Photo courtesy of Mary G. Jones
Amid several concerns being raised by the public, Timberline Four Seasons Resort in Davis began making snow Tuesday evening to gear up for the tentative opening date of Dec. 7.

DAVIS — Officials with an area ski resort addressed concerns raised by the public regarding the 2018-19 ski season.

In recent months, several questions have been posed about operations at Timberline Four Seasons Resort, located in Davis.

Included in those concerns have been the status of water plant operations, a receivership hearing for the water plant, which is slated for later this month, and a boil water advisory being in place; issues with the phone system being disconnected through much of the resort; references to a recapitalization project being posted on the resort’s Facebook page; and the overall future of the resort.

Tracy Edmonds Herz, wife of Timberline owner Fred Herz, special project manager, and owner on site for the realty company and utility company, said the issue with getting the boil water advisory lifted stems from a difficulty in finding a Class II Water Operator for the resort’s water plant, something they are working with the Public Service Commission to do.

“The (Public Service Commission) does not want to have somebody in for three days to lift the advisory, only to have it put back on again and do a rubber band advisory, no advisory, advisory, no advisory back and forth. We want to have it lifted and stay lifted,” she said. “We would be more than willing to do that but the operators that we found didn’t want to come in and have it lifted only to have it go back on when she went to her other job.”

She added the advisory is not due to any sort of contamination or water quality issue.

“The administrative and precautionary DWN remains in place until we have an operator 8.5 hours a day; however, the water does continue to be treated as it was before,” she said.

A hearing to determine whether Timberline Four Seasons Utilities should be placed into receivership is slated for Dec. 13 after the PSC received complaints regarding the boil water notices, inconsistent billing practices and failure to pay bills. Herz said she hopes the hearing will be unnecessary due to the quality of the water.

“The receivership hearing is still scheduled for the 13th in the Pine Room of the Canaan Valley State Park,” she said. “We certainly hope it does not come to that. The utility — it was funded by us in 1987 — there have been no incidents there. We have some of the best water in the state. … We have had no issues until this. We still don’t have any actual quality issues, what we have is the absence of an operator.”

Herz said Timberline Four Seasons Utilities serves 426 water customers and slightly over 700 sewer customers, but noted the Public Service District runs the sewer operations.

In an October post on the Timberline Four Seasons Resort Facebook page, the resort referenced a recapitalization effort, or reorganization of company’s capital structure, for the facility.

“Recapitalization means that a family, who is the 3 (sic) partners of Timberline put money into the mountain from the family, not loans, and not Wall Street and not public money. As a small immigrant family business enterprise 33 years ago and new Americans, they did this because of a commitment to growing jobs in West Virginia; it was the area of the United States most in need of jobs. (The other option available at the time was in Costa Rica, thus not in keeping with the most patriotic choice for the family),” the post reads. “It is now, after 20 years without meaningful upgrades in snowmaking (sic), very much time to reinvest in that core mission and snowmaking (sic) infrastructure. That investment will include aesthetic upgrades as well. Recapitalization is intensive, complex, risk averse and it takes experts to deal with the process, the investors and the resulting capital to improve your experience. We hope you enjoy the mountain this year.”

Herz declined to comment on the recapitalization efforts, but referred to it as “sensitive.”

“That’s a sensitive subject under the circumstances. That remains on track but I wouldn’t be able to offer you any details about it or any names,” she said. “Because it is so sensitive we are just not able to talk about that at any level of detail but it does remain on track.”

The phone system at the resort is still not operational; however, Herz said everything on the resort’s end is ready to go and they are just waiting for Frontier Communications.

She said when she and her husband moved here two years ago, they found the organization to be “flat,” and they are working to fix the issues at the resort.

“The most important thing about business is control and when we moved here two years ago, what we found was an organization that was, what I would call a ‘flat organization.’ It didn’t have hierarchy, it didn’t have the kind of modern systems that are required to run an efficient organization, it didn’t have real-time financial recording. When you are absent those things, you find that it’s a little more difficult to do the kinds of turnarounds as quickly as you would like, that we’ve been doing. …,” Herz said.

“The kinds of control that are needed to run a business from an administrative point of view were not in place when we moved here but they will be in place going forward,” she continued.

The resort began making snow Tuesday night; however, Herz said the ability to do so is largely dependent on the weather. According to the resorts website, the tentative opening day is scheduled for Dec. 7.

“If you know anything about the ski business, the opening day can change with the weather. For example, (Monday) the rain washed off just about everything off the Canaan Valley Resort State Park hill and they have (thousands of dollars) worth of snow making so that’s a lot of electricity we didn’t choose to waste,” she said. “Everybody — I think Snowshoe has 11 slopes open and they put a $4 million infusion into snow making — we expect that we will be putting in layers, a great deal into snow making this year. We just want to watch the weather and do what makes sense.”

Herz said resort officials hope these changes will not only help the company survive but thrive going into the upcoming season and years to come.

“We hope to not only survive, but thrive. We don’t want to be responsible for Canaan Valley to become the vacation in hell. …,” she said. “We hope that Timberline will not only change in the positive ways, in the structural ways, and in the administrative ways that it needs to change to become a modern organization but that people will respect our absolute dedicated devotion and our resolute intentions to see that happens this year at any cost to our personal lives. Any sacrifice we have to make, we are making it to make that happen and we hope that people can respect that.”