V2N9: The Council Is LYING About Their Density Plan

Aspenization got a boost with dishonesty in the Comp Plan

The BIG LIE: Increasing Density Improves Housing Affordability

The BIG LIE about their density program (and the Housing Action Plan) is that housing will become more affordable in Ketchum if we build hundreds of more condos near the ski mountain base. That is the City Staff’s justification for the massive density increase they will jam through with the Comprehensive Plan and Future Land Use Map.

Let me be clear: Building more condos in Ketchum will NOT make workforce housing more affordable.

They know this, yet they persist in the lie.

They know this because the City Planner has told them. Unless we can prevent incremental units from going to the tourism/second home market, they will. According to the Mayor, the City Planner, and the Housing Department Director at multiple public meetings, Ketchum cannot prevent units from being sold into the tourism market.

ADUs for affordable housing are not a bad thing. They have community support. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT THE CITY IS DOING. They are doing ADUs to create more STRs. They say they cannot restrict the use of ADUs. Which means they can (will) be Airbnbs.

As Mr. Chubb noted at the meeting, housing in Ketchum has a higher value as a tourist rental than for a workforce resident. This is obvious. This is why most of our long-term rentals went to Airbnb. This is why every time Ketchum has upzoned density, it has led to less housing affordability. Look at the KETCH building. Look at what has happened to West Ketch. Look at the apartment complexes that were once workforce housing but are now essentially de facto hotels.

Think about it. When you upzone from medium density of 16 units per acre to high density of 30 units per acre, you incentivize a developer to knock down a 16-unit building that may have residents who are just hanging on to build a building twice the size and sell it out to the AirBNB speculators. Upzoning results in fewer workers and fewer families living in Ketchum. This is not unique to Ketchum; it’s been true in every “destination” town, from Sun Valley to Aspen.

If you think I am wrong, please lay out your analysis and provide examples.

The only thing that makes housing more affordable when working families compete with tourists is a deed restriction plan that prevents new units from being touristed. We can’t do that by statute; we can only do it with money.

The Plan is Bad for Local Retail

Upzoning in the core will make it harder for independent retailers to survive. That’s not from KBAC (or me). It came from the Sun Valley Board of Realtors in their public comment.

We have already seen this with Dave Wilson’s leases to Johnny Was and Faherty in his new building.

This Plan Screws Single Family Residence Owners

If you live in a free-standing home on your lot in a zone that will go to medium or high density, you get the short end of the stick. Your house will be considered a “non-conforming use.” Want to knock your house down and build a new one? NO CAN DO. Your house burns down and you want to rebuild it? Non-conforming says you can rebuild only if you do it in two years. Try to get that done today—or during the construction boom this Plan is designed to create. Currently, you can add up to 1200 sf to non-conforming SFR. That’s now. A future planning commission could revoke that.

This Plan takes away some of your property rights. For what? To destroy your neighborhood by turning it into an Airbnb hotel?

How Will All These New Tourists Get Here? Bradshaw and Breen Are Working on It

The development will happen rapidly, partly because Bradshaw and Breen are working to fill up the new units quickly. How? They are driving airport expansion. Bradshaw heads the Sun Valley Air Service Board (SVASB) which hands over LOT money to the Ms. Breen’s Fly Sun Valley Alliance (FSVA) to grow operations at SUN.

Read today’s IME article about the 27% increase in flight capacity to SUN this summer, which is on top of last year’s 17% increase. They have big dreams for SUN, including getting American to fly directly to Dallas.

Guess who pays for this contribution to the destruction of Ketchum? YOU.

So if you thought the small size of our airport was part of the limiter on development, you are wrong. Bradshaw has figured that one out.

The citizens of Blaine County and the City of Hailey own SUN. When have those citizens ever been consulted on the massive airport expansion being done with their taxes? Never. Ironically, it is not the owners of the airport, but the Troika in Ketchum controlling airport expansion. The SVASB, FSVA. VSV. FMAA system is too complicated for most people to follow (including, apparently, the IME). The Hailey mayor runs the Friedman Memorial Airport Authority (FMAA) and is all-in on the expansion program.

The Big Question: Why?

The Mayor mentioned that land use is all about tradeoffs and that this is tough. He is wrong. Upzoning does not involve tradeoffs. It transfers social and economic capital from local residents to developers and tourists.

