USIA Dies; NSAA Reborn With Michael Berry as CEO

by David Rowan

The item on the USIA calendar looked innocent enough: a meeting of the SIA board on September 10 at the Chicago airport. But was it just that? Why did the SIA board have to meet?

The official answer was simple: the NSAA board had met in Orlando and had extended for a year the “pre-nuptial agreement” it had with SIA; so, it was said, the SIA board had to pass a parallel motion. (The “pre-nuptial agreement”, otherwise scheduled to expire in October, facilitated a separation should either party want it.)

But couldn’t that be done by a conference call ballot? Did everyone have to schlepp out to Chicago? No, and obviously something big was afoot. It was common knowledge that most on the SIA side were exasperated with their NSAA partners in merger, so what could this be?

Telephone queries to the USIA officials got “no comments.” Chairman John Stahler was slightly more forthcoming: “If something big is planned for that meeting I certainly wouldn’t be telling you!” Obviously something big was going to happen.

And it did: unmerger, as it began to be called by staff. SIA voted to withdraw from the union. Those who had seen the areas as the less committed partner in an obviously shaky union were stunned that it was the other side which broke for the sidelines.

Events followed fast. Chris Diamond, USIA’s first vice chairman, and more importantly, the ranking NSAA official and its chairman, called a conference call meeting of the eight-member NSAA board that was in place during the three-year “pre-nuptial” period of merger. Among the key decisions: 1) to grant virtual operational carte blanche for the three-man executive committee — Chris Diamond (Mt. Snow), Gary McCoy (Mammoth), Dan Seme (Snowshoe), respectively NSAA chairman, vice chairman and treasurer; 2) to maintain ongoing NSAA programs; 3) to bring NSAA back to operational status, starting with the appointment of a new CEO — this following the appointment of a search committee of past NSAA chairmen who would make their recommendations based on screening of candidates by a professional; [Kirkwood’s GM, Michael Berry, was eventually chosen.] 4) set up NSAA offices in Colorado pursuant to a unanimous, pre-merger board vote on March 23, 1989.

The future of USIA itself still seems in doubt. At one time there were intimations it would continue as some sort of umbrella organization for undertaking unspecified joint projects. This did not fly very high. At presstime, it seemed possible that USIA would be kept alive as a vehicle for the Federal Express discount program, whereby the advantages of having the combined royalties of both NSAA and SIA business could be realized.

Other than that, there seemed to be a polite but firm inclination by both sides to go back to their independent selves with barely a backwards look. Indeed, there seemed to be considerably more enthusiasm for that than there had been for merger three years ago.

For all that, the USIA staff kept the work flow moving on all fronts so there was no lapse in committed programs. Sid Roslund, for instance, could be heard explaining B-77 matters at various regional meetings in early fall, and Mary Jo Tarallo was supporting several ski promotional events in New York.

Things obviously were moving fast. In USIA’s McLean headquarters work began, just as it does in any divorce, with a listing of assets, and a start made on plans to distribute them. The bottom line for NSAA: the equity we put in, we get back; but that probably doesn’t mean much cash. We get back all our “hard” assets of computers, phone system and the like — all perfectly stored, in good shape, but three years older. Whether we get cash will depend on what the auditors find. “It could be slightly negative,” cautions Diamond, who also points out that many people just didn’t read the financial statements accurately when they saw NSAA going into merger with a big hunk of cash. Under IRS rules, an association has to carry a deferred compensation program on its books as an asset, and that’s what a lot of people saw on the NSAA books, failing to see it also as an offsetting entry on the liability side.

The split between NSAA and SIA becomes official as of the end of 1992, but on a de facto basis it is in effect now. There is complete cooperation in the interim, with USIA staff functioning as before on committed programs, but with separate accounting, each association being responsible for the costs of its own programs as well as the shared costs of shared programs.

Dues are also being accounted separately, so area dues are being credited to the NSAA account. Diamond is more than a little frustrated by members who think they are somehow helping by withholding their dues from “them,” not understanding that “them” is actually “us.” They are hurting NSAA.

At presstime, almost 70 percent of dues were in, which is about where NSAA would be in a normal year. Diamond urges everyone to help by getting dues paid. In the meantime, arrangements are being made for an “appropriate line of credit” in Colorado so that NSAA can “deal with potential cash flow problems,” according to Diamond.

