GILFORD — At a special August 15 meeting, the current three-member Gunstock Area Commission dealt with an expanded audit and ongoing legal expenditures in order to put a year of controversy behind it, but the chair of the Belknap County Delegation warned that any action taken would be challenged in court.
Representative Michael Sylvia (R-Belmont) stepped forward as the meeting was about to begin to address Chair-Pro-Tem Doug Lambert: “Commissioner Lambert, before you attempt to call a meeting into order, I’d like you to know that Vice-Chair Strang has not been invited to this little assembly; Vice-Chair Strang has not resigned. At a questionable meeting involving acts thereafter from the alleged delegation meeting of August 1, all actions will be challenged, and anything you do today and in the future is going to be before the court.”
Sylvia and several other members of the county delegation had stayed home during the emergency meeting, which Sylvia maintained did not meet the requirements for public notification. Representative Harry Bean (R-Gilford) called the meeting on 24-hours’ notice and acted as chair in Sylvia’s absence. The 10 members attending accepted Dr. Strang’s resignation, based on his promise to resign once there were enough commissioners to meet a quorum. The delegation appointed Denise Conroy to serve out the term of resigned commissioner Gary Kiedaisch, which meant that there still would be a quorum if Strang were to resign.
Strang did not attend the August 1 meeting, and he had not formally submitted a letter of resignation.
“Commissioner Strang gave his conditions for resignation,” said Representative Gregg Hough (R-Laconia). “He stated that if the GAC had a quorum to do business, he would tender his resignation. Today, we have appointed a commissioner that will fulfill the commissioner strength requirements, and now we should accept his word and his integrity and vote to accept his resignation.”
Until Monday’s meeting, Sylvia had not publicly contested the decision, but Lambert said one member of the commission had been served with “a legal document” at 12:03 a.m.
“I’ll just leave it at that point,” Lambert said. “There’s been no threatening letter per se received received by the commission.”
Monday was Conroy’s first meeting as a commissioner, and she commented that she was surprised to see so many subcommittees for such a small board, and said it adds unnecessary bureaucracy.
“Obviously, when we’re at full strength, we’ve got five members,” she said. “Given the size of this business of Gunstock, it’s highly irregular to have so many committees. … We want to keep this as streamlined as possible.”
Her comments came after Lambert’s motion to declare the audit committee disbanded. The previous chair, Peter Ness, had established the audit committee, with Dr. Strang as chair, to oversee Gunstock Mountain Resort’s annual audit procedure.
An August 11 letter from Vachon Clukay & Company said the audit had been disrupted and delayed by the additional information requested, which “was outside the planned scope of procedures and/or year of audit.”
The resignation of Gunstock’s senior management team on July 20 also disrupted the audit, but with Strang’s resignation, the team was back on board. The auditors wrote, “we have re-established contact with the Finance Department and provided a list of open audit fieldwork items which still need to be addressed.”
“The commission will address and look into each and every item on the list,” Lambert said, “and I can tell you it was a very substantial list that mostly involved checks that have been written, and some beyond the typical year that the audit firm would be looking into. I believe it was characterized as ‘unprecedented.’”
Because of the additional work, the auditors said the report is likely to take until September 30 to prepare, and Lambert said the work will most likely cost more than a typical audit.
The commissioners unanimously approved the motion to disband the audit committee and to have the chair remain in communication with the auditors and report back to the full commission.
That led to a general discussion about subcommittees and the lack of documentation from their meetings. Lambert said his motion aimed to bring committee work back to the entire commission “so that we as a complete body can make the decisions necessary to move forward, hold our votes, and provide the proper guidance and public dissemination of information, as we are required.”
Commissioner Jade Wood suggested that they update their bylaws and procedures to accomplish that.
Legal Work
The commission had engaged the PretiFlaherty law firm to review the genesis of the lawsuit that three members of the Gunstock Area Commission had filed against the county delegation in response to Sylvia’s request for reimbursement of the delegation’s legal bill in defending against the lawsuit. The Gunstock Area Commission had paid $17,000 initially and “a couple thousand dollars” after that, according to Lambert. The current bill totaled $44,512.75, which included a mix of partner and associate time at market rates, as well as consultations with attorneys at Westlaw Research.
An additional bill will come due when the report is completed.
While Wood had voted against engaging the firm, Lambert had joined the majority in voting to do the research. On Monday, he called the bill “staggering” but said the final report will be helpful “so that we don’t end up here, or some future commission ends up here in the same place, at some future point.”
“To that end, sadly, I have to vote in favor of accepting and paying this invoice so that we can get the final report that we ultimately are going to have to pay for anyway at some point,” Lambert said.
The commission approved the motion and made the invoice public, as well as officially disbanding the legal services committee.
While responding to public comments at the end of the meeting, members said they were interested in putting the past behind them and moving on, a sentiment that Gunstock President and General Manager Tom Day echoed.
Former commissioner Gary Kiedaisch asked the current commission to make sure that future candidates for appointment are “properly screened, properly referenced, properly interviewed, and I would strongly recommend to Representative Sylvia that you hire an executive recruiter to identify and screen candidates, and put a slate of candidates before you that are pre-qualified, that they have the capabilities and talent and whatnot so that you don’t worry about their political appointments with people that don’t know what they’re doing, which has created a lot of this problem.”
Lambert and Wood, both of whom were appointed by the delegation that Sylvia leads, took offense at Kiedaisch’s comments about members being unqualified to serve, and the new commissioner, Conroy, also took issue with Kiedaisch’s assessment.
“I think a qualified person is any member of the community that has integrity, that actually has an open mind and is curious and can learn,” she said. “When I look at who was on the subcommittees, those were people who didn’t want to learn; they just wanted to dig and they wanted to harass.”
She said she has watched commissioners Wood and Lambert “navigate this swamp” and “I am so impressed with both of them.”
She described Wood, who is pregnant with twins, as “a force, and for any of you dudes sitting out there, she’s done this while she’s carrying two kids. She’s carrying two human beings, so that’s no small feat.”
As for Lambert, Conroy called him “a quick study. He already runs a business, so I feel like if we can just stay on the path of appointing folks like this to the commission, then Gunstock’s in really good shape.”
Kiedaisch said he was not referring to either Wood or Lambert; he was speaking of Ness and Strang.
Lambert said, “I’d just like to keep moving forward. We keep looking backwards and looking at things and looking at last year’s lawsuit, and, honestly, I’m looking forward to the day we can talk about the master plan and, oh, by the way, the Stockade lodge, which I was excited to be able to do.”
He also said he wants to talk about discounted tickets for Belknap County residents.
“So that’s the kind of stuff that I as a commissioner would like to think about and talk about at some point, and get all this legal stuff in the past.”