Vol1#57: Last Council Meeting of 2024 Drops $100mm BOMB 💣

Actually, Two Bombs: Fat Man 💣 + Little Boy 💣

At the final Council meeting of 2024, the City continued to push forward down several paths that are at odds with good governance and the will of the electorate. Not much of a surprise there.

But then, over two hours into a meeting, with no member of the public in attendance, they dropped the bombs.

• Fat Man: $80mm required to rebuild our streets

• Little Boy: $20mm to rebuild our sidewalks

FAT MAN 💣: Bradshaw Regime has Neglected Ketchum’s Roads, Leaving Us an $80mm Bill

For the duration of the Troika administration of Bradshaw/Breen/Hamilton, Ketchum has spent only $125,000 a year on road maintenance. That leaves Ketchum residents with an $80mm liability for rebuilding and maintaining our roads.

$80 MILLION DOLLARS

The entire annual budget of Ketchum is less than half of that.

The Troika prioritized housing to subsidize low-paying tourism industry employers like Sun Valley Co. They have a massive $350mm plan to build a slew of Bluebirds in Ketchum (see Ketchum Housing Action Plan).

Meanwhile, they let our roads fall apart.

In this Council meeting, they only agreed to catch up on deferred chip sealing, at a cost of $600k for 2025.

They decide how to pay for this in a February council meeting. They discussed using LOT money and the $900k windfall from fire taxes that Ketchum chose to keep while outsourcing its Fire Department to the new Fire District.

Note: the new fire district plans to impose a new Fire Tax that will be substantially HIGHER than our old local fire department tax. You will pay more in fire tax for no improvement in fire services. If you voted “for” fire consolidation, you didn’t do your homework: you got snookered by the City Council.

LITTLE BOY 💣: Another $20mm is Needed for Sidewalks

And then there are the sidewalks. The $80mm does not include the millions of dollars required to fix them. Per the City Administrator, that’s another $20mm.

Ms. Hamilton prefers to raise taxes to pay for new routes to connect residential neighborhoods to downtown rather than address the existing crumbling infrastructure. Ms. Breen agreed.

They seem incapable of caring about how residents will pay for their dereliction of duty during their tenure.

This is All On Top Of The Rest of Their Mess 💩

These thermo-nuclear revelations show how poorly the Bradshaw administration has managed Ketchum and how they have misused the City’s resources for their tourism subsidization program that has replaced long-time local middle-class families and young people with tourists, rich old people, and low-paid tourism workers housed at locals’ expense. All of this is well-documented in the Comp Plan materials.

The Mayor packed KURA, an urban renewal agency that is supposed to repair roads and sidewalks, with non-business owners and non-residents to subsidize the Mayor’s replace-parking-with-low-income-housing-projects agenda. KURA has borrowed tens of millions of dollars and not renewed our downtown. They have been used for backroom deals to get a new City Hall and a new Fire Station (which we just voted to GIVE AWAY FOR NOTHING to the new fire district).

⬆️ TAXES ARE GOING UP ⬆️

For the road and sidewalk renewal, there is no way to pay for them without massive borrowing that will require substantial tax increases.

Before we knew about the $100mm in deferred infrastructure costs, the Troika was already going to leave office with Ketchum $25mm in debt.

The Council’s permanent destruction of parking now requires the City to build a parking structure at a cost of at least $13mm. That’s on top of the $100mm of deferred infrastructure liability. They are contemplating a referendum in May to raise a special LID propery tax on the entirety of Ketchum to pay for that.

And if this wasn’t enough to make you shake your head, there was what they did in the rest of the Council meeting…

More Parking Reductions Proposed 🅿️ ⬇️

The Council approved engaging a consultant, for $60k, to propose putting in more bike paths in Ketchum, potentially reducing parking by another 90 parking spots in the Commercial Core (mostly along Washington St). Not only will the bike paths cost substantial money (additional capex not included in any of the above), but the removal of 90 parking spaces is economic destruction of up to $13mm. Not a typo.

The Mayor put this on the consent agenda to be approved with no discussion. There was no public comment permitted.

This is on top of the 27 spots removed with the Main Street project and the 65 spots that KURA is working to replace with a housing project.

Then the City has targeted its only remaining public parking lot at 6th and Leadville for replacement with a low-income housing project.

What the heck?

More Corporate Welfare Proposed — For Employees Who Don’t Work in Ketchum

I was surprised to hear Mr. Hutchinson propose that Ketchum taxpayers fund subsidized housing in Elkhorn for people who don’t necessarily work in Ketchum. This is compounding the Bluebird error of spending Ketchum taxpayer money to subsidize housing for for-profit employers when their employees don’t work in Ketchum. Sun Valley Co. is taking advantage of this in Bluebird, and I bet they would love to do the same for Mr. Hutchinson’s Elkhorn proposal.

Meanwhile, essential workers like teachers and healthcare workers are getting kicked out of their housing, and Ketchum has no plan for them.

Ketchum residents need the Council to reserve their scarce resources to house the essential workers that make Ketchum function for its residents rather than subsdize the for-profit employees that serve tourists. They are doing the opposite—why?

I urge Mr. Hutchinson to revise his proposal and limit this subsidy solely to essential workers who WORK IN KETCHUM. If they are Ketchum essential workers, why limit the subsidy to living in Elkhorn? Why not Hailey or Bellevue? Why remove agency from our essential workers while enriching Sun Valley property owners?

Housing Director Pulled Another Fast One

She slipped into the consent agenda (no Council Member mentioned it) a 29% hourly rate increase for one of her employees…to $90 an hour. $90 makes this person one of the highest hourly employees of the City of Ketchum. It’s 50% more than the Housing Director makes on an hourly basis. Even more troubling is that they work for the Blaine County Housing Authority as well as for Ketchum, without tracking. Who works for whom?

The contract appears to be prepaid via a City purchase order to the tune of $75k. How does an independent contractor get prepaid without issuing an invoice for hours worked?

This person lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is not a housing professional by education (an architect/urban planner). As far as I can tell, this plum job was not advertised locally. Could that be because he went to school with the Housing Director, and no one else was evaluated for the role?

Only Two Weeks Left for Public Input on The Comp Plan

Please see the last issue of The Ketchum Sun for how the Council is shaping Ketchum’s strategic plan, aka the Comp Plan, for the benefit of tourists rather than residents. To my reading, it is a middle-class resident replacement plan.

Please read it and comment on it. It is hard to find and not advertised on the City website. Here’s the link: https://www.projectketchum.org/cohesive-ketchum/

I know commenting is a pain, but we get the government we let them do to us, and at least we should let them know that we know what they are trying to do to us.

Currently, only 10 people out of Ketchum’s 3500 residents have commented on the plan. Doesn’t that seem…light? If you were creating a 10-year strategic plan for your City, wouldn’t you want it to include input from a wide range of people in your community?

Or maybe this is the outcome they want?

P.S.: Fat Man and Little Boy and their $100mm bill are NOT in the Comp Plan.

The Troika will leave us holding a very large bag.