V2N20: If The Council Wins on Upzoning, the Residents Lose Ketchum

There is no more important battle in the war for the soul of Ketchum

“People who manage the problems are always upset with people who want to fix them.”
—Bojan Tunguz

A version of this post can also be found at 5b Gazette, here.

Enough With The Complaining—What About Solutions?

A reader gave me feedback this week, saying I am not solutions-oriented enough. I demurred. I have a proposed solution to every problem I identify. It’s not necessarily the only solution, but you can be sure I put a lot of thought into it. Better solutions are sorely needed if you have them.

One challenge is my writing style. I typically describe the problem and then end with a solution. So, if you want my solution to how we kill City Hall’s ruinatious UPZONING plan, you will have to read to the end. As Mark Twain said: “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”¹

What The FLUP?

The Future Land Use Map (FLUP) appeared sometime between December 4th, when the first draft of Ketchum’s Comprehensive Plan was posted, and January 17th, when public comment on the draft was closed. The FLUP is the biggest threat to Ketchum since the Council passed an ordinance in 2018 that changed a footnote in a table to the zoning code to make Bluebird possible.

How can one little piece of paper be this important?

This map contains something never discussed in a public meeting or requested by a Ketchum resident before it was posted: UPZONING. Upzoning is the mandate for increased condo density near the Baldy bases in Warm Springs and West Ketch.²

No one in City Hall will say who included upzoning in the FLUP. Four prime suspects are the Mayor, the City Planner, the City Administrator, and the Ketchum Housing Director.³ The FLUP could not have been issued without their collaboration.

What is the rationale behind upzoning? A lie: if we have more condos in Ketchum, that housing will be more affordable for working families. This is false, and the people who assert it know it to be untrue.

Upzoning to create affordable housing defies common sense, Idaho statute, and empirical data. We have forty years of experience building market-rate condos in Ketchum. Has housing gotten more affordable? Given the desirability of Ketchum as a tourist destination, we know the highest return on land is for condos for the second home and short-term rental markets. A tourist or wealthy homeowner can always outbid a local working resident for a condo.

Watch Out For The Sugar Coating on the Cyanide Pill

I think City Hall has been getting a lot of pushback on upzoning. That will not stop them; they have the votes to jam it through.

I bet the Troika of Bradshaw/Breen/Hamilton will try to sugarcoat this cyanide capsule by saying they will only permit more density on a lot if it includes affordable housing. This is a trojan horse that must be rejected. Upzoning is cyanide for Ketchum, regardless of how it is packaged.

Once these areas are upzoned, it is hard to de-upzone them. Zoning is semi-permanent. Once they make single-family housing a “non-conforming use,” you are stuck with that for a long time.

Housing incentives are…flexible. There is nothing that stops a Council from amending or removing housing incentives.

The sugar-coating is disingenuous. They don’t need this magnitude of upzoning to provide affordable housing incentives for Ketchum’s essential workers. But packaging it this way will let them say they only voted for upzoning to get more affordable housing.⁴ I hope we are all smarter than that. The FLUP came out with no housing incentives because their real goal is to get more condo development activity to benefit the tourism industry. They lead with maximum development,⁵ and walk that back to get whatever they can from us. They have no regard for how it will impact the quality of life for Ketchum residents.

Context: Upzoning is a Next Step For the Aspenization of Ketchum

If you examine the Troika's actions over its seven years in office, it has supported narrowing Ketchum’s differences with Aspen.67 On almost every issue facing the City, from housing to parking, the City benchmarks itself to other mountain towns like Aspen and Park City, as if being more like them is good for people who live in Ketchum. It’s not. But it’s great for people who exploit Ketchum.

The Troika has approved six-story hotels, presided over the conversion of over 300 units of long-term rentals into Airbnbs, and provided millions in subsidies for corporate welfare to promote and enable tourism growth and keep wages depressed in the tourism industry.

The Aspenization Plan is Hidden

What is Aspenization? It is the replacement of low-revenue locals with high-revenue tourists and wealthy second homeowners. This is done in concert with taxing everyone in every way possible to build subsidized housing to trap chronically underpaid tourism industry workers and to keep wages depressed for the tourism industry. It is also accompanied by public money diverted to private use to promote and subsidize the tourism industry. It is often facilitated by comparing the town to Aspen to rationalize actions taken by the government.

All of this is happening right now in Ketchum. Little of it is done transparently.

Under the Troika regime, City Hall hides what it is doing with odd definitions and bad statistics. On page 7 of the Ketchum Housing Action Plan, they redefined “unhoused” to include commuters who drive over 45 minutes but have houses. They redefined “workforce” to include people who choose to stop working. They claim a 600-unit housing need based on non-statistical surveys that has nothing to do with housing Ketchum’s essential workers and leads to things like Bluebird, which excludes essential workers.

To justify the replacement of parking with low-income housing projects, they tell us that we have more parking spaces per capita than other mountain towns.⁶ That is a classic half-truth. It is true if you count only municipal parking. But when you include commercial lots, the parking comparisons are much different. Why won’t they show that data? Or take parking utilization. They say we average under 85% utilization when they know the average is meaningless. The correct statistic is the percentage of the time during commercial hours when utilization exceeds 85% (which is almost half the time near Atkinson’s in peak seasons). This has been pointed out to them multiple times, but they stick with that average. What is their motivation?

