MMSA employee memo from Rusty Gregory
The following is a memo to Mammoth Mountain Ski Area employees from MMSA CEO Rusty Gregory intending to clarify his remarks at the June 5 Mammoth Lakes Town Council meeting about someone else running the ski area. For more on this story, pick up a print version of this week’s Sheet.
The communities of Mammoth and June continue to struggle with the hardships and disillusionment of the last seven years that saw a global financial meltdown, two years of recession, and four years of the worst drought in our region’s history. Jobs were lost, businesses disappeared, a town went bankrupt and a ski area was closed.
As locals moved away, and others were making plans to follow, the world began to change. Business began to improve, jobs were created, new employees hired, home prices began to rise, companies and individuals began to invest. These improving circumstances have been imperceptible to most, but they exist, they are real, and they are harbingers of a bright future ahead.
Our company and our community will not realize the opportunities of the future by employing solutions of the past. It is time for new vision and bold action. It is time to pass the baton to a new generation of leaders who dare to have this vision and possess the audacity to take the big risk, the guts to change the old ways and the energy to do the hard work to transform the opportunities of the future into realities.
While I intend to be your CEO for some time, I am stepping away from ski area operations and business duties that I have been my responsibility since 1995 to make way for a new six member leadership team, including a Chief Operating Officer of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. I will turn my focus on attracting and deploying the considerable resources required for the company and the community to realize its full potential. I am excited to introduce you to this new leadership team and to have you hear the vision for our future and our plans to get there.
Rusty Gregory
Chairman & CEO
Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, LLC
What. A. Drama. Queen… So that bit of news requires Rusty to make some grand announcement before the city council – and if so, why be so coy and elusive about it? This just speaks to the fact of what we all know…that Rusty Gregory is the Lindsay Lohann of the ski industry. He is a narcissistic potentate, whose hubris continues to doom the Mammoth to the Sisyphean exercise of chasing its own tail. Is he really that out of touch that he expects us to forget about organizational hierarchy? In what world does a CEO not jerk the reins of a Chief Operating Officer? If he really intends on stepping aside, then STEP ASIDE and relegate yourself to an ex officio role and let the mountain flourish as it should.
We can only hope that the new team members are honest, enviormentaly sensitive, and not greedy.
Does this mean he will not be aVAILable, then?