Thursday, July 7, 2016

Community survey nixes Killington slogan change

Rutland Herald
By Lola Duffort

STAFF WRITER | July 07,2016
KILLINGTON — “The Heart of the Green Mountains” won’t be going anywhere.

With a community survey showing overwhelming opposition to changing the town’s slogan, Select Board members opted not to take any action in favor of change at their Tuesday night meeting, Town Manager Deborah Schwartz said Wednesday.

Nearly 73 percent of the survey’s 106 respondents said they would rather keep the town’s current slogan. And though the survey, which was available online and in a paper format at the town office and welcome center, gave respondents the option to choose at least three options, many only endorsed the town’s current motto.

“Only one I want. The others have no community meaning. We are a community first — tourist destination after,” one respondent wrote in the survey’s comment section.

The survey gave respondents seven options: the town’s current slogan, five alternatives and the chance to suggest their own. Alternative slogans included “Discover More,” “Something for Everyone,” “Discover the Heart of the Green Mountains,” “Elevate Your Experience” and “Your Adventure Starts Here.”

A distant second to the town’s current slogan, with 26.4 percent of the vote, was “Your Adventure Starts Here.” One respondent even suggesting melding the two: “Heart of the Green Mountains — Your Adventure Starts Here.”

But in general, commenters argued that proposed changes substituted the Killington Ski Resort’s identity for the town’s.

“There is nothing wrong with the current slogan,” one respondent wrote. “The others are either too long, require an explanation or sound too touristy and trite. The town of Killington is more than the resort. We are in fact and in spirit ‘the Heart of the Green Mountains.’”

Schwartz and the town’s marketing department had pitched the new slogans in view of planned resurfacing work to the town’s three welcome signs.

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