Rules of attraction

Town to developers: If you push, we’ll play dominoes

In an effort to “get everyone on the same page regarding plans and work programs,” the Town of Mammoth’s Community Development Director Mark Wardlaw and Public Works Director Ray Jarvis pulled together the Town’s commissions on Wednesday to review the 5-Year Capital Improvement Program (CIP) and the Public Facilities Finance Plan (PFFP).

“The CIP is a short to mid-term plan and the PFFP is long-range,” Wardlaw explained to the commissioners.

The CIP is a thorough and comprehensive approach to planning for asset management and capital improvement projects while the PFFP will describe the scope, available financing tools and opportunities, priority, and timing for each individual project or facility.

“The PFFP integrates and reconciles facilities cited in varies planning documents,” Wardlaw said. “It will help determine the best financing and implementation tools and will serve as the basis to recalibrate DIF.”

DIF needs to be recalibrated because one of the purposes of all of these exercises is to prepare Mammoth to emerge from the recession and the still unknown outcome of the lawsuit settlement ready to attract investment.

“We want to build a more collaborative process,” Wardlaw said. “We want to end up with a program that is prioritized and get a return on investment. We need to focus on a long-term fiscal strategy.”

Chuck Lande of Snowcreek Resort attended the meeting and found the plans energizing, but the timeline too long.

“It’s great that we are getting Mammoth ready to take advantage of opportunities as we emerge from the recession, but the timeline doesn’t really get things started for eight months,” Lande said. “We need to get developers engaged sooner. It’s critical to tell the public that we have changed and want to incentivize.”

Wardlaw explained that staff would be moving the process as quickly as it could, and that he believed it would be receiving direction from Council by January or February 2012.

For now, each commission will be responsible for reviewing the portions of the CIP and PFFP projects and facilities specific to its expertise and focus, i.e. the Recreation Commission will responsible for reviewing recreation projects and facilities such as the Whitmore Pool and the Community Tennis Courts.

The commissions will work to understand the facilities that the Town already has, and will try to determine how to improve and prioritize them.

“We need to come up with this list before we determine how to pay for it,” Jarvis explained of the order of the process.

The commissions’ pieces will then be funneled up to the newly appointed Capital Facilities Committee, which will integrate all of the pieces together and work to come up with financing options.

The Town Council approved the Capital Facilities Committee at its Oct. 5 meeting. It is made up of Mayor Jo Bacon and Councilman Rick Wood, Planning Commission Chair Jay Deinken, Airport Commissioner Pam Murphy, Mobility Commission John Vereuck (and/or Sandy Hogan), Diane Eagle, Dan O’Connell, Chuck Lande and Jim Smith.