Telluride, Mountain Village Mayors Resign Over Controversial 51% Resort Offer

Both the Telluride Mayor Pro Tem Meehan Fee and Mountain Village Mayor Marti Prohaska stepped down amid fallout from a signed Offer to Purchase that listed them as controllers for a $127.5 million bid to acquire 51 percent of Telluride Ski Resort. The offer, dated Dec. 29, 2025, and a related Exhibit B bear the signatures of Meehan Fee and Marti Prohaska, and town leaders have opened inquiries into whether written commitments were made on behalf of their governments without council approval.

Prohaska and Fee traveled to meet resort owner Chuck Horning in Newport Beach, California, in late December 2025 and spent three days working with Horning and his representatives on the proposed deal. The plan discussed keeping Horning as board chair while organizing investors into a new board to make financial and structural decisions for the ski area. The resort bid was tied to an entity identified in the documents as the Telluride Ski Resort Fund.

The trip and the offer came as the 72-member Telluride Professional Ski Patrol Association voted to strike on Dec. 27, prompting a 13-day resort shutdown that heavily damaged the local economy. The closure left nearly 15,000 resort workers without pay and drove an 8 percent drop in bookings in Telluride, underscoring how tightly local livelihoods and municipal finances are tied to Telski operations and winter-season stability.

Both town councils moved quickly. Telluride’s council asked Meehan Fee to step down Jan. 20 and authorized the town attorney to hire an unbiased third-party investigator into the meetings and the offer. Mountain Village’s council announced its own probe and placed Town Manager Paul Wisor on paid administrative leave after an executive-session recording surfaced in which Wisor allegedly said he knew about the California trip and that he connected the women with potential investors.

Mountain Village’s public statement warned that “In the course of these discussions (with Horning), certain written commitments appear to have been made. No other member of the Mountain Village Town Council participated in or were aware of these discussions as they occurred. Whatever one’s view of her actions, we have no doubt they were motivated by a sincere desire to advance the long-term health and future of our region.” Scott Pearson, Mountain Village Mayor Pro Tem, said Prohaska “served ‘with a genuine love for this community.’ ” Marti Prohaska, who resigned Jan. 14, wrote that she “will stand in truth that our actions came from our deep love and commitment for the Telluride and Mountain Village communities.” Meehan Fee resigned from the Telluride council by early February after being placed on administrative leave.

Key questions remain: the full text of the Offer to Purchase and Exhibit B, the exact nature of the alleged written commitments, and whether town processes or public hearings were bypassed. Investigations will examine potential conflicts of interest and any legal or ethical breaches tied to elected officials signing deal documents.

For residents and seasonal businesses, the immediate concern is stability: who will lead town decisions, how the investigation will affect resort governance, and what this means for the rest of winter and the upcoming spring season. Watch for council meeting updates, the release of the full offer documents, and findings from the third-party reviews to learn how municipal authority and resort ownership will be resolved.