CAMDEN, Maine — On a warm Sunday, skiers made their way down one of Maine’s only municipally-owned ski areas.
The Camden Snow Bowl was founded in the 1930s, and decades later, retains its distinctly local character—along with the extra complication or blessing, depending who you ask—of being overseen by the town government.
"You’ve got 5,000 bosses," the mountain’s general manager, Holly Anderson, said Sunday. "They feel… they own this mountain, and rightly so."
For Anderson, who oversees daily operations at the Snow Bowl, answering to the town financially means finding away to stay within the roughly $1.1 million budget.
"We buy a lot of used things, just to be penny-wise. But it eventually catches up with you."
For many of the last five years, revenue has afforded the mountain a surplus, but not so this year, where expensive improvements have caused a deficit so far.
Still, despite the fiscal drag, Anderson says the benefit to the surrounding area should not be underestimated.
"We’re just really feeding the economy around us. And that’s how its been set-up," Anderson added.
With the extra financial considerations that come with a town-owned mountain, there is an equally abundant enthusiasm among employees that Camden Snow Bowl is owned by the people.
"A lot of other mountains, the money just goes into big corporations and other people’s pockets," Cody Kingsbury said, "[Here] it’s really cool to see the money that comes from the town be invested in the town."
As fellow employee Richelle Gagne, who arrived to the mountain at 4 a.m. to begin work, sees it: "It's different because we're actually doing it for the residents of Camden."