Q&A: Bill Stenger: President of Jay Peak

Vermont Business Magazine, May 01, 2003

Stenger: We have several. Fifteen years ago the Canadian dollar was 85 cents. It was strong and Canadians were coming down here right and left. We're only an hour and a half from 3.5 million people. In Newport we're only 40 minutes from half a million people in Sherbrooke. Now they're not coming south anymore, for two big reasons.

One, the (Canadian) dollar is weaker, and the border is harder. Going back almost 10 years, one of the last acts of the Mulrooney administration was to pass a general sales tax for Canada. For the first couple of years they didn't get too anal about collecting that tax at the border. You were able to come to Newport and go to a Sears, or Radio Shack, and buy some products you might not be able to get up there. You had the 85 cent dollar you were buying it with, but you didn't have the 15 percent tax.

If you were to talk to the banks in Newport, 10 years ago the receipts were 10 times what they are now in Canadian dollars. In other words, there might be $100 deposited on a Monday from Joe Schmo's Country Store, where 10 years ago that would have been $1,000.

It's because now, if you're Canadian and you go back into Canada, they check what you bought and they require that you pay the tax. So one of the benefits of coming to Vermont from Canada is gone. We've seen a precipitous drop in border crossings.

Since 9/11, the issue of going back and forth across the border has been a bit more complicated. It's actually a little better since 9/11 because they've been able to find people, hire and train them and get them into service, so they have enough staff to do the job now, where a year ago they didn't.

We're a long way from anywhere. Our economy up here is travel and tourism, education and healthcare, agriculture, and to some degree manufacturing. I refer to that as the E-TEAM, the EconomyTEAM, In this county the economy is made up of almost 25 percent from each one of those areas. Burlington is only an hour and a half away from here, but it's another world. It's got vibrancy, it has critical mass, it has airports, colleges and universities, the lake, the big healthcare center, and big companies like IBM.

Up in this area we have a much harder struggle. That's why our workforce development center is so important to us. We're working hard to get that focused and on track.

VBM: What is your position as an employer up here? Jay Peak must be one of the largest employers in the area.

Stenger: Probably second or third. Ethan Allen is the biggest employer in Orleans, but there is, from what you hear locally and in the State House, a good possibility they may not be here in two or three years. Not because they couldn't be, but they may have other options in South Carolina and other places, so we're working hard to keep everybody here.

VBM: Any comments on Act 60?

Stenger: It's a mess. Whenever you go to our school board meetings here' in town, you see it. We're a gold town, solely based on the strength of Jay Peak. Townhouses, condominiums, our own tax base and the fact that there's not one single schoolchild that fives here. So the town gets a lot of money from us, which makes us a sending town. But the kids that go to the Jay/Westfield School are not gold kids. These are working class families, a lot of them less than working class families. Some are single parent, some unemployed, and some facing a tough upbringing. Yet we spend more per pupil than the state allows.