ISSUE #15: COMMUNITIES ARE PEOPLE, NOT BUILDINGS

The Troika's approach to the Comp Plan misses this fundamental principle

May 15, 2024

RIP Ketchum

Ketchum, as a community, is dying. Many people think it is on its last gasp. Over a 20-year period, the average age of a resident has moved from the 40s to the 50s. The middle class has been squeezed out. Young people striving to make a life here have been squeezed out. We lack the teachers, the medical people, and the first responders that make a town more than a tourist destination. Most fundamentally, we lack families with children—they are the future of any community. This distresses me, as it seems like it has been done on purpose.

The Troika1 and the IME pose the issue as an affordable housing issue. The destruction of a housing base for the people who make a town a community is the means of our death, but saying that low-income housing projects in the middle of the commercial district will magically “fix” Ketchum is not only flawed logic—it is a lie. It is the BIG LIE.

The Troika’s commitment of our scarce tax resources to low-income housing for underpaid, transient tourism-industry employees is not the path to a vibrant future. It guarantees the continued death of Ketchum.

Get The Basic Premise Right, or Fail

We need to start by defining the kind of community we want and then work backward to implement the things we need to achieve that vision. Our Comprehensive Plan2 process does not do this. It focuses on things, not people.

For example, what does a demographically balanced community look like? An average age of 51 and rising is clearly not balanced. We should be examining ways to bring that down into the 30s. That means families with kids. If the goal is to bring families to Ketchum, why are all of Ketchum’s housing resources going to tiny housing units for transient underpaid tourism industry workers? Where are the plans for daycare? Where is the coordination with the school system and the entire ecosystem around raising kids? None of that is in this planning process.

This is the most basic building block of a community. If we ignore it, as we are doing, nothing else really matters. The community will die. Ketchum might as well give up as a town and hand itself over to Sun Valley for its plans to optimize the tourism experience.

I have been consistently critical of the Troika, because they seem to have their heads up their tukases about what makes a community a community. They have been all in on tourism. Almost every action taken by the Troika makes it easier for the tourism industry and harder for Ketchum to remain a community. In their six years of iron control, the Troika has overseen the wholesale replacement of locals with tourists. Why is that? Are their personal economic interests tied to killing off Ketchum to make it more like Sun Valley? What is their motivation?

The Mayor speaks of “vibrancy” as a key objective. How does he define that? Judging by his leadership, it means putting up low-income housing projects for retirees and underpaid tourism industry workers within walking distance of their low-paying jobs at taxpayer expense. Is that “vibrancy?”

Vibrancy is more than just tourism industry activity; it is local family activity. It is people raising their children in Ketchum, and those children learning how to work in their community and feeling they have a future here where they can raise their own families.

Make an Expensive Mistake. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

We have never gotten an accounting of what our resources accomplished with Northwood Place, aka Bluebird 0. Northwood Place is the model for Bluebird 1, built by the same team using the same financing methodology. Is it workforce housing? If you think it is full of Ketchum workers, I have a parking spot on Main Street to sell you. What is the City hiding? Why won’t they report on whether Northwood Place achieved its promised outcomes? Maybe because it didn’t. And now they are repeating the same mistake, but on an even larger scale.

Bluebird 1 is now accepting tenant applications.3 Check out the website in the footnote.

Does anyone think Bluebird 1 will make Ketchum a better community? If so, please make the argument in the comments section.

If you assert it is vital housing for teachers, healthcare workers, and first responders, as the Mayor did, let me know if you are willing to put money behind that conviction because I will take that bet all day. If you think it is for families, I will give you double odds. Even the developer said that was not its purpose. Over the next five years, my prediction is that it will be filled with long-term retirees and transient low-paid tourism industry workers.

The City is preparing for yet another Bluebird on the most valuable piece of underdeveloped property we own: Lift Tower Lodge (LTL). I call this Bluebird 3.4 The City values this land at $7 million. The City applied for HUD money to develop LTL from 13 units to over 50 units. Like Bluebird 1, the way they plan to finance it means that it cannot, by law, be housing for essential workers. It won’t have a work requirement at all. It can’t—by law. It will be an ideal location for a retiree on a social security check looking for a subsidized ski condo. You can walk to the ski lifts there.

The definition of insanity: repeating the same behavior hoping for a different outcome. Given that the Troika isn’t insane, they must be looking for this particular outcome on purpose. The question is, why? How do they benefit from this, because the community surely doesn’t.

