What do you do when you lose an election?

Wait: make that two elections

Shine sunlight on City Hall…

Why? Because, as the WashPo says: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”

Over the past four years, I have attended more public meetings than most Ketchum public officials—maybe all of them. My overall conclusion is that the Mayor and City Council run Ketchum not for the people who live in Ketchum, but for people who don’t.

The two classes of constituents who, in my opinion, get attention are:

1. Exploiters, and

2. the Exploited. I know that sounds odd, but bear with me.

If you judge them by their actions rather than their rhetoric, they are tools of the Exploiters. Ketchum is beautiful, and many people want to make money from it. Fair enough; people need to make a living. But when the Exploiters take out more than they put into a community, the residents are left holding the bag.¹ There should be more balance in our economy; and in who gets taxpayer resources.

Growth in tourists in Ketchum is evidently a high priority for the Council. Despite several thousand objections, they broke the zoning code to permit a 6-story Marriott at the town entrance. They got 20% of us to vote to tax 100% of us to promote tourism.² More places to house tourists is a priority—thus the Marriott. They are currently encouraging people to build more AirBNBs.³ And, of course, we will need an endless supply of underpaid workers who can’t afford market rents to service the tourists. The Council has gotten Ketchum taxpayers to pony up for that, too.

The Ketchum Council has become a tool for social engineering. They adopted a plan to house anyone who wants to live in Ketchum, in taxpayer-subsidized housing, regardless of immigration status or employment status.⁴ Take, for example, their plan for the Lift Tower Lodge. 50+ units of low-income housing. There is no particular work requirement. It’s within walking distance of the ski lifts. On land the City values at $7 million and plans to donate to the project. You could buy a trailer park and turn it into nice workforce housing for that kind of money.

And when they are not pushing for residents to subsidize more tourism for the Exploiters or more benefits for the Exploited, they do an overall mediocre job because, in my observation, they don’t really know what they are doing. Examples: parking, traffic, traffic lights, housing, transportation, sustainability, zoning, application of zoning, city planning, economic development, water treatment, and communications with the electorate.

It can’t be that bad, can it? Come to some meetings with me and judge for yourself.

Some of it is outright duplicitous misinformation. The Mayor promised that Bluebird would be housing for teachers, first responders, and healthcare workers.⁵ Most of those occupations in our community make too much to live in Bluebird. So who is it for? If Aspen is an indicator, it will be low-paid tourism workers (like for the Marriott, maybe?) and retirees. The City Council put retirees in the preference policy.⁶ According to my calculation, the Council put at least $10 million in taxpayer resources toward Bluebird.⁷

And then there are the blatant conflicts of interest. The City’s Housing Director also serves as the effective director of the Blaine County Housing Authority (BCHA).⁸ Wearing her City employee hat, she has applied for a $5 million Federal housing grant. Which she plans to hand over to BCHA, which is not a Ketchum agency and has no accountability to Ketchum voters.⁹ Wearing her BCHA hat, she will get to spend that money without accountability to the City Council.¹⁰ Yes, funds awarded to the City of Ketchum will not necessarily go to housing in Ketchum or house Ketchum workers. And the Council approved this.

Where does this leave the residents of Ketchum? Poorly represented by their elected officials. We all know that Ketchum's big challenge is its residents' quality of life in the face of unmanaged growth. Visit Sun Valley did a survey last year where it was the #1 concern.¹¹ But in no City Council meeting is quality of life for residents a topic of discussion, much less a priority.

What to expect from “The Ketchum Sun”

The goal is to shine some sunlight on the goings on in City Hall on a weekly (more or less) basis. Initially, the focus will be on the goings on in City Hall. While this initial issue highlights some of the negative aspects of our current Administration, we will also offer some stabs at solutions.

Over time, The Ketchum Sun may expand to highlight people and organizations working to address our mountain town's challenges, including local entrepreneurs and nonprofits. The kind of people and organizations that put more into the community than they take from it. Isn’t that the definition of a true local?

Suggestions are welcome!

I leave you with a thought…

Qui bono?

The Ketchum City Council described both of these low-income housing projects as their highest priorities for Ketchum. Nothing else in Ketchum's history has received such a massive share of taxpayer resources. They purposely located them in the center of the commercial district on some of the most valuable land in Idaho. Their rationale ranged from things like “the tenants won’t need cars and will walk to work” to “the buildings have to go in the core so rich people know there are working people.” That’s not about optimizing workforce housing to support a balanced community. In any discussion of either project, there has never been a cost/benefit analysis or an analysis of the impact on residents’s quality of life.

And, while I’m no architectural expert, do boxes like these further the #1 priority of our Comprehensive Plan—to preserve the small mountain town character of Ketchum?

Here’s where you can leave your thoughts…

(Comments will be moderated and potentially edited)

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1. Literally. We pay for a lot of this through the LOT.

2. 577 voters out of about 2700 registered voters. https://www.livevoterturnout.com/ENR/idaho/127/13/en/Index_127.html. Seems undemocratic to me.

3. https://www.ketchumidaho.org/sites/default/files/fileattachments/planning_amp_building/page/2231/ketchumadufaq_2023.pdf

4. https://www.projectketchum.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Ketchum-Housing-Matters_2022.2023_Action-Plan.pdf

5. As he stated in a Guest Opinion for the IME: “I believe that we all want to find a way to allow our teachers to be able to stay on after school so that they can play in the softball league, attend trivia night, volunteer for a nonprofit or contribute to our community in many other ways. I believe we want our volunteer firefighters and paramedics to live closer so they are quicker to respond to an emergency situation. We want our service workers to avoid a long drive home and be able to help with a youth soccer team, play in the local band and participate in town life. Finally, I know we want our health-care workers to stay in our town so they can get that extra hour of sleep and be rested and better able to cope with the trauma case that they may face the next day.“ https://www.mtexpress.com/opinion/guest_opinions/let-s-provide-a-warm-ketchum-welcome-to-affordable-housing/article_2cbda4b6-65a4-11eb-84ff-a36e75ccd5c7.html

6. https://www.mtexpress.com/news/ketchum/ketchum-drafts-new-qualifications-for-bluebird/article_b1529ebe-ee93-11ed-9230-aff6a7539f8a.html

7. $6mm in what the Mayor called “free land.” $4mm of “in-lieu-of” funds. This does not include the reduced property taxes for the next 40 years, and the free parking spaces on the street that will be used by tenants because the garage is too small. And when and where do we get the 10 replacement trees that the developer owes the City?

8. https://mccmeetingspublic.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ketchid-meet-201b06f17f6c44d9afcb95717947b554/ITEM-Attachment-001-19e30824bfb4446ba9232d695e720ebf.pdf

9. https://www.bcoha.org/about-us.html

10. read the paragraph in the middle of the last page of this—it’s an interesting admission from someone who is supposed to work for the citizens of Ketchum: https://www.projectketchum.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Application-for-Submission-City-of-Ketchum.pdf

11. https://www.mtexpress.com/news/blaine_county/survey-shows-quality-of-life-declining-i[%e2%80%a6]ver-valley/article_9103b3f8-4ff3-11ed-8baa-7b8cf011c68b.html