Ask yourself this: in what public meeting did members of the public push for increased density in Ketchum? You won’t find one because it never happened. Where did this upzoning push come from? I don’t know, but it could only have come from some combination of the Mayor/Council and the City Staff. What kind of government is that?

Why increase density if it doesn’t benefit residents? Indeed, it harms us.

Please ask Mr. Bradshaw, Ms. Hamilton, Ms. Breen, and Mr. Cordovano that question and let me know what they tell you.

Ironically, we would be better off if they did what Ms. Frick initially proposed—nothing. She said nothing had changed in what people wanted in a decade, and she suggested taking the 2014 Plan and changing the date. That would do less damage than this Plan.

City Planner Morgan Landers said our long-term population growth rate is 1.5% yearly, or perhaps 26 families yearly. So why propose more density to generate vastly higher condo growth? The only answer is to promote tourism growth.

I also think that 1.5% number is misleading. We need to understand the growth in total bodies in Ketchum at any given time. We know that during tourism peaks, our “population” explodes. Increasing density won’t increase full-time resident growth; it will fuel tourism growth.

She said the supply/demand function does not operate normally here. She agreed that more housing means more STRs. She said they won’t write a zoning code that won’t get us community housing. That’s fine as long as she is in office. But that land use map doesn’t say that.

It says “build baby build.”

So Many Unanswered Questions!

There is no formal process to get your questions about the Comp Plan answered. You are not allowed to get questions answered in the public comment portion of public meetings; you are only allowed to comment. You can send questions to participate@ketchumidaho.org. Sometimes, you get an answer; sometimes, you get ghosted.

I plan to send the following list in and see what happens:

• What is the increase in the maximum number of people in Ketchum under the old land use versus the proposed map?

• What is the Ketchum plan to handle that increase in population?

• What is the impact on traffic? (we don’t have a long-term supply/demand-driven traffic plan)

• What is the impact on parking (we don’t have a long-term supply/demand-driven parking plan)

• What is the impact on police calls? (the crime rate has doubled over the past five years per SVED data)

• What is the impact on fire calls? (fire calls are going up significantly, per the fire union—it is a reason they are pushing for consolidation)

• What is the impact on the budget?

• Why doesn’t the Plan address the impact of the City of Sun Valley’s development plan for Sun Valley Co? (It could bring up to 800 more workers without providing housing for them.)

What are your questions? Don’t tell me—ask the City.

Cui Bono?

Who benefits from this plan? If it destroys the character of Ketchum, if it won’t create affordable housing, and if it creates an economic boom only for the tourism and construction industries, does this benefit the residents of Ketchum?

I don’t see how it does.

I see that it benefits:

• Sun Valley Co

• The tourism industry

• IKON pass (aka Alterra, aka Aspen)

• Developers (many of whom aren’t even in Idaho)

• Contractors (most of their workforce doesn’t

• People who make their living off of development (including some of our Council and P&Z Members)

• The staffs of VSV and FSVA

• BCHA staff and the system they are building for transient underpaid tourism industry workers.

The Plan imposes significant financial and social costs on Ketchum residents.

Why do we want a lot more people when we are struggling to run the town we have? We don’t need more housing units; we need more families. Families are the future of a community—not tourists. There is nothing in the Comp Plan about families. Indeed, as proposed, in my view (and the opinions of many others), it will squeeze out what families remain.

At the last Council meeting of 2024, they dropped the bomb that Ketchum has $100mm in deferred road and sidewalk construction. Not even mentioned in the Comp Plan. No plan for that. Isn’t that a dereliction of the Council’s fiduciary duty?

I Don’t Get What Spencer Cordovano Is Trying to Achieve

Given that he says he represents the interests of locals, I was surprised at Mr C.’s pro-density stance. In my reading, he became part of the push of the BIG LIE. He either does not understand the basic economics of supply and demand, refuses to see what is in front of his eyes, or has some other interest in generating more density in Ketchum that has nothing to do with affordability.

Mr. C. said everyone should take a deep breath. Taking a breath is precisely how we got to the place we are. He said not to worry because most of Ketchum will remain low-density residential. Ha! That was also true for the areas he wants to upzone. This is how to put the City in the City of Ketchum.

