ISSUE #8a: Ketchum's Corporate Welfare Program (Part I)
This is Part I, because the giveaway program is so large it requires multiple parts...
Did I touch a nerve? The Ketchum Sun has over 330 subscribers in less than three weeks.
Amanda Breen—We Need You!
In the last Council meeting, Tripp’s proposal for a development pause in the core while we rewrite the zoning code was killed by a 3:2 vote. While the Mayor objected to it because investors would not like it, Ms. Breen’s only substantive objective was that it was proposed as an emergency ordinance. She expressed a great deal of sympathy for what Tripp was proposing.
I hope that Tripp will bring back this proposal as an interim ordinance at the next Council meeting. That will give Ms. Breen the opportunity to advocate for good governance and her constituents.
What can you do? Email Ms. Breen at abreen@ketchumidaho.org and let her know what you think she can do for Ketchum.
Corporate Welfare From the Ketchum Taxpayer
In the comments section of the Mountain Express, Jacob Yourman stated that Sun Valley Co is the font of economic activity in Wood River Valley. Someone posting as Badger says that isn’t true anymore. Clearly, SVC is a major economic player. The City of Sun Valley is essentially a company town, and SVC has a large impact on Ketchum, where its main ski mountain is located. One of the stated uses of the LOT tax by Visit Sun Valley is to attract more tourists in the winter to enjoy what SVC has to offer.
In my analysis, SVC gives to the local economy on the one hand and takes from the locals on the other.
SVC is An Example of How Companies Dump Their Employee Housing on Taxpayers
We would like to give credit to Sun Valley Co. for housing its employees. And it does house some of them in its dorms. One of the options is four people in a bunk room at $580 each per month. That’s $2,360 a month to SVC for one bedroom. There are shared bath and kitchen facilities. (I wonder if they make a profit on this?) They offer meals at $3 per, which seems like an incredible bargain.
But what if you can’t get a bunk? Sun Valley Co encourages its employees to find housing on the taxpayer dime. They have a whole web page dedicated to this on their employee website. At a public meeting, the Ketchum Housing Director revealed that at least one Sun Valley Co employee is housing in the Lease to Locals program.
Isn’t this corporate welfare?
As I wrote in Issue #5, I believe scarce taxpayer resources (money, land, and character) should be prioritized to housing essential workers like teachers, first responders, and healthcare workers, not underpaid workers for big companies. I realize not everyone agrees with me on this, but I’m not hearing many alternatives. At present, non-profits like ARCH and WRCHT are working to provide this kind of housing in partnership with BCSD, St Luke’s, etc.—not the City of Ketchum or BCHA (are they the same thing?).
If you have a different way to prioritize the allocation of taxpayer resources, please share it! It is probably better than mine.
It’s Not Just Housing—They Even Get Our Water
SVC has mastered the art of extracting resources from Ketchum locals. They even get our water. Our water supply is taken from the aquifer. Then we do whatever we do with it; then it goes to the Water Treatment Facility (the WTF—I couldn’t resist). And then the treated water goes into the Big Wood.
Except that not all of it does. Sun Valley Co. takes treated water out for golf course irrigation. I am all for them using brown water rather than tapping the aquifer or Trail Creek. However, the taxpayers are paying to treat that water. I asked how much they reimburse us for that and got two different answers. One (from a guy at the WTF) was “nothing.” The other (from someone at City Hall) was “something.” Not very informative. The right answer would be—” a lot.” A lot to divert water that we could use to increase the health of our public river rather than to improve the hue of a private golf course.
But wait, there’s more…
Sun Valley Co not only benefits from, but helps determine how Ketchum LOT taxes are spent. ( More on this particular form of corporate welfare in Part II on Friday.).
How is it beneficial to Ketchum taxpayers to subsidize the cost of operating Sun Valley Co? Maybe someone at SVC will read this and share the answer with the group.
Of course, it isn’t just Ketchum taxpayers who are subsidizing SVC. All WRV residents do this through the LOT. And in Sun Valley itself, it looks like the local taxpayers will pay for a roundabout at the resort's entrance at no charge to SVC.
It is terrible governance for a corporation to determine how taxpayer money is spent. But no one in any of the WRV city halls seems to have a problem with that.
But I shouldn’t pick on just SVC…
The City of Ketchum Is In On It
In a way, you can’t blame a company for taking advantage of all its available resources. But you can blame your government for handing them money and not requiring a quid pro quo.
And I do. I do blame our government for this. I blame our Mayor and our City Council for being complicit in this bad governance. The Ketchum City Council keeps handing over taxpayer resources to for-profit entities. It is such a regular occurrence that you have to ask yourself whose interests they represent.
There are multiple examples…
Handouts to PEG for the Marriott—despite massive public opposition
The previous Ketchum City Council unanimously approved the zoning waivers sought by PEG Group to develop the six-story Marriott slated for the entrance to Ketchum. What did they get in return? Nothing. Because this hotel is in the tourist zone, PEG only has to build workforce accommodation for 23% of its employees. They will employ over 100 people, so we can assume 23 get housing and 77 low-paid workers get to compete with all the other low-paid tourism workers for the scarce housing that exists in Ketchum. I wonder if PEG will copy Sun Valley Co. and guide these people to taxpayer-subsidized housing. Isn’t this corporate welfare?
Handouts to Aspen Ski Co owners
A previous Ketchum City Council (that included the current majority) also approved the Limelight Hotel, owned by the Crown family, the people who own…wait for it…here it comes…Aspen Ski Co.