NSAA’s Leadership

Board of Directors — in place until new board, with new by-laws, replaces them:

• †Chris Diamond (Mount Snow, Vt.), Chairman
• †Gary McCoy (Mammoth Mountain, Calif.), Vice Chairman
• Gerald Groswold (Winter Park, Colo.), Ex officio
• Irv Naylor (Snow Time, Inc., Penna.), Secretary
• †Dan Seme (Snowshoe Mountain, W.V.), Treasurer
• David Roberts (Sno-Star Pipelines, Inc.)
• David Moffett (Alpenthal et al., Wash.)
• Dennis Harmon (Heavenly Ski Resort, Nev.)
• Joe Wachtel (Chestnut Mountain, Ill.)
• †Serve also as Executive Committee

Ski Area Advisory Committee — Names in italics were area members of the USIA board; the others were appointed to the committee by Chairman Diamond. Names with (*) asterisk are also members of the By-Laws Review Task Force, Gary McCoy, Chairman.

• Chris Diamond (Mt. Snow, Vt.), Chairman
• *Gerald Groswold (Winter Park, Colo.), Ex officio
• Rick Carter (Ski Sundown, Conn.)
• Mike Collins (Big Mountain, Mont.)
• *Sandy Eneguess (Temple Mountain, N.H.)
• Dennis Eshbaugh (Holiday Valley, N.Y.)
• Brian Fairbank (Jiminy Peak, Mass.)
• *Dennis Harmon (Heavenly Ski Resort, Nev.)
• Frank Helm (Dodge Ridge, Cal.)
• Kent Hoopingarder (Snowbird, Utah)
• Wally Huffman (Sun Valley, Ida.)
• Larry Hutchinson (Spirit Mt., Minn.)
• Phil Jones (Park City, Utah)
• Dave Marsh (Mt. Bachelor, Ore.)
• *Gary McCoy (Mammoth Mt., Cal.)
• *Dave Moffett (Alpental et al., Wash.)
• Harry Mosgrove (Copper Mt., Colo.)
• *Ted Motschman (Mt. LaCrosse, Wisc.)
• *Melanie Murphy (Big Boulder, Penna.)
• *Les Otten (Sunday River, Me.)
• David Roberts (Sno-Star Pipelines, Inc.)
• *Dan Seme (Snowshoe Mt., W. Va.)
• *Randy York (FallLine Corp.)
• Tony Waddell (Cataloochee, N.C.)
• Ralph Walton (Crested Butte, Colo.)

The key event in NSAA’s short new life occurred October 13 in San Diego, Calif., at the Town and Country Hotel, where NSAA’s convention and trade show will be held in May. (Incidental bad news: by all reports, the facility is just a little bit above the Hotel Diplomat; the good news, it’s cheap and convenient.)

What had originally been the time and place scheduled for USIA’s fall board meeting became instead three separate meetings: 1) an SIA board meeting, mainly to work on new directions for their Las Vegas show; 2) a USIA executive committee meeting to attend to housekeeping details relating to the break-up; and 3) a meeting of what was now called the NSAA Advisory Committee to plan for the future.

This last group was originally constituted as a USIA Operations Committee, set up right after the Orlando convention to be a mechanism for giving greater direction to USIA’s activities on behalf of area members. It never met as such.

Its composition was the handiwork of the pragmatic, savvy thinking of a crisis-hardened pro, Chris Diamond (see box). The group includes the 12 area members of the USIA board as of the May elections. To these he recruited another twelve, mostly new to the national association scene, several of whom were the elected heads of their respective regional or state ski area associations. Many of them were from small areas; one was a woman, Melanie Murphy. Each enjoyed a reputation for being bright and for having worthwhile ideas.

Though each had to pay his or her way, all but two answered the summons and the two absences were unavoidable.

“It was,” says Diamond, “probably the brightest group I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Not one of them was the slightest bit shy about expressing their ideas. There were no wallflowers. The input was very good. What made it especially rewarding,” Diamond elaborated, “was that there were very few instances of anyone ‘positioning’ — of staking out a position on something for effect, but without regard to the facts or circumstances.

Diamond also felt the diversity of the group helped the dynamics of the meeting. “Harry Mosgrove (Copper Mt.) is very focused, very direct, gets right to the question; while Ralph Walton (Crested Butte) kept us loose — you can count on him for a different perspective on things. Ted Motschman was outspoken on small area issues. He’s great!

