On May 16, Ketchum voters will be asked whether the LOT should be split between workforce housing and airport subsidies. I will vote "no." While there is a definite need for housing in the city, and I would support different variations of funding for it, I will not support it this way.
First, Mayor Bradshaw and the Ketchum City Council are relying on a gimmick hoping that residents here will not risk their airline subsides and vote yes to get the housing subsidy. For me, this is a legal form of extortion that the city of Sun Valley has not done to their residents. It is unethical and should be rejected just for that.
Secondly, the Ketchum should not be given a blank check. They are saying to the voters, "Trust Us!" Give us the funding even though we only have concepts, and we will give you a plan when it is too late to challenge it. That is how Bluebird was done, and right now we are paying millions more in both overruns, lost revenues. You are asking Ketchum residents, not tourists as they keep suggesting, to pay for housing for an undetermined group of people that like Bluebird, they will have little say over.
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AP. We are a community, but run by people who just know how spend without doing any planning. Bluebird is a farce that may not benefit us at all as they are required to allow anyone who applies get in. You don’t have to be from Ketchum or even work in Ketchum to be approved. You literally could reverse commute and work in TWF which would be great for a lot of people. You’d have the Valley for your weekends. There are many places in Ketchum that have Workforce housing where there is no enforcement. People who are in those complexes subsidize a unit, but no one checks out whether they are below or above the income threshold, and I’m not sure they could evict them even if they were. We need housing, but as Ketchum is paying for the housing, the people should be required to work in Ketchum. The city will not enforce that. They have said so.
Agreed, but we better start taking care of people or there will be no tourism. Are we a community, or a theme park?
We are a Theme Park. Is sking tourism?
Agreed. Let’s take people of the people who live here. Not corporations and real estate speculators who take more out of the community than they put in. Voting for this referendum is like saying you love a 6 story Marriott going up that will require locals to subsidize housing for its workers. How is that taking care of the community?
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