, the average age of the population that does remains is in the mid-50's, your school enrollments decline 10-20% a year, the majority of your public employees live in towns 45 minutes to 2 hours away, and those folks that want to raise families cannot afford to do so without winning the lottery. Economic factors such as those that face Lake County, south of Eagle County and Vail, threaten communities that don't even have ski resorts. Since a significant portion (upwards of 40%) of Vail's lowest wage workers live in Leadville (a 50 minute drive on a good day), Vail gets the benefit of their labor and the tax income that results from that labor, while Lake County, the poorest (or 2nd poorest depending on the year) county in the state, gets none of the economic benefits and has the burden of providing public services for these laborers and their children. Thus the Town of Vail spends somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000/year on flowers for the roundabouts in town while Leadville struggles to provide the most basic services and education.

The comment that someone posted about not caring if workers have to commute an hour to the resorts totally overlooks the environmental externalities of high-density urban sprawl in fragile high-alpine environments. On the I-70 corridor through Eagle County, one enters the urban zone in East Vail, and doesn't exit it until Wolcott (with the exception of Dowd Junction where the highway fills all available ground), a total of 25 miles of high-density development, including buildings in excess of 10 stories in height, all in a valley that never exceeds 2 miles in width. Areas on the valley walls are developed up to the elevation of 9500 feet and the only relatively flat ground left is taken up by golf courses. This same "down valley sprawl" is occurring everywhere there is a ski resort in the West. The impacts of this development on wildlife have been profound as they no longer have places to winter. When I was a kid and in my first year in Vail, in 1987, it wasn't uncommon to see a few hundred head of Elk in the meadows of Eagle-Vail, Edwards, Bachelor Gulch and Beaver Creek. Now all of that land has been developed and the last time I saw any Elk was 6 struggling animals on a steep hillside in Dowd Junction in 2004. They are gone, not moved elsewhere, not hiding in the woods, they simply have all died out. I can go on: habitat destruction, air pollution, water pollution, traffic jams... the impacts of the single industry, single company ski resort reaches far beyond the immediate environs of the ski area itself.
Seriously, cry me a river!

With the precipitous fall of the dollar and the rising Euro, Manhattan became too expensive for many in NYC. We routinely commute 40 to 50 minutes to work every day. Once upon a time there were wolves and deer roaming Manhattan, but that no longer exists. In midtown manhattan the average height of building 90 years ago was 5 stories, now it's probably around 20. The upper west side was once farmland. When my parents moved to the NYC they were able to buy their apt in the upper west side for 70k, where most of the stores were of the mom & pops variety, and subway cost 50 cents. Now, the subway costs $2.50, their apt would sell for 2.5M and most of the store fronts are taken up with banks and or large corporate stores. Guess what: things change. If you don't like it, move.

We live in a country where if you work hard, make enough, and are so inclined, you can buy yourself a vacation home wherever you want. With transportation being cheap, it's now easy enough to live in the cities and vacation in the mountains. Why should those who can afford to deprived of it. It's sad that it comes to the detriment to some of the locals, but to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs. Furthermore, those ski area don't necessarily owe it to the community to take their needs into account first, especially when they are concerned about the bottom line, which frankly most businesses are. Whether or not you feel that is moral is immaterial.

One other thing. Let's say that MRA is really successful. What's to keep private developers from building around there? I
 
rfarren":fa0m4k1m said:
One other thing. Let's say that MRA is really successful. What's to keep private developers from building around there? I

In my fantasy world, I would create community and affordable housing projects (with an eco/green focus) for everyday folk to be able to purchase. Back at Squaw Valley USA, we used to refer to them as the Squawjects.
 
soulskier":1z32xfxu said:
rfarren":1z32xfxu said:
One other thing. Let's say that MRA is really successful. What's to keep private developers from building around there? I

In my fantasy world, I would create community and affordable housing projects (with an eco/green focus) for everyday folk to be able to purchase. Back at Squaw Valley USA, we used to refer to them as the Squawjects.

It's a nice idea but not exactly economically responsible, at least from a business perspective, but hey, as long as it has showers for those granola eating, smelly ski-bums the rest of us day trippers will be pleased.
 
soulskier":2uc8elv4 said:
2) That's true, it depends on the state. At the very least, the electric company will issue a credit, thus eliminating the electric bill, which according to many besides Geoff, is the number one expense of a ski resort, especially if the area requires snowmaking like Killington.
The bolded portion is 100% verifiably false. Unless ski areas are operated by mostly/solely by unpaid volunteers, labor costs are always, ALWAYS the #1 expense in running a ski area, even at a large snowmaking hill like Killington.

