ISSUE #52: KURA Attempts to Put Lipstick on Their Washington Lot Pig

This is how things work in autocracies, not in small communities in the US

PLEASE SEND YOUR INPUT ON KURA BOARD TO PARTICIPATE@KETCHUMIDAHO.ORG

Before we get to the KURA “survey,” there is a City Council meeting on Monday, 12/2, in which no public comment is permitted, but the Council plans to reappoint Casey Burke to KURA (Ketchum Urban Renewal Agency).

I don’t know Casey Burke. However, I know that KURA has no representative from Ketchum’s local business community. Which seems…wrong.

Isn’t KURA supposed to be fixing the urban blight that hurts their commercial viability? Isn’t it common sense for the KURA board to be run by local businesses? Two members are city council members!—how does that make sense?

This is a rare opportunity for the Ketchum City Council to put a local business owner on KURA. Please email the Council and ask them to do so.

THANKS

While You Are At It, Let Them Know What You Think About Their Survey

Did you get the survey? The one the City is sending around for KURA about the Washington Lot. If not, here is a link: surveymonkey.com/r/first-washington or visit ketchumura.org.

In my opinion, it is not worth filling out. It presents the choices you face dishonestly.

That being said, I bet most submitters will opt for Option A, as it is unfairly presented to look the best. If you don’t want them to rubber stamp Option A, claiming the community supported it, go into the survey and vote for Option B.

The Survey Options Are Dishonest

They leave out Option A’s $13mm parking impact to present it as the lower-cost option.¹ Option A changes the net supply/demand balance of parking in the Ketchum core by 107 spots. Using KURA’s lowest estimate for the cost of a spot, that amounts to over $13mm, which should be added back to the cost of Option A to get it apples-to-apples with what we will have if we choose Option B.

Both options have a similar net economic impact on Ketchum taxpayers.

Either they can’t do the math, or they are trying to manipulate us into validating an outcome that will happen regardless of the survey outcome.² Why do I say that?

In the end, even if KURA chooses Option B, the Troika said in the November 18th meeting that they won’t support it. Even if KURA does something totally out of character and defies the Troika (two of whom are KURA board members), it is irrelevant. The Troika controls the outcome, not KURA.³

KURA Tenants Won’t Have to Work in Ketchum

In the survey materials, KURA discloses that tenants will be required to work but do not have to work in Ketchum.⁴ That’s right. It’s not dedicated Ketchum workforce housing, yet it will sit smack dab in the middle of Ketchum and be paid for with tens of millions of dollars in Ketchum taxpayer resources.

Public Comments Are Suppressed

The materials do not include the public comments from the November 18th meeting. This seems…intentional. They have public comments from previous meetings, but not the one where people finally figured out what they were doing and filled the room to object to it. Selective information is part of the playbook that KURA’s executive director used to honcho Bluebird through the process.

KURA Board Does Not Represent The Business Community

The Mayor handpicked the KURA board to ensure they would build another housing project on that lot. KURA is supposed to be an independent agency but does not behave independently. Two City Council members sit on KURA, along with a Chair who has a social mission that defies economics and, in my opinion, common sense. As noted above, when presented with the option to appoint a member of the business community to KURA, the Mayor refuses to.⁵ Then there is the commissioner committed to the project, who does not live in Ketchum but has dedicated himself to Aspenizing it for those of us who do live in Ketchum by jamming this project down our throats.

Guess who runs KURA. The same person who ran the Bluebird project for the Mayor.

What is noticeably absent from the KURA board are local business people. The ones operating in the area where KURA is supposed to be improving. Why does the Mayor exclude them from this agency? Could it be because he knows they would not go along with his plan to reduce the viability of their businesses?

KURA is Out of Its Brief

An urban renewal agency is supposed to mitigate urban blight. It borrows money to make infrastructure investments that will attract commercial investment in the commercial core. It pays that money back with the incremental property taxes that arise from cleaning up a depressed downtown.

KURA does little of that. The majority of its resources are dedicated to a single project that is not commercial and will not increase the commercial vibrancy of the commercial core. It is an apartment building. An under-parked one that will crowd out parking for commercial activity. While the lot pays no property taxes today, neither will it after this development—the way the costs are kept down is to do it in a tax-exempt structure. Where is the tax increment?

The Process is a Sham

KURA and the Council had a joint meeting on November 18, ostensibly to hear the business community's concerns. After three hours of presentations and public comment in opposition, the Troika of Bradshaw/Breen/Hamilton, who controls Ketchum, said nothing had changed their minds, and they were sticking with their original plan.

I could have told you that before the meeting.

The Survey is A Sham

And now KURA is out with a “survey.” Take a look at it. Do you think it enables people to provide their input reasonably? Of course, it does not. It railroads the respondent into accepting KURA’s pre-determined outcome. This is not a statistically valid survey. It’s not limited to Ketchum taxpayers—anyone can fill it in. It is lipstick for the pig.

The Outcome is Pre-Determined

From my observation, the Mayor was always going to have his housing project on the Washington Lot. He pushed KURA into buying the property, enabling him to tap KURA’s borrowing powers to build the new City Hall (off the regular public budget) and to hand over the old one to his preferred developer to build Bluebird— without having to come to the voters for a referendum.

It was the kind of transaction you would expect from someone who worked on Wall Street.

