V2N23: City Puts Lipstick on Their Upzoning Pig
The Community Consensus at the 3/25 P&Z Meeting Was Clear--NO to Upzoning
My Public Comment at The 3/25 P&Z Meeting
Perry Boyle, Ketchum. Look around the room. These are your neighbors. They look to you to represent their interests. They aren’t happy. Please ask yourself what you can do to act in your neighbors' interests.
Community housing as a rationale for increased density in West Ketch and Warm Springs is a misdirection. We have the perfect place for it: build it on top of the hospital's parking lot. Upzoning is not about housing affordability. It is about Aspenization.
How many people showed up to ask you to upzone West Ketch and Warm Springs? There was no community consensus for upzoning. There was no mention of upzoning in the 18 months of the process. The staff just put it in there at the end of December.
If you don’t want to encourage growth, you go back to the original map and tweak the definitions. You know that this will not make housing more affordable. Morgan said at a previous meeting that unless you can’t restrict housing to working families. So you know the basic premise behind upzoning is, well, it’s a blatant, bald-faced lie. So why is the City staff pushing this? Who directed them to do this?
This will destroy what is left of the soul of Ketchum and push us closer and closer to Aspen.
Even the Housing Director said that upzoning will not make housing more affordable but will increase the need for community housing. Upzoning does not achieve housing affordability. So why the upzoning?
You are our representatives. The staff works for you, not the other way around. Instruct them to revert to the old densities. If you approve this map, you will rip this community apart. There will be lawsuits; this will be THE issue in the November election.
We don’t need this. No one asked for it. Please keep what remains of Ketchum Ketchum and tell the staff to take upzoning out.
Why is the City Behind Schedule on the Comp Plan?
The Comp Plan was initially scheduled for adoption in February. It will not be adopted until May at the earliest. Why the delay? The Council tried to jam this through without appropriate community inclusion by hiring a consultant to draft the plan. Given the uproar this process has engendered, they are BACKFILLING with public input.
This is ass backwards.
They have put out a Comp Plan that the community is forced to react to rather than including the community in developing the plan. Judging by the Mayor’s actions, this appears intentional. Mr. Bradshaw did not intend to include the community in a Comp Plan process when he ran for mayor. During the campaign, he didn’t even raise the topic.
After he was elected, the then-city planner said that since nothing had changed in Ketchum in 10 years, they would take the old plan and change the date. In response to protests (me?), the Council then agreed to do an “audit” of the old plan and update only the portions they thought needed updating rather than doing this the right way. That’s how we got to this debacle. Now, they are doing damage control by saying there will be as many public meetings as the P&Z Commission wants.
That sounds transparent and inclusive. It is not. It is the appearance without the substance. How do we know that? Compare drafts one and two of the Comp Plan. Do you think they listened to the public comments in the revision? Do you think they made any fundamental changes to reflect the consensus of the community? Or do you think they just put some lipstick on their pig?
It was and is a bad process, and in my view, it will lead to a bad outcome.
This is a Plan To Increase Density—If It Looks Like a Duck…
The City’s planning consultant stated at the 3/25 P&Z Meeting that this plan is not intended to encourage growth but to accommodate it. That is a distinction without a difference. Is that accommodating or encouraging growth when you propose this kind of upzoning?
Don’t treat us like idiots. This is a pro-growth plan consistent with the Aspenization goals of the Troika. We have over seven years of them doing it piece by piece.
For three years, the Mayor has de-emphasized the importance of the Comp Plan. This process aims to get through the Comp Plan as fast as possible so that he can revise the zoning code before he gets voted out of office. That’s how we got a Future Land Use Map (“FLUM”) that came out of nowhere with a massive upzoning near the Baldy bases in West Ketch and Warm Springs.
Assistant Planner Rivlin said on 3/25, the FLUM was substantially changed in response to public comment. That is bullshit, and she knows it is bullshit. They made single-family residences conform to the use of newly medium-density zoned areas and slightly reduced the high-density zone. They didn’t address the community revulsion over the upzoning of low-density to medium and high-density. This is a classic autocratic tactic: make it look like you are listening by making a de minimus concession. The spade of upzoning is still a spade.
The fact remains that there was never any public process that generated a consensus for ANY upzoning anywhere in West Ketch or Warm Springs. The City Staff, directed by someone, upzoned and are defending it as if their jobs depended on it. Why? Their excuse is that more condos near the ski bases will make housing more affordable for working families in Ketchum.
How dumb do they think we are? We have 40 years of experience in which increased density does not reduce housing costs. It defies basic economics—tourists and second homeowners will always price out a local working family in a tourist town. The only way to save housing for locals is with deed restrictions.
Upzoning Makes Things Worse, Not Better For Ketchum Residents
One commissioner mentioned that she didn’t think upzoning increased density by very much. That begs the question—by how much? What will the population increase if fully built to the proposed density? That information has not been made public. Why not? She lamented the high prices of single-family homes in Warm Springs but noted that smaller townhomes in West Ketch can go for even more. Doesn’t this prove that more density does NOT mean more affordable?
City Planner Landers said that most of Ketchum will remain low-density. That’s not the point at all. Upzoning is the point. She did not address the WHY behind upzoning. Why not? She mentioned one principle they are following is no net loss of residential units. Who cares if we lose units that are AirBnBs or second homes? That’s a developer issue, not a resident issue.