What is So Bad About the Council That the Council Has to Get Money out of the Hands of the…the Council?!?

To ensure that the next City Council cannot stop Bluebird 3, the Troika has empowered their Housing Strategist to immediately transfer any HUD money out of the City’s coffers to BCHA. Oh, the Executive Director of BCHA is the very same person as the Housing Strategist. How does that work?

This is a similar technique the Troika used to get the money going to Bluebird 2 out of the public's control. Even the Executive Director of KURA, the Bluebird 2 agency, used to be the City Planner— at the same time.

This is terrible governance, and it is done with the express purpose of taking control away from the public. That sounds like an extreme statement, but it is not an opinion. It is what the BCHA Executive Director (or is she the Housing Strategist?) wrote in her HUD application. 5 It’s there on the last page. Oh, wait. You aren’t allowed to read that anymore. Consistent with the Mayor’s claim of transparency, they took it off the Project Ketchum website. But the Troika approved this application—they are all for getting the money out of the hands of the next City Council.

Why do elected officials not trust the electorate once they get elected?

The Troika Needs to Go if We Have Any Chance at a Future

Some people say it is too late for Ketchum. That Ketchum is a place that is forever out of reach for teachers and doctors with kids. Let them live in Hailey, or Bellevue, or Fairfield, or Shoshone. Give up on revitalizing Ketchum as a community.

If we accept that as our future, we will certainly get it. The Troika is hard at work making that a reality. They just approved expanding the Lease to Locals program to use Ketchum taxpayer money to pay for non-Ketchum workers to live outside of Ketchum. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. Yes, the Troika lied to you about how they are using the 0.5% for Housing money they tricked you into voting for. It’s not dedicated to housing Ketchum workers.

And they just got back from their annual trip to other tourist cities to see how they can make Ketchum more like those places.

If we want to live in those places, we would move there. Yet, we are here. Because Ketchum isn’t dead yet. I believe we can make Ketchum a community we want it to be, not the Disneyland that the Troika wants.

It will take a lot of work to undo what the Troika has done, but I think it is not too late. I despair that we will not make any progress until they are voted out of office in 18 months. In the next election, we need to make community our #1 priority and elect people who will lead us in rebuilding our community.

Or else, you might be reading this obituary in the IME after the next election6:

Obituary: City of Ketchum (1880-2025)

The City of Ketchum, once a vibrant community and beloved home to generations of locals, has passed away at the ripe old age of 145. The cause of death was intentional murder, orchestrated by the nefarious trio known as “The Troika.”

Ketchum was born in 1880 as a frontier town with a spirit of independence and rugged individuality. After periods of mining and sheep shipping, it came into its own as a thriving hub for outdoor adventure, arts, and culture. Ketchum's downtown was the beating heart - a mix of retail shops, art galleries, and affordable restaurants frequented by locals and visitors alike.

But in the new millennium, dark forces were at work. The Troika, composed of exploiters who discreetly profited from Ketchum's real estate development and tourism industries, enacted their devious plan. In cahoots with the slavish Ketchum Urban Renewal Authority, they eliminated downtown parking and replaced it with massive block-long low-income housing projects for transient underpaid tourism workers.

With a callous disregard for the community, they opened the floodgates to short-term rentals like AirBnB and VRBO that turned workforce housing into soulless investment properties.

First to perish were Ketchum's young people, whose dreams of building a future in their hometown were crushed under the weight of ever-rising housing costs. Next went the teachers, firefighters, and nurses - the very "lifeblood" of the community, according to Ketchum's mayor, who lost their homes to companies like AirBnB and Natural Retreats.

With its heart and soul eviscerated, all that remained of Ketchum was a picturesque facade for visitors to admire through the lenses of their iPhones. The Troika permanently rules now, re-elected term after term by the impoverished workers who have no choice but to trade their votes for meager housing allowances.

While the authentic Ketchum is no more, the corporatized photogenic version thrives on taxpayer-funded Visit Sun Valley’s social media. Locals can at least take solace in the fact that their beloved hometown is Instagrammable, even if its existence has become a terrible parody.

In lieu of flowers, mourners are asked to make donations to the Hunger Coalition, whose services are in desperate demand from the underpaid tourism industry workers imported to replace the locals by bottom-line-focused corporations.