JAY — Town residents voted to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and heard that at least two different buyers for the Jay Peak ski resort are in the “ninth inning” of the sale process.
The annual Town Meeting for the municipality of about 550 residents on the U.S.-Canadian border took place Tuesday morning and stretched into the afternoon inside the station for the Jay Volunteer Fire Department.
As the meeting drew to a close, David Sanders, the town moderator, asked if there was “any other nonbinding business” for the roughly 50 residents at the meeting to consider.
“Anything we talk about here isn’t binding, but it’s informational,” Sanders said.
Resident Ron Horton stood up and placed a motion on the floor, calling for the town of Jay to take a stand with other people around the world in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We firmly denounce the actions of the Russians against Ukraine,” Horton said in his motion.
Without further discussion, voters supported the measure on a voice vote with no dissent.
“Motion carries,” Sanders said.
Earlier in the meeting, the residents’ focus was on local matters.
Steve Wright, Jay Peak’s general manager, addressed the crowd as he has in the past, updating residents about the goings-on of the ski resort and the search for a buyer.
The ski area, which is the largest taxpayer in town, has been overseen by a court-appointed receiver since investor fraud allegations were leveled at past owner Ariel Quiros in April 2016. It has been on the market for about three years.
“There are a couple, a few, folks still in the ninth inning of this thing,” Wright said of the potential buyers. “The first eight innings of a sale rips on by, it happens pretty quickly, and then everything grinds to a halt in the ninth inning. We’re still sitting there in the ninth.”
Due to the confidential nature of the sale process, Wright did not disclose details about the interested parties or any dollar figure they might pay.
“The good news on that is folks that are interested continue to push the number up,” he said.
“Both of them are buyers that are going to continue to let us do our thing with respect to how we run the business, things that we value.”
Jay Peak officials — including Michael Goldberg, the court-appointed receiver overseeing the ski resort — have said little about the sale process over the years, other than to say it is ongoing.
Wright’s updates to Jay Town Meeting voters provide one of the few glimpses into that sale process.
As for a timeline for sale, Wright told Jay residents that is still up in the air.
“On one hand, we could see the sale within the next few months,” he said. “If you told me that the sale was going to happen in six to eight months, I’d believe that too. It could be anywhere in the middle.”
He said the ski season has been strong despite the difficulty Canadians face in getting across the border to the resort due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Wright did say that the past three weekends have drawn “phenomenal” crowds.
“Quite frankly,” he said, “the growth on the U.S. side has more than made up for the reduction in volume from the Canadian side.”
As for the workforce this ski season, Wright said the effects of the pandemic and a tight labor force have dropped that number down from the usual peak of about 1,100-1,200 employees to a top figure of a little more than 700 workers this winter.
Proceeds from the sale of the resort are expected to be distributed on a “pro-rata basis” to the hundreds of EB-5 immigrant investors who each put in at least $500,000 toward upgrades at the resort and have not been paid back.
According to civil lawsuits filed in the spring of 2016 by the state and federal regulators, Quiros, then Jay Peak’s owner, and Bill Stenger, at the time the resort’s CEO and president, misused $200 million of investor funds raised through the federal EB-5 visa program.
In May 2019, Quiros, Stenger and two of their associates were indicted by a federal grand jury in Vermont on criminal charges in connection with a separate failed EB-5 project they headed, a biomedical research facility called AnC Bio Vermont, which was proposed for Newport.
Stenger and Quiros have reached plea agreements and are awaiting sentencing.
Also at the annual Town Meeting, Jay residents reelected Sanders to another three-year term on the Selectboard.
The only article on the meeting’s warning that voters nixed was a proposal to contract with the Orleans County Sheriff’s Department for 208 hours of coverage per year for $11,464. Sanders, as moderator, said that would provide an average of four hours of coverage a week.
With little discussion on that specific article, residents voted it down in a secret-ballot vote with 39 against and 13 in favor.
