ISSUE #47: Ketchum Council Has Outsourced Everything-- Will Now Outsource Locals

They have managed to get rid of everything a City Council is supposed to work on--what are they gonna do with the extra time? Get rid of you!

If you are one of the people who voted for Fire Consolidation, you are an idiot.¹

You are an idiot for thinking that you actually voted for Fire Consolidation. You did not. You voted to get the Ketchum City Council out of the fire department business as one of the last steps to freeing up their agenda to eliminate what locals remain in Ketchum.

I know this sounds provocative and melodramatic. But bear with me and comment at the bottom where I am off-base.

They Have Outsourced Everything Except Development

The City of Ketchum no longer performs most of the normal functions of a city.

• Police? Outsourced to Blaine County Sheriff’s Office

• Fire Department? You just kissed goodbye to the Ketchum Fire Department. It is now a separate district out of the control of the Ketchum Council

• Public Housing? Handed over to Blaine County Housing Authority (they are the people that turn down Ketchum locals for Bluebird)

• Public Transportation? Mountain Rides

• Short-term rental safety? That went with the fire department

• Sustainability? They gave this to the Blaine County Sustainability Commission

• Dog Pound? Mountain Humane

• Building inspection? Outsourced to a Boise firm

• Roads? Have they ever prioritized roads? The roads department is the worst-paid group of city employees

• Water/Sewer? They split this with Sun Valley

What’s left? [scratches his head]. Oh—we still do our own city beautification. We want Main Street to look nice for the tourists.²

What is left for them to do?

Spend your money: Once a year, they jam through a budget that has nothing to do with the Comp Plan to hand over money to all the outsourced service providers. There is no accountability for performance in any of those contracts—the costs just keep going up every year.

Raise your taxes: Once a year, they work to raise your taxes. You will get another LOT tax increase referendum in May from them.

Turn Ketchum into a Hotel: they are doing this with actual hotels. One is finally being built in the infamous hole in the ground. The Troika of Bradshaw/Breen/Hamilton gave zoning waivers for a six-story Marriott to be built across the street. That will put a hotel on each corner of River and Main.

But hotels are not enough. Every home in Ketchum could be a hotel room. The have set the zoning so that if you take down a single-family home in the core, you can’t replace it with a single-family home. You have to build at least two units. That way, they make it very profitable for a developer to eliminate a local family and replace them with two Airbnb units. I challenge you to name a single situation in the Ketchum core where a single-family home demolition resulted in new permanent residents.

And they are making it easier to build “additional dwelling units” or ADUs, which are nice little Airbnb units in your backyard.³

They have even blessed SVED to work with Airbnb to shift locals out of town for the World Cup to accommodate more tourists.⁴

Build Dorms to Depress Wages for the Tourism Industry: Do you know a local essential worker who has qualified for Bluebird? The odds are you know someone who applied and was rejected. How many Sun Valley Co. employees will be housed in Bluebird? How many people in Bluebird work full-time in Ketchum? How many people in Bluebird have lived in Ketchum at any point in their lives?

The Mayor sold this with lies and plans to build three four times as many more Bluebird units—all on some of the most valuable land in Idaho.⁵

Bring in World Class Amenities: like the luxury chain stores in Aspen, Jackson and Park City. National mall retailers Faherty and Johnny Was will open on the location of Bradshaw campaign HQ, where local retailer Formula Sports once stood.

Outsource the remaining locals: read on….

What Do They Do With All Their Free Time? Replace Locals With Tourists

I know this sounds provocative and melodramatic. Read along and then comment below where I am wrong.

When interpolating the intent of a white-collar criminal enterprise, what do the prosecutors focus on? How the subject spends their time, and what they do with the money.

I come up with my assertion that they are in the locals eradication business when I look at the Ketchum City Council through that lens.

Look at the Council agendas and go to the Council meetings (it’s kind of fun, but usually I am a bit lonely in the almost empty room.). You can find the agendas here. Do your own analysis and tell me what their priorties are, not by what they say, but by what they spend their time on.

Then, look at how the money flows in Ketchum. There are sixteen separate government and quasi-government entities that have input on how Ketchum tax money is spent. Only one has any semblance of accountability to the taxpayer (the City Council—we can vote them out). The Mayor controls the majority of the rest. The bureaucracy is mind-boggling for a town of this size and results in a veneer of inclusivity while maximizing non-transparency. IMO, it is a work of genius.

