{"id":2452575,"date":"2019-12-25T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=318249"},"modified":"2019-12-25T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-25T12:00:00","slug":"village-voices-rhonda-coxon-snowmass-town-clerk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/village-voices-rhonda-coxon-snowmass-town-clerk\/","title":{"rendered":"Village Voices: Rhonda Coxon, Snowmass Town Clerk"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Rhonda Coxon, Snowmass Town Clerk, stands outside of the Town Hall buidling on December 18, 2019. (Maddie Vincent\/Snowmass Sun)<\/strong>
Maddie Vincent\/Snowmass Sun<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

For over 25 years, Rhonda Coxon has worked for the town of Snowmass Village. But for over a decade before she started as a clerk with town government, she oversaw reservations for the former Snowmass Resort Association.<\/p>\n

On a recent afternoon in Town Hall, the Snowmass Sun sat down with Coxon to learn more about her experiences in Snowmass and what\u2019s kept her in the village for so long:<\/p>\n

Snowmass Sun: So how long have you lived in Snowmass?<\/p>\n

Rhonda Coxon: I moved here in September of 1982 from Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n

SS: Is that where you grew up?<\/p>\n

RC: No, I\u2019m an army brat. I\u2019ve lived in Germany twice; I\u2019ve lived in Texas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Nebraska. I\u2019ve been around, but this is the longest place I\u2019ve ever lived in my life.<\/p>\n

SS: What made you want to come here?<\/p>\n

RC: The SRA, which was the Snowmass Resort Association. I had a friend who worked for them that I worked with in Westin hotels.<\/p>\n

I started working for Westin hotels when I was like 19 and then I went to airline travel school. \u2026 There are always a bunch of hotels that are hiring, so I got hired in Houston for reservations. I worked for the Westin Oaks and the Westin Galleria; it was two hotels at the end of a mall. One had 300-some rooms and another had 495 and I was the reservation manager for both hotels and I went through the whole Westin training program, so you work in every department of the hotel. A guy that was in catering came (to Snowmass Village) and said they were going to open up a new conference center. He asked me if I was interested and the people who were working at SRA at the time, I think it was the marketing and PR person, interviewed me and flew me out here. And after I visited I was like \u2018I think I need that, I think I want to get out of Houston.\u2019 So that\u2019s when I moved here.<\/p>\n

SS: How long were you working for SRA at the conference center?<\/p>\n

RC: Well actually, our office was on the mall. I worked there until \u201993, came in \u201982, and the conference center opened in \u201985. \u2026 It was just so different, it was a huge undertaking. There were like two people who worked in the res office and everything was written on cards and you called the hotel to find out if space was available. Well, by the time I left in 1993, we had three supervisors, 14 reservation agents, we did airline and hotel reservations, and everything was by computer. At that time my job got eliminated at SRA, I had three strong supervisors so they didn\u2019t need me and they were combining some groups. I was kind of devastated because I thought I\u2019d for sure still be there.<\/p>\n

I worked with the Silver Tree for a little while after I left SRA. \u2026 Then I just saw the job for the town and I was like \u2018OK, I\u2019m going to try something new and different, I really don\u2019t wanna be on the phone all day.\u2019 Then after I started working for the town they dissolved SRA, I want to say three or four years after, maybe 2001, and everything went to ski.com. So it all went away anyway.<\/p>\n

I guess everything works for a reason because where would I have gone? Another thing that\u2019s really funny, when Rose (Abello) started here at the tourism department, we had a storage room that had all of the SRA files in it, and because I\u2019m the clerk I had to figure out if there was anything we needed to keep and I got to go through all of those files again and my name was on stuff. It was like wow, this is really bizarre, so it all comes back every once in a while.<\/p>\n

SS: How has working for the town been different than what you were doing in the reservation world before? Have you found that some of the same skills transfer over?<\/p>\n

