Stuck in Hailey
Hailey needs to figure out how to handle
snow.
The New Year’s storm that dropped more
than 24 inches of snow in a single night strangled movement in Hailey for days
afterward. Side streets were a slippery morass of ruts and drifts. Piles of snow
slowed travel to a crawl.
The clogged streets contrasted starkly
with the tidily groomed streets in Ketchum and Sun Valley.
Where were the snowplows and hauling
trucks? They were broken, and city crews had difficulty fixing them.
With more than 6,000 permanent
inhabitants, Hailey is the valley’s largest residential city and home to the
majority of the valley’s work force.
The week after the storm, the Hailey
Volunteer Fire Department asked residents to go out and dig out fire hydrants
because volunteers didn’t have time.
No wonder.
Hailey’s rapid growth has not been
accompanied by equally rapid growth in funding for city services. The city was
strangled by snow because the Idaho Legislature has strangled city budgets and
handcuffed the city’s ability to serve a larger population.
City officials have repeatedly expressed
frustration at laws that blindly restrict adequate funding of essential services
like fire protection and snow plowing.
It’s time for city officials to declare a
moratorium on growth in Hailey. No one will be happy about it. Yet, it might
convince the Idaho Legislature to quit crying about the need for a better
economy and to change the laws that left workers in Idaho’s largest winter
tourism market stuck in hip-high drifts in Hailey.