But almost nothing in the bureaucracy is designed to improve the quality of life for the residents.

After the Council is done handing out money to the outsourced providers of health and safety, the majority of the remainder goes to tourism development and subsidization. This is also the fastest-growing area of spending. And tax increases.

They Are Aspenizing Ketchum

Yes, I am still being provocative and melodramatic with that Aspenization word. Once again, tell me where I am wrong. Here are the results of their actions:

• More hotel rooms (including one owned by Aspen).

• Fewer long-term rentals

• More Airbnbs

• Tax on locals to promote tourism

• Fewer parking spots in retail core

• More low-income housing largely occupied by underpaid tourism industry workers (and retirees)

• Doubling the number of chain stores

It’s working! The average price of real estate in Ketchum is now $1,300 per square foot.⁶ That’s about 3x what it was five years ago.⁷ In Aspen, the PPSF has not quite doubled in that time frame.⁸ The Troika are doing a good job at closing the gap!

But how does that benefit a local who wants to build a life in Ketchum? They can’t afford a market-rate home, and they make too much for the tourist-industry-wage-depressing housing that is the only thing the Ketchum Council wants to build.

You could not come up with a better method for getting rid of the locals.⁹

What is Their Motivation?

Greed. Locals are low-profit. Tourists are high-profit.

The goal of the City Council is to maximize revenues. How do we know that is their goal? Because every action they take raises revenues. Have you ever seen them eliminate a fee, reduce a tax, or not take the maximum possible tax increase?¹⁰

And also, because they said so. From Amanda Breen’s official biography:

Amanda is also committed to providing strong public safety services to Ketchum residents, including pursuing consolidation of the North Valley fire departments, and to maximizing revenues coming in to the city so that Ketchum can continue to provide a variety of world-class amenities and services to its residents and visitors.¹¹

When you work through that sentence, the only part that holds true is the revenue maximization part. Strong public safety? While she has been in office the Ketchum crime rate has almost doubled.¹² Fire consolidation on the North Valley? She just got you to vote for consolidation as far south as you can get in Blaine County—with West Magic. Hailey, Sun Valley, Bellevue will have no part in this. Even Smiley Creek hasn’t voted to consolidate with the new district. Fire consolidation was sold on misinformation.

Where are the “[W]orld-class amenities and services?” You won’t be able to park in Ketchum once the Council has eliminated the Washington Lot along with the 32 spots along and off Main Street. Our Post Office barely functions, despite her promise to fix it—in 2015. Is sprucing up Town Square is a world-class amenity? Is Bluebird an amenity when it recruits tenants from the homeless population of Twin Falls while essential workers are squeezed out of their Ketchum housing? Mr. Cordovano wants more Christmas lights on Main Street. Is that an amenity?

How does her family make money? How does Ms. Hamilton? Mr. Cordovano? Real estate development. Closing the price per square foot with Aspen directly benefits them. How the Mayor benefits from his Aspenization program remains a mystery, but his family bears no price for it—they live in Hailey. Only Mr. Hutchinson seems to be fully committed to locals in Ketchum, yet even he is flirting with the locals extermination program (e.g., he supports more Bluebirds).

Please Tell Me Where This Analysis Is Wrong

1. If you want to object to this, make a comment on your rationale for voting “yes”.

2. Apparently, it is not nice enough. Mr. Cordovano was adamant in the last Council Meeting that Ketchum needs more Christmas lights.

3. I am thinking about building one. I can move into it during high demand events like the World Cup or Allen & Co and rent out my house. Because that is the way you build a community—🤮

4. Watch the video of the 11/4/24 Council Meeting. Apparently there are too many locals in Warm Springs and not enough rooms for the World Cup groupies.

5. per his official bio, the only priority he lists is more housing. https://www.ketchumidaho.org/citycouncil/page/mayor-city-council-members

6. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Ketchum_ID/overview

7. source: RedFin

8. source: RedFin

9. At least, I couldn’t. But maybe I’m just not smart enough? Do you have a better way to do it? If so, the Mayor might be interested in hearing from you.

10. I exaggerate here, but only a little. For many fees, like water, they are legally required to hold a referendum to raise the fee above a certain percentage. So they always raise the fee 1/10th of 1% below that maximum.

11. https://www.ketchumidaho.org/citycouncil/page/amanda-breen. The poor grammar is her own (Stanford lawyer).

12. https://sunvalleyeconomy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Profiles-booklet-2.pdf. I am not making this stuff up.