“This was the group,” Diamond points out, “that I put together with an eye on this eventuality. They represent the diversity of our trade association — geographically, politically, sizewise. It was important they appreciate that what we’re doing now is managing work that was put in progress anywhere between six months and six years ago. It is the ongoing train and all I’m trying to do is slow the train down to where it’s consuming an amount of fuel that is equal to what we can afford to buy, and that also preserves the core programs.

“Some people,” Diamond continues, “thought we should stop the train completely and then start it up later. But that’s a luxury we don’t have if we’re going to preserve those programs that are the core of NSAA.”

The meeting itself, which started at eight, with participants seated around a square arrangement of tables, divided naturally into two parts. In the morning, with staff members David Ingemie, Rick Owen and Sid Roslund in attendance, a complete review of NSAA operations was undertaken. Diamond gave a chronological account of events leading up to their meeting,

Some Dates in NSAA’s Continuing History

Date	Event
May 27, 1962	Founding meeting at The Broadmoor, Colo. David Judson (Otis Ridge, Mass.) elected president; David Rowan appointed executive secretary, with offices in New York City.
1964	Ann Hasper appointed executive secretary.
1967	Richard Garis appointed executive secretary.
1973	Cal Conniff, formerly GM at Mt. Tom, Mass., named executive secretary. Offices move to West Hartford, Conn.
1980	NSAA moves offices to Springfield, Mass.
August 1988	NSAA and SIA jointly retain McKinsey and Co. to study demand; DMB&B ad agency also retained. Key summit of elected heads of NSAA and SIA (present, immediate past and next in succession) discuss closer cooperation; they commission McKinsey to make a study. Their recommendation: Merge.
January 1989	NSAA board and SIA executive committee approve merger.
July 1989	NSAA and SIA memberships vote merger in, 56 and 54 percent respectively voting “yes.” David Ingemie named president.
September 1989	First USIA board meeting in Denver. Jerry Groswold (Winter Park) is first chairman. USIA headquarters in McLean, Va.
May 1992	NSAA board, Chris Diamond chairman, votes to extend “Pre-nuptial agreement” for a year.
Sept. 10, 1992	SIA board votes to withdraw from USIA.
Sept. 23, 1992	NSAA board holds conference call meeting; authorizes search for CEO; reaffirms intention to move to Denver area.
October 13, 1992	NSAA advisory committee meets in San Diego; Gary McCoy to head By-laws Review Task Force.
Nov. 30, 1992	Michael Berry becomes sixth executive head of NSAA, with offices in Lakewood, Colo.

Ingemie gave a status report and then committee reports were presented. Also presented was a break-even budget to carry the association from the present period of co-existence with USIA in McLean, overlapping slightly with NSAA’s independent start-up operation in Lakewood, Colo. and then on through to the end of the fiscal year.

Diamond reported on the status of the CEO search for a “hands-on, focused, industry person with deep, broad experience.” [Later in the month he was found: Mike Berry, of Kirkwood, Calif.] Diamond anticipated staffing will eventually go to 10, but added it will be up to the new CEO as to if, and how fast, that might happen.

At the lunch break, Joe Prendergast, president of American Ski Federation, brought the group up-to-date on government affairs matters, including the frustrating near-miss on the Forest Service legislation his office had worked so hard and effectively for.

The second part of the meeting, closed to all but the area participants, was what Diamond calls the “political” side, having to do with planning for NSAA’s future. In his opinion, the core operations are not really an issue because they won’t change (“our priorities are historical, not temporal”) and he points out that “90 percent of our resources, human and fiscal, go towards those core functions like B-77, economic study, various educational materials — things we’ve done in the past and which no-one wants to change. When you ask people what they want to cut you don’t see a lot of hands. There’s just not a lot of debate or change on these things.”

But Diamond predicts that on the political aspect of things, “It’s going to be a whole different animal.”

It was with this in mind that he formed an 11-person By-laws Review Task Force, headed by Gary McCoy, and made up of volunteers from the advisory committee (see box). Their task is to reach out to the ski area industry and re-build a political structure that reflects the hopes and wishes of the membership.

Diamond emphasizes the division of labor here: he says his plate is more than full making sure the NSAA programs operate and the association gets up and running; the future make-up of NSAA, however — how it nominates and elects its board, what the membership requirements will be — is what McCoy’s By-laws Review Task Force is charged with studying and making recommendations on.

McCoy plans to get input from the industry in any and every way he can. Among the mechanisms is a questionnaire to all areas (see page 6), networking with regional and state ski area associations and round-table discussions at the mid-winter meetings at Mt. Snow and Keystone in January.

