V2N20: How Many Ketchum Officials Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

While dozens are nominally involved, only three people can change it

Local News Competition: 5B Gazette

If you didn’t catch it, I had my first column published in the 5b Gazette. You can read it here. It’s about all the corporate welfare the Ketchum City Council is diverting from the locals. My key point is that if this were all laid out transparently so that the residents knew what the Council was doing, that would be one thing. But the Council hides it all in various dark corners to keep public scrutiny away from what amounts to a reverse Robin Hood scheme being run by the City.

I am optimistic that the 5b Gazette will fill the vacuum for news coverage and local opinion that the Idaho Mountain Express refuses to fill. Yes, those are essential functions of a local newspaper, but the IME has become a shill for its advertising base rather than fulfilling the function of the 4th Estate for its readership. Let’s hope the competition improves both products. I offered to write a column for the IME a while ago, but there was no response. In contrast to the papers in other mountain towns, the IME doesn’t have local columnists.

“Small Town, Big Life.” Big Bureaucracy, Too!

For a town the size of Ketchum, we have a lot of commissions, committees, boards, etc. In theory, these are ways to bring citizens and experts into local decision-making. In practice, they are vehicles for the Aspenization program being implemented by the Troika. The Mayor appoints the non-elected positions; they get approved by the Troika. It’s part of the self-licking ice cream cone. It’s not dissimilar to how things work today in DC. Or Moscow.

Here’s a list of every bureaucratic body I could identify that influences what happens in Ketchum, spends Ketchum taxpayer money, or has a Ketchum elected official on its board:

• City Council

• Planning & Zoning Commission

• Arts Commission

• Traffic Authority

• Sustainability Advisory Committee

• Technical Advisory Committee

• Citizens Advisory Committee

• Historic Preservation Commission

• Ketchum Urban Renewal Agency

• Sun Valley Air Service Board

• Fly Sun Valley Alliance

• Visit Sun Valley

• Mountain Rides

• Ketchum Community Development Corporation

• Blaine County Housing Authority

• 5B Can (Blaine County Sustainability Commission).

That’s 16. Remember that the City doesn’t provide education and has outsourced its police and fire departments, usually the three big ones for a town.

This frees up the Council’s time to work on Aspenization.

In Ketchum Only the Troika Can Change a Light Bulb

Any decision made by a City entity can be appealed to the Council. With the Council's approval, the Mayor fills all City-controlled positions in these entities. When a council has three members who share a similar agenda, those three members control every outcome for the City. That’s why I call them the Troika.

When I reflect on Ketchum’s bureaucracy, it’s genius. It lets the Troika, supported by fewer than 15% of the homeowners in Ketchum, maximize tax revenue and distribute the money to achieve their goals while looking like there is public participation in decision-making. It is the veneer of transparency without transparency. If we ignore their words and judge them by their actions, their mission is to close Ketchum real estate's price per square foot with that of Aspen.

Locals are low-revenue. Replace them with higher-value inhabitants: tourists. To keep wages low for the tourism industry, tax locals and second home-owners to provide subsidized housing, not for essential workers like teachers, health care workers, and first responders, but hotel workers, retirees, and even homeless people from Twin Falls if they want to move here. To make it look “fair,” tax the tourists for this too. Ensure there are enough wealthy second-home owners to boost the budget and donate to what makes Ketchum a nice place for tourists.

Am I wrong? What do you think?

Anyone Else Notice the Silence From The City?

If you haven’t gotten the message yet, The Ketchum Sun is my vehicle for advocating for an open, transparent, and inclusive government in Ketchum. However, like many of my efforts, it’s not accomplishing its intended goal. Ketchum may appear inclusive, but that belies the fact that it is becoming less transparent.

In the Troika of Bradshaw/Breen/Hamilton’s first term in office, a terrific city employee, Lisa Enourato, answered all the inbound to the City from its participate@ketchumidaho.org mailbox. This was just one part of her job, but she generally replied to almost everything within a day.

Now, it appears that this mailbox is used only to log written public comments for official meetings, and there is no longer a way to ask the City a question. You can email a question to the mailbox, and you might or might not get a response. Yet instead of responding to it as just part of one person’s job, in the Troika’s second term, we have a dedicated Community Engagement Manager, Daniel Hansen. From his title, one might presume it is his job to engage with the community. And he does, but it appears to be on a selective basis.

When you combine this newfound selectivity from the communications channel that is supposed to answer community questions with the fact that you can’t ask a question in a public meeting, how are community members supposed to get their questions answered? Maybe the answer to that is…you’re not supposed to.

Maybe it’s just me they are ignoring. I could understand that, as I tend to ask them questions highlighting their lack of openness, transparency, and inclusivity. It’s probably pretty annoying for them for someone working to hold them accountable.

But I don’t think it’s just me. If you look at the City Council agendas, they never take public comment unless legally required to. Contrast that with other local governments and agencies encouraging public comment, such as the City of Sun Valley or the Friedman Memorial Airport Authority. Even Ketchum’s P&Z is more likely to hear from the public than the City Council.

I don’t know why we should be surprised at Ketchum’s lack of inclusion. After all, Ms. Hamilton advised the Historic Preservation Commission not to share too many details with the public. In her Marriott comments, Ms. Breen said it didn’t matter what the public wanted—they got elected and decided. In the recent meeting on the Bluebirdization of Lift Tower Lodge, a City staff member commented that they didn’t want to be too specific about the project lest it draws public scrutiny.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bradshaw constantly asserts how proud he is of the City’s transparency while not being transparent on critical issues, like why he won’t appoint a member of the local retail community to KURA or who instructed the Planning Department to put upzoning in the Future Land Use Map. One of the most frequent public comments is that the Council doesn’t listen.

They don’t have to. They got elected, and they get to decide.