It was the first building in Ketchum to break four stories. What did the Council get in return for that? Less than nothing. It gave the owners a complete waiver on employee housing. Plus $1.5 million from KURA to help with improvements. The Limelight didn’t have to provide one single bed for workforce housing. Where do all its employees live? How many live in taxpayer-subsidized housing? Isn’t that corporate welfare?
Handouts to Seattle-based GMD
I know you are sick of my rants on Bluebird 1, but one of my frustrations is that it is also corporate welfare—yes, to the employers of the tenants who are incented to depress wages so their workers qualify to live there, but also the developer. Ms. Frick called it a “private project on public land.”
Unlike actual workforce housing built by local non-profits ARCH or WRCHT, Bluebird 1 is being built by an out-of-state, for-profit developer who gets to take multiple bites from that apple: developer fee, rent profit margin, and the retail lease income.
Not only did we give him, in the words of our Mayor, “free land” (worth millions), but we also gave him access to public parking in the retail core for his tenants, and we are out a lot of property taxes versus what we could have had. (Another tax increment fail by KURA, who put our money into Bluebird 1). No wonder he could afford to build that house in White Clouds. I guess that is one definition of putting profits back into the community. Remember, this is a guy who, in 2017, objected to Sun Valley Co. building their workforce housing next to his Cottonwood condo (he’s quoted in the paper). Who’s the NIMBY?
Handouts to KETCH developer
The City subsidized the developer of KETCH's construction of dense housing in the commercial core by requiring zero parking for 32 units of housing. The original out-of-state developer leased the building, then when it was full, jacked up the rents and sold it for about double to another non-local investor to take money out of Ketchum.
The City said that the residents would park at the Washington Lot. Now KURA says they own that lot, and it was always going to be developed, so it was never supposed to be parking for apartments built without parking. Did the City lie?
(Notice the pattern? We got fleeced.)
Creating the Crisis they Claim to be Solving
It begs the question: Who is creating the workforce housing crisis? Could it be employers who know they don’t need to pay a living wage because they can charge taxpayers for their employees' housing? Income-capped housing like Northwoods Place and Bluebirds 1 and 3 encourages corporations to depress wages so their employees will qualify.
Could it be a City Council that not only lets them get away with it but is also in on the game?
Elections Matter!
The whole PEG thing made me realize that elections matter. One of our council members said something to the effect that it doesn’t matter what the people want; they got elected and get to decide. She said this in a public meeting as she voted to approve all the waivers for the Marriott despite 3000 people signing a petition against it.
I have come to realize that there are only three people who get to decide pretty much everything for Ketchum because they have the majority on the Council.
I hope that in the next election, we get candidates who want to represent the people’s agenda rather than their own. Maybe that already happened? Maybe Tripp and Spencer will stand up for the locals?
And Now, the Biggest Corporate Giveaway—the LOT for Air
Well, not right now. You have to wait for that in Part II…
Exquisite analysis of the profit privatized, risk socialized agenda of both real estate development and corporate interests who only see our fair valley as just another commodity from which to extract wealth, not much interested in the opinions or concerns of citizens being severely impacted by the malignant growth agenda, much less the massive unfunded liabilities they are creating. The massive failure by north valley leadership, heavily influenced by Sun Valley Board of Realtors, SVED, SVCO, and resort interests, to adequately and thoughtfully consider the impacts of the toxic gentrification they intentionally engineered, has them trying to ram the problems resulting from their poor decisions, incompetence, and neglect down the throats of south valley communites and make taxpayers in Hailey and Bellevue pay for the privilege, many of them already struggling under a cloud of financial insecurity, many others already forced out of the valley.
The BIG LIE around here from local officials and establishment developpment extremists, is that any housing inventory being created will be affordable to those working in low-paying, often seasonal resort jobs, they won't. They will be purchased as investments or vacation (second) homes by an aging population of retired boomers. Just ask BCSD about enrollment statistics.
Congestion is not vibrancy. There has been zero consideration of the carrying capacities of roads and sevices infrastructure by local officials over the past decade. By build-out and occupancy of what has already been approved, this valley will be an unmitigated disaster of unmitigated impacts, with taxpayers on the hook for any proposed remedies. This aggressive "approve now, pay later" agenda and associated massive unfunded liabilities being created by poorly managed growth suggest it is time hit "PAUSE."
Perry, thank you for bringing competent analysis to the equation locally. Holding a mirror up to the ugliness resulting from the expression of values limited to only money and self, is of immense value here in our fair valley. No doubt that any future run for office will find you winning in a landslide. Unfortunately, so much damage has already been done by establishment real estate extremists that those future officials inheriting the consequences of their massive failures will have challenges that will be extremely difficult to meet. Easy to run an aggressive "rubber-stamp" malignant growth agenda motivated by greed, not so easy to provide solutions and pay for an excess of the future problems resulting poorly managed growth. But people are finally starting to come out of their Covid comas and are paying attention, about time.
Again Perry thanks for providing critical information to the public in a format they can easily digest, as well as the TRUTH about unfortunate circumstances and events here in our fair valley and who is responsible, citizens growing tired of the false narratives from officials regarding affordable workforce housing. The acceleration and abbreviation of the analysis and review processes has ensured there will never be enough to make any difference, just carrot here and there by developers interested only in profits, precedent established anything more cannot be mandated in any agreement. Now BCRD is suggesting we are somehow "underserved" when there are way more than enough athletic fields at our parks and schools if effective organization and scheduling is competently managed. Of course everybody wants everything all the time. BCRD mission is being abused by those attaching it to a real estate development proposal, Flying Hat, which is an absolute train wreck.
Have a great weekend folks!
If everything Perry says is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), then the Ketchum City Council needs to address these issues. They should want to address each issue of this blog in writing for the benefit of its citizens.