Vermont Governor Phil Scott Pays a Visit to The Beast
On Friday, June 5th, The Beast welcomed a special guest to our K-1 Lodge. Phil Scott, the 82nd Governor of Vermont, held a meeting with his cabinet right here in Killington as part of the Capital for a Day initiative. Governor Scott first launched this initiative in 2018, with the idea of bringing government to the people instead of people to the government—instead of everyone needing to visit our state capital of Montpelier, the goal is to deliver the conversation right to the places we call home. As part of this program, Governor Scott and his cabinet members spend a day in each of Vermont’s 14 counties, with this particular trip covering a number of spots in our own Rutland County.
Though Governor Scott was only slated to visit for about 90 minutes, plenty was packed in to his visit. Mike Solimano, president & CEO of Killington Resort and Pico Mountain, delivered a 25-minute presentation on our growth and how our investments in infrastructure and guest experience have been paying dividends for not just the resort, but the Town of Killington and Rutland County as a whole. As we covered recently on our Insider Blog, he had plenty of capital improvements to talk about!
Responses from cabinet members after the presentation were very positive, as the job of a politician can involve a fair bit of listening to more negative feedback. It’s not everywhere you find independently run resorts that are also thriving as much as Killington & Pico have been. We’ve been happy to work alongside the state of Vermont on events that bring a lot of tourist activity like the Stifel Killington Cup, which Governor Scott himself visited the most recent time we hosted in 2024.
After hearing from us, Governor’s Scott’s cabinet members talked about the remaining places they’d be visiting around Rutland County for the rest of the day. Labor Commissioner Kendal Smith, Liquor and Lottery Commissioner Wendy Knight, and Deputy Commissioner of Insurance Mary Block all hung around in K-1 for the rest of the morning for a Hospitality Workforce Roundtable that featured members of our own hospitality staff. Different officials then made their way to over a dozen separate locations, from Brandon to Fair Haven and plenty of places in between, including the MINT Makerspace and Paramount Theatre in Rutland and Vermont Mobile Spirits at Pico Mountain. A full list of each of their stops can be found in the Vermont Business Magazine.
Before Governor Scott continued on with his day, he closed out his time at Killington with quite the unique experience: a quick pit stop behind the controls of one of our grooming tractors. Guided by our own Dave Wright, Killington/Pico’s Grooming Manager, the governor got to take a few laps up and down the still significant snow patch at the bottom of Superstar. Perhaps leaning on his longtime career as a stock car racer, Governor Scott seemed to quickly get the hang of things. And where else can you still be driving a grooming tractor over snow in early June?
A big thank you to our own staff as well as the Vermont government officials who helped put this visit together! It’s truly not every day that a sitting governor comes to visit, especially in a town the size of Killington, but we were happy to host the first stop on the governor’s Rutland County trip.