Jamie - I think what you don't understand is that it's not that people are opposing your idea. On the contrary, I think that most people here would love to ski at the type of hill you're envisioning. Rather, you continue to display an embarrassing level of naivete about the economics of the ski industry while setting up strawmen against which you are striving to rebel. The MRS, as you've articulated it, is more of a juvenile high-school term paper project than a serious business proposition. I love your idealism and your passion, but your strident insistence of certain economic details in the face of empirical facts to the contrary renders much of what you say laughable.
 
Da wood":nhdm99bi said:
I would assume that you are all on this forum because you love the sport, the mountains, the lifestyle and the freedom that you get from skiing, so I wonder why you aren't offering more constructive criticism to help MRA succeed instead of simply bashing it, and Soul Skier's posts.
This is a very long thread now. Especially early on, most of our comments were constructive. The responses seem to ignore a lot of valid concerns, as Mike Bernstein notes above.

Da wood":nhdm99bi said:
"In Search of Powder" explores the impacts of those of us that made our living in these towns and finally had to give it up because it became too difficult.
Fair enough. I should try to read that book sometime. I did read Downhill Slide and had the same view as Skip King quoted earlier.

Much of the time the ski resort developer does not have much control over what happens with the real estate/environment. I know this was the case with Vail. In Aspen they have been very environmentally conscious for a long time. I'm sure it's better for the wildlife and ecosystem, but the real estate is no surprise even more expensive. Jackson Hole is another example of a well preserved environment surrounding a small amount of very pricey real estate.

If the ski resort offers a great product appealing to a wide range of people, demand will increase, real estate is nearly always limited in a mountain environment, so prices can skyrocket. So the only thing the resort/company town can do is maintain some employee housing. Whistler has quite a bit of this and Aspen has some.

Da wood":nhdm99bi said:
so what is the harm in giving them some support.
Most people on FTO would love to see more expert-oriented, low density, minimalist infrastructure areas. But for my part I think soulskier would be well advised just to emulate the ones that exist now (I've listed several elsewhere in this thread). It's enough of a challenge as it is to sustain a ski area that appeals to a narrow niche, without claiming he can take on a bunch of tangential issues.

The whole ski bum pricing issue is not likely to be relevant. An MRA area is not going to be located in a pricey area, and its demand probably won't jack up the local real estate. I suspect Silverton is a relatively affordable place to live compared to towns where the ski area has high volume and broad based appeal.

The energy issue is also likely to be irrelevant. With no snowmaking and just a few simple lifts, energy consumption will be low. Given the high capital cost, producing your own energy makes the most sense if you're a big energy consumer like Whistler. It is very rare for the local utility to pay a price for excess energy production that justifies capital cost. If your local situation yields a short payoff period like Mt. Rose, go for it. But that's an analysis any intelligent business should make, really has little to do with being a ski area. In the current era (and remember I have actually done this) it depends mainly on the combined government subsidy plus the renewable energy potential of the particular location.
 
Da wood":rcli34eq said:
BTW Geoff, read the book and tell me how many of the "ski bums" in it receive any form of public assistance from you or anyone else? (answer: zero, most of them even own their own homes). In all my years of living in ski towns, I can't recall a single person that received so much as food stamps.

I can name quite a few who get food stamps and get state paid Vermont Catamount health insurance. If you mostly work cash jobs, you qualify for all kinds of public assistance.
 
soulskier":1vqphrdw said:
Bolton Valley, Vermont just installed a wind turbine. I believe that's ski area number 3 in the US with a wind turbine(s). Note all 3 have a large snow making demands.

http://snowboardgreen.blogspot.com/2010 ... izing.html

More cluelessness. Snowmaking consumes huge quantities of diesel to run compressors. If there wasn't a monster subsidy for wind turbines, Bolton wouldn't have installed one. My tax dollars at work subsidizing a Chittenden County commuter hill. Not exactly an appropriate spending priority for my tax dollars.
 
Mike Bernstein":2zwazv3t said:
soulskier":2zwazv3t said:
2) That's true, it depends on the state. At the very least, the electric company will issue a credit, thus eliminating the electric bill, which according to many besides Geoff, is the number one expense of a ski resort, especially if the area requires snowmaking like Killington.
The bolded portion is 100% verifiably false. Unless ski areas are operated by mostly/solely by unpaid volunteers, labor costs are always, ALWAYS the #1 expense in running a ski area, even at a large snowmaking hill like Killington.