Ultimately, he went along with the Troika to push the Plan forward.

Mr. C., can you explain how increased density benefits Ketchum residents? I’ll give you a Ketchum Sun issue to explain it to us.

Only Tripp Hutchinson Spoke Up for the Locals

Tripp wanted to hold another public meeting to discuss all the items in the Comp Plan that weren’t on the agenda for this meeting. There is much more in there than land use, and no one on the Council wanted to do that. Their priority is not to create a Plan that the community wants but to get it out of the way so they can work on the zoning code.

Ms. Passovoy of P&Z seemed skeptical of the Troika's actions. She agreed with Tripp that P&Z should examine the entire City's land use map. She also wanted a redline copy of the plan to see what has changed and why.

After 3 1/2 hours, the Council decided to revise the existing draft, hold two P&Z meetings for public comment, and proceed to the final draft and City Council adoption. Ms. Hamilton said there were insufficient substantial public comments to change the planning process, and Ms. Breen agreed. That’s why, along with Bradshaw, I call them the Troika.

I disagree. What do you think? Do you think this is a jam job?

It is Time For Neil Morrow to Leave P&Z

I am sure Neil is a great person. However, he’s been on P&Z for twelve years; under Idaho statute, maximum term on a P&Z is twelve years.

His rant toward the end of the joint meeting indicated that he has lost respect for the people whose interests he is paid to represent. He seemed pretty ticked off at the general population of Ketchum, most of whom are unhappy with the Comp Plan. He said you weren’t proactive enough in expressing your views in the past. He thinks you don’t have a leg to stand on in protesting what he wants to do to you now.

What hit me hardest was his conclusion that we can do nothing. He said “big money” is taking over Ketchum, and we cannot stop it. Therefore, he suggested that we proceed with the Comp Plan as proposed and make the best of it.

In my view, that is giving up on Ketchum. The P&Z exists not to promote development but to ensure that development conforms to the community vision laid out in the Comp Plan, Land Use Plan, Zoning code, and building codes. Neil doesn’t seem to want to do that anymore. If that’s his perspective, then it’s time for him to move on.

He said it is a fallacy that families will move here, given that the average house is $1.4 million. Why is he working to squeeze out the remaining families if he believes that? He said we should give up on keeping national mall retailers out of Ketchum. He ranted about how no one participates in the process, yet he doesn’t do anything to get more people involved.

He said they have planned for the infrastructure that upzoning will require. That’s not true—he must have missed the meeting on the plan to let our roads continue to deteriorate. He says the town is empty half the time. In my view, you don’t plan your town’s capacity for slack, you plan it for peak. He said the plan and the code won’t fix the big money problem. But why, then, does he just give in to more development?

Given he feels this way, why does he chair the P&Z? Time to go.

What Happened to the Do No Harm Principle?

This process problem is based on bad data, assumptions, and analysis. Given its pervasiveness, I think it is intentional. Think of all they could be doing that they aren’t. For example, where is the 3D model of Ketchum? Why did they show only 16 units per acre and not the 30 they are proposing? Where are the traffic studies, the economic studies, and every study that this increase in density will have for us? What will be the increase in our water usage? Will we have enough grocery store capacity?

If we let them adopt this Plan, we know they will break things—they will squeeze out families and bring in more tourists. We know it doesn’t solve our workforce housing affordability issues. So let’s…not.

Let’s not increase density. Until we get a new Council, let’s stick with the 2014 map and tweak it to improve its definitions of permissible density.

What happens if we don’t do any of this? We know our community character is more likely to have a better shot. We know our housing is not affordable, but it won’t be if we do this. We know our economy employs many people who don’t live in Ketchum, so why does it benefit the residents to have more non-residents working in Ketchum? How does the impact on traffic and parking benefit the residents? How will you prevent these dense units from becoming STRs? If you can’t, why do you think they will become affordable for people who live and work in Ketchum? Is there any resort community where increased density has increased affordability without raising taxes to provide tax subsidies?

The Jam Job Train Has Left the Station

I will bet anyone $100 that the Council will adopt this map with some minor tweaks, but still with the fatal flaws of bad data, bad analysis, and bad assumptions. They just kicked the can down to the next step in the process. The outcome will not be good for the people who live in Ketchum.