The Game Is Rigged

This is how Ketchum is run. The Mayor picks the members of every commission. Often, there is one person for show on the commission who tries to represent the community but is outvoted by the others.⁶ This is sham legitimacy.

They are not transparent about it. They hold public meetings and conduct biased surveys so they can put lipstick on their pigs, and then we get Bluebirds.⁷ These housing projects are not, as they promised, for the essential workers of Ketchum. We know this because they recruit homeless people from Twin Falls.⁸ They lied. And they plan to build four more of them.⁹

The only people I see with clean hands in this shameful exploitation of Ketchum are the two new Council Members, who tried to stop it, and the City Planning department, which worked hard to devise alternatives for the business community.

Tell it To A Judge

What can the community do now? KBAC is hosting a meeting to discuss this project on December 3, 4:30-6:30 at The Argyros. All are invited.

Based on their history, I believe the Troika will not be moved on this project, so letters, comments, and appeals are useless.¹⁰

I believe the only thing that can stop this project is legal action. It might be killable if this project can be delayed until a new City Council is sworn in on January 5, 2026.

One local lawyer has told me that the way KURA was initially set up wasn’t legal. The transaction in which they bought the lot might not have been legal. The structure they are using to develop the lot may not be legal. KURA is causing measurable harm to the very business community KURA is supposed to be supporting.

There could be a good case here.

“All Politics Is Local”

As I have explained in previous issues, the result of everything the Troika has done in the past seven years of its rule is to replace locals with tourists and build housing for the tourism industry at taxpayer expense to depress wages. Whether they admit this is their plan or not, Aspenization is the result.¹¹

What does it say about a Mayor when his community wants to sue him? A community that has twice tried to recall him. A Mayor who was returned to office with 65% of the community voting AGAINST him. He is not a legitimate representative of the community, and he does not behave like he is accountable for their well-being.¹² Thus, the subtitle at the top of this issue.

1. 65 spots destroyed. 66 units added with only 44 spots. Average cars per unit in Ketchum are 1.3 (we counted). To be “fully-parked” this project requires 86 spots. It will put approximately 42 incremental cars looking for parking in the Ketchum core. 65 + 42 = 107 parking spots. Using KURA’s lowest estimate for the cost of a parking spot of $124k, That’s $13.268mm in parking cost that should be ascribed to option A.

2. Actually, it could be both. Based on my observations over the past five years, I would say it is both. Except for the Mayor. He could not have had his job at JP Morgan if he couldn’t do this math. So, for him, it’s not a math issue.

3. Gary Lipton has reminded us of that in several meetings.

4. It’s right there in their materials. The ones that depict the lot as empty (see photo at top). They really are shameless calling this workforce housing for Ketchum. I don’t think we can trust them on that, given the lies that were used to justify Bluebird. As I have documented in a previous post, there are no essential Ketchum workers being tenanted there, and many of the tenants will not work in Ketchum, or work full-time anywhere.

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e00b1604a5d349e6b5c139551ac5df6b

5. The Ketchum Business Advisory Council has asked for this to both the Mayor and KURA’s executive director Frick. To no avail.

6. On KURA that is the Vice Chair, TDJ.

7. Sometimes they don’t even bother with these facades of public engagement. As far as the public record, Ketchum’s Sustainability Action Committee hasn’t existed in four years. Yet I am told that it meets regularly. To do what?

8. “Homeless” is not my word choice, it is the word chosen by the agency BCHA used to run Instagram ads recruiting unhoused people from Twin to live in Bluebird.

9. I hear through the grapevine that Ms. Breen is upset with me for having a disrespectful approach to dialog. I would be happy to be more respectful if she, Ms. Hamilton and the Mayor ran the City in a transparent and inclusive manner. Being respectful in speech but being disrespectful in actions is a disconnect. In previous issues I have laid out the path toward good governance. Basic things like having public comment in City Council meetings would be a good start.

She might review her original campaign promises and let us know how she has delivered for the community. She could review the Bluebird process through the City Council and P&Z process and ask herself if the public was fully informed on the project or if they were misled. She could explain why the City Council chose to take the Main Street Project and not the Serenade project from ITD, or why the WTF was adopted without examining alternatives. She could read the 2014 Comprehensive Plan and give herself a score for how well she contributed to achieving the goals of that plan.

One thing I find fascinating—while they object to my rhetoric, no member of the Troika has ever offered an analysis of anything showing that my analysis of something was wrong.

10. It has never worked in any other situation with the Troika.

11. Ms. Breen insists to her constituents that she is not part of a Troika and applies her own judgement to every situation. And yet, has she ever acted independently? She also has said I have “insinuated” she is corrupt. For the record, I do not believe she is corrupt. Judging her by her actions rather than her words, she is effecting the Aspenization program about as well as anyone in her position could.

When people complained about Bluebird impact on parking, she said that you have to walk a long ways from your parking spot at Target to the store in Twin Falls. Why does she think that is a reasonable comparison for Ketchum?

12. Here’s one of the many examples. While he is busy getting taxpayers to subsidize housing in Ketchum for Sun Valley Co workers, our Post Office is coming apart at the seams. Literally. Ms Breen ran for office promising to fix the Post Office. In 2015. Nine years ago. Did she live up to her committment?