“Our task force,” McCoy insists, “will have no limits on it about what we’ll consider.” It will come to grips, he says, with future membership status of suppliers, with nominating and election issues, with issues of working relationships with regional and state ski area associations — in short with anything that is needed for writing a new set of by-laws that reflect the wishes of a majority, as based on the maximum, possible input.

McCoy urges anyone with ideas to share to feed them to a member of the Task Force, or to him at Mammoth Mountain (see page 6). The group will be meeting, both in person and by conference phone, as well as circulating drafts and commentary as they work towards McCoy’s goal of having a set of by-laws ready for approval by the May convention.

And therein lie more procedural conundrums of the chicken-and-egg variety. How do you get people nominated and elected to office according to a set of by-laws that haven’t yet been adopted? Or can the old board, elected under the old by-laws approve the new by-laws and appoint the new directors under the new by-laws? No serious problems here!

In moving to Lakewood, Colo., NSAA becomes a tenant of the consolidated NSP/PSIA, who own the building. All parties agree that the potential synergy, to say nothing of the cost-savings potential for some shared expenses, is exciting.

Steve Over, NSP/PSIA executive director, points out that education, communications and marketing are priorities with both his memberships, and that there are “exciting opportunities for working very closely and effectively with NSAA.”

One skeptic noted that patrollers and instructors are mostly ski area employees and wondered what sort of stress might surface when employees have their employers as tenants, or employers their employees as landlord.

NSAA was able to get an attractive package of incentives from state, city and economic development sources for the move to Lakewood, according to Diamond. “Our chief armtwister, Jerry Groswold, did well,” he says, but without sharing any details.

Before affirming the move, a great deal of careful attention was paid to short-circuiting any future problems of Colorado Ski Country deriving promotional benefits out of having NSAA headquarters in the state. They did not want to see it exploited as Utah promotes the U.S. Ski Team being headquartered in that state. Colorado Ski Country officials were sensitive to the problem and undertook to give the appropriate written assurances.

The San Diego meeting has obviously energized the whole industry. Those attending seemed thoroughly impressed and buoyed by the meeting, using words like “positive,” “open-minded,” “forward-looking” to describe it. There were a few who felt it was “back to business as usual,” and who were disappointed. But most, even if they didn’t agree with everything, felt a great new start had been made.

There was some feeling about the NSAA leadership having suffered from “the good-old-boys” syndrome, but that was put into different perspective by Jerry Groswold, who turned to the group, and welcomed them as good old boys — including Melanie Murphy. The minute you start working on something like this, he told them, you are going to be perceived as having joined the club.

Amidst all the hopeful signs of a healthy rebirth, it was also clear to most that some very tricky times lie ahead, especially on budgetary issues. At the same time that Chris Diamond cautions that NSAA will have to live within its means, he also points out how hard it is to cut its core programs.

Clearly, at least for the time being, marketing will not be blessed with the sort of budgets the marketing oriented are going to want. Indeed, Diamond plans to charge a new marketing committee “to carefully consider the current USIA programs and embark only on new ones that won’t significantly tax NSAA’s available resources.” The role of national marketing is surely going to be a future battleground of thinking. For many, the big-time efforts of two years ago represent a nightmare they don’t want to hear about again. But that is not going to deter the committed marketers from pushing.

Another thorny issue is going to be finding the right relationships between area members and suppliers. Many suppliers felt they were better served and more professionally treated under USIA than they were under NSAA, and they are reluctant to “go backwards” to the old ways. There is renewed talk of forming a supplier’s organization to work with NSAA. Those who favor it insist it not only would not be confrontational, but that it represents the best way to enhance the mutual interests of each. There are budgetary implications, since the old NSAA derived a substantial amount of its funding from suppliers dues and from trade shows.

Others felt that suppliers should stay within the NSAA structure, but with fuller participation and more responsibility for the trade shows that are their lifeblood.

One of Diamond’s undertakings that will find favor in many circles is the planned reconstitution of an NSAA Long-Range Planning Task Force. This was originally started by Waterville Valley’s Tom Corcoran when he was NSAA chairman. The purpose was to keep the association focused and in tune with the wishes of its members by methodically keeping a five-year management plan current and alive.

There is a very large basketful of tasks ahead for the ski area industry. Fortunately, there seems to be the energy, commitment and optimism around to tackle the tasks. One thing is certain: there should be no shortage of news about NSAA for the next six months.