Another Snow-less winter for Warren County tourism

If you know me then, well … um, you know me. You know I’m terrible at making predictions. That’s why I rarely take a bet on anything because I don’t like losing, and I like losing money even less. I’ll bet you that I lose most bets I take, but I’m telling you upfront that’s not a bet you should take.

So what the heck was I about to tell you about? Oh yeah! Despite my historical record I am very confident Alfred Snow will not be back to oversee Warren County’s winter tourism efforts again this winter.

Maybe you remember the brief tenure of Snow as head of our county tourism department. He was hired in August of 2022 and resigned a bit over 2 months later on November 14th.

I was dubious about Snow from the start because I pay attention to the choices our supervisors make. They like yes-men. But I’m not ashamed to admit I was wrong about Al Snow. Turns out Al was not a yes-man. This is what he said (along with a lot of other stuff) in his resignation letter, aside from “effective immediately”:

“Unfortunately, up until this time my expertise and recommendations have been ignored, my ROI analysis on the funding of high-dollar marketing program has been disregarded, and I feel that I have been lied to since my first conversations with Warren County officials since May.”

That is a remarkably blunt assessment of your bosses, bosses who included longtime chair of the Board of Supervisors Tourism committee Gene Merlino the Republican from Lake Luzerne who literally told a meeting of the BOS “I’m one of the good old boys” - I am not making that up, I have a clip of the video, so do not bet me on that - and BOS Chair Kevin Geraghty a Republican from Warrensburg.

But tourism efforts continued despite the lack of Snow. Supervisors brought in the Ice Castles spectacle which was popular but while a lack of snow was manageable the lack of cold doomed the event after 2 years.

Not to worry! Our tourism committee heard from a local coalition including representatives from a major local hotel/historical site, an events producer, a marketing company, and others touting a brand new winter attraction that would not rely on snow OR cold! Mon dieux! It was a stroke of genius! And all it would take was $3 million in Occupancy Tax money!

You know me, I’m skeptical about this sort of thing, but I also know some of the people involved and I had a certain level of trust that these prominent local business people were not in it for themselves but had the best interests of the county in mind. Well, I don’t want to exactly say I was wrong but after the money was spent it seems like a number of the players ended up with some of the cash in their own businesses. The rest of the money, about $1.5 million was loaded on pallets and sent to Canada. Okay, that part I’m making up. They actually wrote a check, or more accurately they likely did some wire transfers of that money straight out of the county and to the Moment Factory in Montreal, Canada.

(I am not going to make any of the jokes that are in my head about money and moments)

The reviews of the resulting light show Winter’s Dream at Fort William Henry were not as spectacular as the promise of the event. The event was a dud. It didn’t come anywhere close to generating the revenue, the tourism visits or the number of heads in beds that were promised. It turns out that $3 million was just not quite enough money to make the event really shine! All they needed was to send another $400,000 of Occupancy Tax money out of the country. Well, probably not all of it.

Being the skeptical bunch that our county Supervisors tend to be (I do not have to tell you that this is a bit of snark, do I?) every single supervisor at the meeting except Queensbury Supervisor John Strough (give the devil his due) voted to send another $400,000 to Canada!

Somewhere in Florida Al Snow must have shaken his head and thought “if only I had no scruples or professional pride I could have had a well-paying job in Warren County and they would have given me any raise I asked for.”

So speaking of raises! County BOS Chair Kevin Geraghty looked at the quality of decision making on the county board including the Winter’s Dream debacle and his attempt to raise the county sales tax 33.3% and decided that for those efforts and more supervisors deserved a bit of a raise, not much, just a token of the appreciation county residents surely must feel, say 30%. Not a lot. Just $6,000 a year more than the current $20,000.

There is a good chance you haven’t heard about this proposed pay increase because there was no mention of it when the county chair, the budget officer, and the administrator presented the proposed 2025 budget to the press and the public on November 1.

It’s probably not that they were trying to pull a fast one and slide the pay raise through without anyone knowing. It’s probably that they are too shy to brag about what great decisions they have been making on your behalf. Nobody likes a braggart.

Speaking of which, I have the greatest idea to generate winter tourism you have ever heard in your life! We take some Occupancy Tax money, not much, maybe $1.5 million, in cash and divide it into piles of $50,000. Then on Friday and Saturday nights through 12 weekends of winter load one of the piles of $50,000 into a trolley bus open all the windows, and drive up and down Canada Street in Lake George until all the money has blown out and hordes of tourists joyfully collect the booty! Not a bad idea, right? And look, I don’t want anything from this, just to help tourism. In fact, I’ll volunteer to load and drive the bus myself, FOR FREE! No need to thank me, I’m here to serve!

(Note: it is completely unnecessary to do the math on this proposal. I checked it myself. It works.)