Jamie - I think what you don't understand is that it's not that people are opposing your idea. On the contrary, I think that most people here would love to ski at the type of hill you're envisioning. Rather, you continue to display an embarrassing level of naivete about the economics of the ski industry while setting up strawmen against which you are striving to rebel. The MRS, as you've articulated it, is more of a juvenile high-school term paper project than a serious business proposition. I love your idealism and your passion, but your strident insistence of certain economic details in the face of empirical facts to the contrary renders much of what you say laughable.

Jeez. Many of us do ski the type of hill he's talking about. I wander up to Mad River when it's good. I tend to ski little retro places like Monarch when I have a few spare days in Denver rather than that I-70 blight. My issue is that you can't have a rational discussion about something when soulskier ignores any facts presented in counter-arguments and just re-states his position over and over. I'm wrong all the time. When somebody presents me with data that invalidates my opinion, I change my mind. There's no ego in it. I don't know about you guys but if I behaved like soulskier professionally, I'd get fired. It's really hard to respect someone who ignores facts and just drones on with their position. You're not entitled to a quaint pied a terre in some idylic ski town ignored by the masses where my taxes subsidize your existence. If you want to create some cool and funky new ski hill, by all means go out, earn a boat load of money, hire the army of lawyers to navigate the permitting, and build your nirvana. SInce the 'earn a boat load of money' part is not gonna happen, this is all just a bunch of snow-melting hot air.
 
Tony Crocker":27jzvd9f said:
Much of the time the ski resort developer does not have much control over what happens with the real estate/environment. I know this was the case with Vail.

That was my hunch. I would imagine that Vail resorts doesn't own that whole swath of land from eagle all the way to Frisco. I'm sure much of that land was developed by outside entities. Therefore, I'm not sure what steps could be taken to reduce development other than the state stepping in and declaring, as NYS did in the Daks, that the land is thereby state owned and forever wild. However, if you think that will lower real estate prices you would be mistaken. By limiting the quantity (i.e. the supply) the prices should rise.

Tony Crocker":27jzvd9f said:
In Aspen they have been very environmentally conscious for a long time. I'm sure it's better for the wildlife and ecosystem, but the real estate is no surprise even more expensive. Jackson Hole is another example of a well preserved environment surrounding a small amount of very pricey real estate....
If the ski resort offers a great product appealing to a wide range of people, demand will increase, real estate is nearly always limited in a mountain environment, so prices can skyrocket.
Yep, that's pretty much economics 101.

Tony Crocker":27jzvd9f said:
the only thing the resort/company town can do is maintain some employee housing. Whistler has quite a bit of this and Aspen has some.
That's nice to do for some transient employees, but I'm sure that won't please Da Wood and his ilk. I wonder what Da Wood thinks should be done to rectify his grievances.
 
Mike Bernstein":1z5ocl6b said:
soulskier":1z5ocl6b said:
2) That's true, it depends on the state. At the very least, the electric company will issue a credit, thus eliminating the electric bill, which according to many besides Geoff, is the number one expense of a ski resort, especially if the area requires snowmaking like Killington.
The bolded portion is 100% verifiably false. Unless ski areas are operated by mostly/solely by unpaid volunteers, labor costs are always, ALWAYS the #1 expense in running a ski area, even at a large snowmaking hill like Killington.

If that be the case then green energy certainly makes no sense whatsoever on an economic level. Energy production would only raise your labor cost by requiring maintenance, installation, etc...

IMHO for Soulskier this isn't so much a business issue as much as he feels moral one. That is fine as long his MRA model brings in enough money each day of operation to overcome the losses induced by green energy installation. The only issue is that ski areas tend not to make too much money as it is, so especially as a start up it would not be wise to add anything onto already existing debt.

I do think it's somewhat dubious (perhaps overly idealistic) to think that if a mountain produces more energy than it consumes it will get paid by the energy company. However, if this operation is small enough, it might be able to pay off its loans, and quit paying the energy company after a while. Nonetheless, it will still be on the hook for maintenance and labor...
 
rfarren":3cbwcwf7 said:
If that be the case then green energy certainly makes no sense whatsoever on an economic level. Energy production would only raise your labor cost by requiring maintenance, installation, etc...

IMHO for Soulskier this isn't so much a business issue as much as he feels moral one. That is fine as long his MRA model brings in enough money each day of operation to overcome the losses induced by green energy installation. The only issue is that ski areas tend not to make too much money as it is, so especially as a start up it would not be wise to add anything onto already existing debt.

