A 40% hike in employee compensation was approved by Eaglecrest Ski Area’s board of directors Thursday night, an effort to solve a workforce shortage caused largely by subpar wages, as part of a proposed budget for next year sent to the Juneau Assembly — which a day earlier reiterated warnings to board members about money being tight.
The board also approved an increase of more than 15% in its commodities and services spending during a meeting where members were rushing to approve a spending plan by a city-imposed deadline, with some audience members offering strong criticism of the process in comments at the end.
The city-owned ski area has been operating at a heavy loss in recent years, with the municipal government covering shortfalls, and the increases approved Thursday would potentially add more than $1 million to a resort budget initially projected at roughly $4.4 million. Eaglecrest officials will next meet with the Assembly’s Finance Committee where the budget will be reviewed and subject to further modification.
“Some of this may come down to us saying let’s just put the big ask into the Assembly and then we’ve still got some work to do,” Board Chair Mike Satre told other members during Thursday’s meeting.
But that was at odds with what Assembly members have been saying in recent months, including during a joint meeting of the Assembly and Eaglecrest’s board on Wednesday night. The Assembly is in the early stages of crafting its budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, with members stating an increase in the property tax mill rate is probable as are other revenue measures such as bonds to meet unexpectedly large needs including protection measures for neighborhoods threatened by glacial outburst floods from Suicide Basin.
Assembly Member Wade Byrson, offering some of the strongest pushback, told the ski area’s leaders “I can’t think of a year that Eaglecrest hasn’t come with their hat in hand saying ‘we need a whole bunch of money to do everything we want.’”
“I think the question I’m going to try and ask the board is when are you going to have the discussion that you guys don’t have a way out of this?” he said. “At some point these numbers — it might even be today — these numbers are unattainable knowing what other asks we have for the city budget.”
Eaglecrest is facing the dilemma of a staffing crisis and major infrastructure problems at a time when Assembly members are expressing frustration with the size of the ski area’s ongoing losses. At the same time, the resort is counting on eventually operating profitably with the installation of a gondola and large-scale summer operations within a few years.
Eaglecrest would have 56.63 full-time equivalent staff positions if fully staffed, but at present that number is about 34, according to budget documents discussed at this week’s meetings.
While employee pay at the ski area is effectively about 40% below the industry average, Eaglecrest General Manager Craig Cimmons said Thursday the $780,000 increase approved for staff won’t increase wages by that amount since the funding also includes insurance and other non-monetary compensation. Also, the amount spent will depend on how many employees the resort is able to hire.
Budget documents show the resort’s wages are about 14% below comparable ski areas elsewhere in the U.S., which is further affected by the cost of living being about 25% higher in Juneau compared to the average. Board members unanimously approved the 40% increase in compensation, stating the priority should be to make it easier for Eaglecrest to lure and retain employees before making a heightened effort to fill the vacancies.
“One reason that we’re in this situation we’re in is because Eaglecrest has not raised wages at the rate it should have for decades, right?” board member Brandon Cullum said. “So we have a lot of people who are really underpaid and so trying to make that up in one year is really hard to do.”
The board also approved about $567,000 for capital improvement projects for the coming year, including repairs to the Black Bear chairlift that has been out of service this season. The final deliberations occurred in the final minutes before the board was facing a mandatory adjournment deadline as well as the need to approve the budget at the meeting to meet the city’s timeline.
“I will absolutely admit that, until a few hours ago, I was not understanding the level of detail that we were potentially being asked for tonight,” Satre acknowledged.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