Another assertion that has been made buy City staffers is that upzoning won’t result in increased property taxes for existing property owners. That is not true. As Mr. Hulbert pointed out at the meeting, when you upzone, you increase the value of land to developers. Value goes up; ergo property taxes go up. To assert the opposite is disingenuous.
Commissioner McGraw asserted that there are “externalities of not increasing density.” He gave an example of how people commuting to work increase accidents and put wildlife at risk. He implied that increasing density will reduce these externalities as local workers move into the incremental units. He is wrong. Those units, absent deed restrictions, will not be worker-occupied. More density in Ketchum does not make Ketchum a self-sustaining island. More people mean more cars, which means more miles driven. Let’s use our common sense: has Bluebird reduced traffic into Ketchum?
Commissioner Passovoy made a critical point. Housing for whom? She said we want people who work in the community to have the opportunity to live in Ketchum with their families and people to be able to retire here. Again, absent deed restrictions, that will not happen.
If affordable housing for Ketchum workers is the community consensus, let’s judge every action by whether it furthers that goal. Upzoning does not further that goal. Let’s not make changes that make things worse for residents.
Every change should address one fundamental question: does it improve or worsen the quality of life for Ketchum residents? Not tourists. Not developers. Residents.
Great Article in 5b Gazette On How BCHA’s Arguments For Upzoning Don’t Hold Water
It is refreshing to have a new newspaper that actually does news and opinion. I write a monthly column for it, but other than that, I have no connection to the 5b Gazette other than as a subscriber.
Sarah Lurie wrote a great article summarizing residents’ opposition to upzoning. Here it is. My favorite quote:
Ketchum’s residents aren’t just skeptical; they’re furious, and their voices demand a reckoning that BCHA’s letter and the Draft Comprehensive Plan fails to deliver.
One thing that the BCHA Chair and Executive Director failed to mention in their 3/25 public comments is that neither BCHA nor the Ketchum Housing Action Plan requires tenants in their deed-restricted units to work in Ketchum, to work full-time, or, for the most part, work at all. They aren’t being transparent with Ketchum about how they are spending Ketchum taxpayer money.
While City Hall likes to point the finger at me as the town rabble-rouser to dismiss ideas they don’t like, it has to be obvious even to them that opposition to upzoning is the consensus rather than the exception. Will that sway them?
The Battle For Ketchum Is Heating Up: Time to Get in The Game
Okay, I mixed metaphors there. How do you get in the game?
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Show up: The next P&Z meeting on the Comp Plan is at 4:30 p.m. on April 8 at City Hall.
Make a Public Comment: send your views to participate@ketchumidaho.org
Write a Letter to a Paper: send your letter to an editor (less than 300 words) to letters@mtexpress.com and/or press@5BGazette.com.
Join the Opposition: Michelle Stennett is launching a movement to halt the process until after the next election. Email her at stennett.michelle@gmail.com if you want your name added to her list.
Meet with Council Members: call them at 208.726.3841 and ask to meet with them.
Yeah, I have some thoughts on the hospital property with regards to housing. When construction had been recently completed and operations just underway, SLWR announced a meeting open to input from the community with the top-level administrators coming up from Boise. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then they opened the meeting to public questions and comment. There were only six or eight members of the public in attendance, over twice that many representing SLWR, three of them attorneys.
I have often been called a gadfly, and much worse, no longer interpreting this as an insult. So, I got right to the heart of the artichoke asking if any consideration had been given toward the housing of employees on-site. The three attorneys, I believe including Tom Praggastis, became noticeably agitated deflecting and refusing to provide any coherent response. A 'smart dude' behind me followed up on this thread for a minute, perhaps 'smart' enough based on the evasion regarding this topic by these attorneys to understand what was really happening here.
I am not a 'smart guy' but have decent critical thinking skills, but often require a little time to process events and attach any probable or possible meaning. Why did these attorneys get so weird when I brought up employee housing. Ah hah! I wrote at the time that I believed there was something in the contract between SLWR, BC Med, and the owners of the property prohibiting any workforce housing on site as the negotiations for acquisition of the property no doubt included the real estate interests making the deal possible, and definitely not wanting to add any affordable supply because the doctors and employees at that time could easily afford to buy into the market.
Maybe I am wrong about this, or not. But I believe it was the 'smart guy' attending the meeting who wrote a LTE published in the IME that was absolutely brilliant. It had an almost science fiction quality to it, raising the specter of this state-of-the-art hospital facility filled with the most advanced and expensive diagnostic and imaging equipment, with no employees to operate them. I challenge the IME to do some investigation into their archives as to the date of this meeting and subsequent issues containing this LTE and to publish it. It was wonderful, written at a time before everyone around here sold out.
I can’t believe McGraw actually said ….“people commuting to work increase accidents and put wildlife at risk”. And that he said it in defense of upzoning!
Traffic will increase hugely for at least 10 to 20 years during the construction phase of building high density units.
Of course Perry is correct that locals won’t live there, so people from the south end of the valley will have to drive up there to service the needs or the increased number of tourists and second homeowners. Thus increasing traffic!
I no longer live in Ketchum, so I have no say in this craziness. But just the same, it breaks my heart to watch this sweet mountain town destroyed by these people.