I do think it's somewhat dubious (perhaps overly idealistic) to think that if a mountain produces more energy than it consumes it will get paid by the energy company. However, if this operation is small enough, it might be able to pay off its loans, and quit paying the energy company after a while. Nonetheless, it will still be on the hook for maintenance and labor...

Wind turbine electricity generation only makes economic sense because the government is subsidizing it. The zero carbon footprint solution that scales and where the economics work is to build nukes. The granola people don't particularly care for that solution. I lived a few miles from the Seabrook nuke plant in New Hampshire. That one was engineered properly and is competently operated so I had no reservations living near it. If I lived near Vermont Yankee, I might have a different opinion. I think nukes should have one standardized design, a standardized operations procedure, and oversight that is empowered to toss people in jail for being Homer Simpson on the job.

Nobody is going to invest a penny in a group like MRA that is so out of touch with how to run a ski business. The best hope is to keep the ski areas alive that don't have developable land at the bottom. Ski Santa Fe, Monarch, ... Speaking of that, what ever happened at Wolf Creek? I know some politically connected Texan did a land swap for forest service land at the bottom of the new lift. Everybody was suing everybody else over it.
 
Wow, you ignore a thread for a few pages and look what happens.

Let's see which needs addressing....

Labor costs are #1 as previously stated - not even close. Vail Inc is public, please read through their 10K or 10Q reports. It's a bit generic in some language, but you'd learn a lot I think (just as you say we'd learn a lot by reading downhill slide, et al).

I believe that the folks on this board and this thread are not opposed to MRA, just opposed that the statements posted come off as very one sided preaching that the ski industry as a whole is broken and MRA is a magical savior and only MRA knows how to do it right. Also that somehow there is only one way to do a ski business model. Most of us here would love to hit your funky slow lift but big terrain resort. But there's a whole lot fewer of us than those going to Vail or Breck. And for good reasons too.

Geoff":1urfl23g said:
Wind turbine electricity generation only makes economic sense because the government is subsidizing it. The zero carbon footprint solution that scales and where the economics work is to build nukes.

Wind isn't quite as bad as most think as far as economics... (not great, mind you, but not as bad as you probably think). Though I have heard that Sea based installations have huge % of downtime for maint issues. Solar is the tech that is absolutely horrific economically. Cute and 'cool' technology (I once built a solar powered car in College for a Mechanical Engr class), but even with 50% Gov't subsidies the payback is quite long. Just ask the Germans who force the energy companies to buy any excess power from solar farms at ridiculously high rates (literally tons of farmers making a buck by selling solar power due to the regulation that the electric co must buy it). Germany now has the world's most expensive electricity - by a lot. Anyway I agree that Nukes should be a decent portion of the solution.

Geoff":1urfl23g said:
Speaking of that, what ever happened at Wolf Creek? I know some politically connected Texan did a land swap for forest service land at the bottom of the new lift. Everybody was suing everybody else over it.

Still tied up in lawsuits If I recall. They finally agreed to scale it back by a lot as far as size and also to do a new land swap that would at least put the development outside the ski run boundary (previously it would sit right smack in the ski terrain). Those two combined dropped some of the ferocity of the opposition, but last I knew it was still being fought, just less vociferously.
 
Some constructive criticism in these latest posts. Just to be clear, I have nothing to do with MRA other than they asked me to write about the current state of the industry. I do however support their conviction, drive, idealism and vision, despite the non-polished message and communication and wish them the best. As for real estate development, much is driven by the resorts, either through their wholly or partially owned real estate arms or through "strategic partnerships" with developers. And as to the question of development that is not resort related, the local communities and elected governments can control this and are increasingly stepping in to do so. Democracy at its finest...

For those few of you on here that love to trot out absurd generalizations and hackneyed stereotypes, especially about my "ilk," whomever they may be, this vid is for you: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7782417

As someone once said: "arguing on the internet is like..." Well, this says it better: :dead horse: posting.php?mode=reply&f=10&t=9084#
 
Da wood":spxxar35 said:
And as to the question of development that is not resort related, the local communities and elected governments can control this and are increasingly stepping in to do so.

Local governments can only control it to a certain extent. Besides, that sounds a little socialist to me.
 
rfarren":1gp3fav2 said:
Da wood":1gp3fav2 said:
And as to the question of development that is not resort related, the local communities and elected governments can control this and are increasingly stepping in to do so.

Local governments can only control it to a certain extent. Besides, that sounds a little socialist to me.

:roll: ](*,)
 
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