Roger:
I am glad to hear that the merchants of Georgetown have decided to wake–up to the fiasco that the CHS has created out of the Loop RR. I would tell you to review Jim Poston’s site
[www.savethetrain.org]
as we have already asked all the questions you guys are now coming around to understand. Honestly I wish you well but in all candor you are wasting your time trying to work with the CHS. They have proven time and again that they are incompetent to manage the Loop property. Further, the CHS BOD has shown over many years their lack of oversight of the property and their own employees and most significantly has now orchestrated a basic breakdown in their fiduciary trust of state tax monies in regards to this operation.
Here is what I suggest your merchant group consider doing to make lemonade out of the CHS lemons. Petition the governor/legislature to have the Loop property and all Loop assets removed from the CHS control. I think you will now have a great case to present on why the CHS needs to stick to their museums and library functions and leave the Loop property to a new organization that has the best interests of Colorado railroad preservation and historical (C&S) recreation for the Loop. Not unlike what is happening to the Texas State RR I would suggest this be a group formed from the existing merchant/citizen base with directors from other industry organizations like the CRRM, D&S, Royal Gorge, Friends, C&S Historical Society etc. Now instead of sharing revenue with the CHS which ends up in Denver, the revenue would only have to be split two ways between the local entity and the operator. Everybody wins (except the CHS). I would suggest they get one board seat just so they can learn a lesson from all this. In a turn about is fair play you could even resurrect the IGA the CHS drafted in 2005 and substitute the new organization for the CHS.
I can’t think of a better way to turn the tables on the CHS who I am sure will scream bloody murder, but a surely fitting way to restore the Loop to control of the people. Roger, talk is cheap, let’s see this merchant group rally around a state backed and local grass roots take over plan for the Loop property and then reopen the process to select a competent operator for the railroad for next season. Doing anything less than a complete take over of the Loop from the CHS is IMHO just pissing in the wind.
Rod
