Finance Committee Meeting: May 15 & 23, 2008

Mad River Cooperative

Finance Committee Meeting (Teleconference)

May 15 & 23, 2008

The Finance Committee held two conference calls primarily to review the budget for fiscal year 2008 / 09 and to set ticket and pass prices that support the budget.For simplicity only one report is being issued for these two meetings.

May 15 – Attendees: Chairman Eric Schoenholz, Andrew Snow, Andy Dulik, Lars Bruns, Tom Cagnina, Deb Steines, Betsey Jondro, Jed Kalkstein, Pete Ludlow, Roy Liu, Jamey Wimble, and staff members Eric Friedman

The telephone conference was call to order by the Chair at 7:30 am

May 23 – Attendees: Chairman Eric Schoenholz, Andrew Snow, Lars Bruns,Tom Cagnina, Deb Steines, Betsey Jondro, Jed Kalkstein, Leigh Michl, Pete Ludlow, Roy Liu, Jamey Wimble, and staff members Eric Friedman; Sharon Crawford

The telephone conference was call to order by the Chair at 7:35 am

Short P&L Review for April and forecast for end of fiscal year (Jamey)

The outlook from the April P&L indicates that our forecast for approximately a $185K NOI at the year end still holds.There are no surprises.The CAPX that was approved is underway.There may be a request for some additional CAPX for the 1^st level upgrade depending upon how the bids come in for the work on the floors and the bathrooms.

Ticket pricing 2008 / 2009 (Jamey)

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Day tickets

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Season Passes

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Mad Cards

We discussed whether to change our “practice” of selling Season Passes, Mad Cards, and Daily Tickets with prices that include sales tax.Daily Tickets would always include sales tax, but due to the fact that many of our competitors quote prices not including sales tax, we might want to change our “practice”.After much discussion Staff recommended that we stay with our current practice, because they felt it would be the easiest administratively.The final decision was left to Staff.

Due to the competitive nature of the discussion no specifics will be reported in these minutes at this time.

Budget for 2008 / 2009 (Jamey)

The proposed budget for 2008 /2009 was discussed.Cost savings and frugal operation is the key to our planned profit for the coming year.

Cost considerations were discussed in the following areas:

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Need to develop contingencies – driven by possible higher pricing.

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>Oil / Diesel

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>Electricity

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>Labor

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Understand/expect price increases for food supplies.

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>Develop contingencies – set higher prices for food in café and bar

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Consider volunteer staffing for lifts and basebox – and training.

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>Should we establish Board Committee on Volunteerism (Bill R.)?

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>Should we establish a “position” to manage volunteers?

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Cost Savings – Part time operation of Lift 4

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>Possible operation 2 pm or 3 pm to closing weekdays?

<![if !supportLists]>§         <![endif]>Accommodate Harwick Skiers

<![if !supportLists]>§         <![endif]>Accommodate Homeowners that want to get home at the end of the day

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Prepare a “Plan B” for “disaster”

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>How to pare operation to the bone?

<![if !supportLists]>o       <![endif]>Written so it can be reviewed by committee

<![if !supportLists]>·        <![endif]>Have the committee review the “Limited Ticket Sales / Reservation” Concept (Eric S)

Taking over of the Retail Shop was discussed.A separate P&L will be developed for the shop which will be integrated into the total P&L and Budget for 2008 /2009.In the interim a nominal profit figure has been included in the budget equal to the amount of rent we would have received from Alpine Options.The shop will concentration on “Logo ware”, Emergency Goods – gloves, goggles, sox, etc., and no hard goods as we don’t want to compete against “ski shops”.

The committee recommended approval of the submitted pricing and recommended budget and to present it to the Coop Board as presented by management.

Share Redemption – what do we recommend to the Board? – Resume or not? (Eric)

There are currently 41 outstanding requests for redemption with a value of about $53K.We recommend that the suspension of share redemptions be lifted and that we redeem all outstanding requests by the end of the fiscal year.In order that we don’t put too much “stress” on cash flow we recommend that we spread these redemptions out over the coming months.