RC: Because we\u2019re the town, my clientele now is the constituents, so I want to make sure everyone is registered to vote, that they have all of the information they need for business and liquor licenses. So you still have your clients, you\u2019re just not on the phone constantly, and supervising that many people was quite stressful. I think I was in meetings more than I was at my desk, so I think this is a lot calmer, saner. And you know it\u2019s true, you would get people calling you in October wanting to know exactly what the weather was going to be like the day they checked in. \u2026 I mean after however many years of that from the time I was 19 to \u201993, I won\u2019t say my age, you just kind of say \u2018Oh my gosh,\u2019 and the people got more demanding as time went on and I think it was probably a real good time for me to find something else.<\/p>\n

And I absolutely love my job, I love being able to know everybody, I love that I\u2019m still involved in the restaurants with liquor licensing and training. I get to go out and see everybody, see all of the special events, I do all of the liquor licensing for the special events, and you\u2019re still serving a client it\u2019s just a different client, it\u2019s not the tourists. But I absolutely love dealing with tourists, too. If I see somebody standing in the hallway anywhere, I\u2019ll ask them, \u201cHow can I help you?\u201d<\/p>\n

But yeah, I love serving the people who work and live here. Where else can you get first hand of what\u2019s going to go on in the village if it\u2019s not in the council chambers sitting up there for every meeting? I can\u2019t tell you how many councils I\u2019ve worked with and they\u2019re kind of like friends for life.<\/p>\n

SS: What do you think has kept you in Snowmass for so long, first in the reservation world and now with the town?<\/p>\n

RC: The people and the community.<\/p>\n

SS: What separates it from other places you\u2019ve lived?<\/p>\n

RC: Well, they were cities. Houston is huge, they used to have a sign on Westheimer and Gessner (roads) and it would just roll constantly and that\u2019s how many people were moving into the city. They would keep track of it and it was during the oil boom so it was just crazy, but up here was just a whole different breadth of life, getting in the outdoors. The first time I snow-shoed I thought I was going to die. I learned how to ski in jeans, and the people, some of the people I met when I first moved here I still know. And then I got really involved with the chapel, too, and I just fell into a great crowd of people.<\/p>\n

But I think just because it\u2019s small. I love the fact that you don\u2019t have a red light, I really like that. I was able to get housing, I\u2019ve never lived outside of Snowmass since I\u2019ve worked here. I just love it. And of course now, getting close to retirement age, I\u2019m like I need to find someplace even quieter, where\u2019s that cabin in the woods? But I think that\u2019s just age.<\/p>\n

SS: Do you have any goals as Town Clerk before you plan to retire?<\/p>\n

RC: I think one of the main goals is to keep our technology up and make sure everything the constituents need is available on the website. \u2026 My goal is just to keep the public informed. I make sure everything submitted at council gets up the next day so everyone can see, like all of the public comments and everything, and I just think it\u2019s important to keep people informed. Put all of the services out there that they need and I\u2019d still like them to come see me too. They are allowed to walk in the office any time they want, it\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n

A lot of things have changed. All of our sales tax and business licenses are computerized now, there\u2019s the marijuana license, first one, I never thought I\u2019d be here to see that, I mean that\u2019s how times change. It\u2019s just keeping up with the technology would be my goal and making sure everything is where people need it.<\/p>\n

With Base Village now there\u2019s so much more but it was beautiful before when it was just the mall, too. So yeah, there are a lot more people and a lot more buildings, but it\u2019s still the same little small town, which is really nice.<\/p>\n

And retirement? I would love to retire, but it\u2019s really not one of those places you can retire unless you own your house outright. But I\u2019ll be here for a while, and when I leave? I\u2019m not leaving forever. I\u2019ll always come back. Always.<\/p>\n

mvincent@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rhonda Coxon, Snowmass Town Clerk, stands outside of the Town Hall buidling on December 18, 2019. (Maddie Vincent\/Snowmass Sun)Maddie Vincent\/Snowmass Sun For over 25 years, Rhonda Coxon has worked for the town of Snowmass Village. But for over a decade before she started as a clerk with town government, she oversaw reservations for the former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 00:32:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2452575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}