Who reading this would rather live in Aspen? It’s a nice place. More skiing options. Good public transportation. Also on the IKON pass. Just as much culture. You can shop at Prada and Gucci there. They have bottle-service nightclubs. 53% of the voters live in subsidized housing, although that hasn’t solved their workforce shortage at all. There's nothing wrong with Aspen if you like that sort of thing. But you don’t live there; you live here, probably for a reason (or set of reasons).

So why don’t we let Aspen be Aspen and keep Ketchum Ketchum?

Solution 1: Fight Upzoning

If you have limited time and can only participate in one battle, this is it. If they win on upzoning, you will lose what is left of Ketchum's soul.

What can you do? Make your voice heard. Here are some options.

Show up at public meetings. The key ones are the P&Z Meetings at 4:30 p.m. at City Hall on 3/25 and 4/8. Public comment will be permitted at both meetings. Get up and use your three minutes to tell them to leave the zoning density alone in West Ketch and Warm Springs. Once the P&Z approves the FLUP at that April meeting, it goes to the City Council later in April for adoption. The Council is not obligated to accept the P&Z's recommendations, but the FLUP must go through the P&Z before the Council adopts it.

Talk to the Council Members. Call them and/or meet with them. Tell them what your issues are and what solutions you suggest. Hear their side of the story. Weigh what you hear against their track record. Make your own decision about what is what. You can get them through the City Hall switchboard: (208) 726-3841.

Send an Email to the City Council and P&Z. Write down your thoughts and send them to participate@ketchumidaho.org.

Write a letter to the paper. We now have two papers. You can send a letter to the editor of the Mountain Express at letters@mtexpress.com (keep it under 300 words). You can also send a letter to the editor of the new 5b Gazette at this link.

Write an issue of The Ketchum Sun: Lord knows I could use a week off. Shoot me your text; I will issue it under your name without editing. Feel free to disagree with me. Three community members have written issues in the past year. I asked Mr. Cordovano and Mr. Hutchinson to write issues explaining their positions on upzoning (they both seem to support it!).⁷

Get everyone you know to do one of the above. We get the government we let them do to us.

Solution 2: Vote Them OUT

We have an election coming up in November. All three Troika members’ seats are up. They will have had eight years in office. Just look around to see the fruits of their administration. Ask yourself: are you better off than before they took over? The decline in quality of life was the #1 complaint in the Visit Sun Valley survey of residents. Vote for someone who will represent your interests. Hopefully, a new council will undo some of the damage of the past eight years.

Solution 3: We Can Have Both Housing And Parking

For parking, the only thing the City has planned is to hold on to the parking we have⁸ (despite their upzoning plan, which makes zero sense) and to improve utilization by limiting parking times below what they are currently. As they acknowledge, that will push more parking into the residential areas abutting the commercial core. When you combine that with upzoning in West Ketch and their de minimus parking requirements for condos,⁹ I don’t think you will need to worry about speeding in West Ketch anymore—there will be too many cars on the street.

What’s the solution? Well, don’t upzone and increase demand for parking—that would be a start. We need a long-term demand forecast for a long-term supply plan. This seems…obvious. It has never been done. Who is trying to park, where, and when? This data is available from cell phone tracking services. How will that change with growth? I have proposed to the City how to do this.

We need to do something similar regarding workforce housing. Given that the City acknowledges we don’t have enough money to maintain our streets and sidewalks, let’s start by recognizing that we have scarce housing resources and should prioritize them based on community needs. We don’t need housing units for Sun Valley Co. workers or nannies—we need affordable housing for essential workers like teachers, first responders, healthcare workers, and city employees. How many of those workers are we short? We have no idea. That strikes me as odd, as it is an easily knowable number. But when you read the Ketchum Housing Action Plan, you realize that the City’s housing policy is that ANYONE who wants to live in Ketchum should be able to live here, and if they can’t afford it, the rest of the residents should be taxed to provide it for them.

Once we know how many essential workers need housing, where should it go? It should go where we get the biggest bang for the buck. However, the Council does not think that way. They want housing on absurdly valuable commercial properties like Bluebird and Washington. They also want housing at Lift Tower Lodge, at the town entrance, which is already congested with a new hotel and is permitted for a 135-room Marriott across the street.

The ideal location would be on top of the parking lot at St Luke’s Wood River. There is plenty of room in a great location on an underutilized piece of land that would benefit its owner (covered parking and staff housing).

What do you think?

1. I have a day job, plus some volunteer work, so I fit this writing in when I can.

2. I included the West Ketch FLUP as it looks like the only people who will be allowed to live in single family homes are rich people on the river who can afford lawyers to sue the City. The City hates to be sued, because they usually lose.

3. This is from a Mayor who touts his transparency.

4. 🤮

5. Based on their history, this is their ultimate goal.

6. The Mayor has repeatedly stated that every city-owned lot will be developed into housing.

7. So far, nothing from them. It’s been weeks.

8. That is, after they removed 27 parking spots that they value at over $3mm in the Main Street Project. Based on how many parking spots this regime has removed and how just a month ago they wanted to remove 65 more of them, I am a skeptic when they assert they will preserve parking.

9. They typically request one spot per unit. Unless the unit is under 650 sf (no parking space).