Remote controls in hand, about 130 people at two separate meetings in Ketchum and Hailey Tuesday cast their ballots in a planning exercise designed to elicit the values and visions citizens have for future growth in the county.
For the purposes of the ongoing "Blaine County 2025: How and Where Will we Grow" exercise, the county has embraced growth predictions for a 44 percent population increase adding some 10,000 residents, which would push the population over 30,000 people in 20 years. The growth could lead to development of nearly 4,000 new homes, development of several thousand more acres of private land and a 67 percent increase in jobs.
With those predictions in mind, Tuesday's exercise facilitated on behalf of the county by Colorado-based planning consultant Ben Herman, of Clarion Associates, and Karen Yacos, of the Vermont-based Orten Family Foundation, was designed to get community feedback at the push of a button. The consultants and regional planners will use the feedback to produce a preferred development scenario for the county to present to elected officials. The goal is to complete the outreach and feedback-gathering component of the Blaine County 2025 campaign by the end of the year. A final scenario would be offered after the first of the year.
Peter Kenney, of Civic Results, a company that assists governments, businesses and nonprofit institutions to plan and implement initiatives collaboratively, oriented the audiences in Ketchum and Hailey to their wireless voting tools. Kenney facilitated a real-time interactive response to the exercise geared toward expressing trends in public sentiment about growth and management solutions. The exercise included a $5 fine for any cell phone interruptions with proceeds going to the Blaine County Hunger Coalition. About $10 was collected.
"This is about the whole county, but it is a county process," Herman told the audience as they entered their demographic information into the computerized database the consultants are building. He added that part of the goal of the process is to determine what the county and the cities as political entities can and cannot do together in the future.
Citizen feedback has also been gathered through the Blaine County 2025 Road Show surveys distributed at meetings held throughout the county over the past month. In addition to the use of the wireless voting tools to gather feedback Tuesday, data that will contribute to creating a community-wide vision will also be gathered through the end of the year through the "virtual town hall" found at www.blainecounty2025.org.
The live-voting process Tuesday kept audience members on their toes as they answered two hours of questions about where and how the county should grow. Instantaneous results showed that the exercise may be ushering in a new area of regional thinking, as those participating represented old-timers and new-comers to the area and city as well as rural county residents. One question showed that people came from a variety of professional backgrounds, including government employees and private entrepreneurs.
Taking into account data indicating the change in the physical, social, civic and human infrastructure of communities and regions to work towards plans that benefit the common good is the business of the Orten Family Foundation. The foundation developed out of planning struggles in a small Vermont town seeing a boom in second-home ownership in the mid-1990s. It is supported by proceeds from the Vermont Country Store. The group partners with nonprofit organizations, local and regional planning agencies and others to help "engage and empower people to make land-use decisions inspired by their community's heart and soul."
According to its Web site, the foundation "embraces the poet Gary Snyder's belief that 'People who can agree they share a commitment to the landscape—even if they are otherwise locked in struggle with each other—have at least one deep thing to share.'"
In a question about priorities, voters clicked that above all, the remote areas of the county should be protected. Open space, efficient transportation, affordable housing and a sustainable economy were also top values.
As part of the exercise, audience members were given four scenarios to consider for how growth should proceed. Using Google Earth, a graphic Internet device, Yacos demonstrated how the scenarios might look in one canyon located in the county. The models showed separated single-family homes and clustered, hamlet-style housing. Four scenarios, including a scenario "D," which calls for development of a new city in the county, were rated for how the scenarios represent voters' visions for community character.
The goal of the Blaine County 2025 outreach campaign is ultimately to bring one preferred alternative before the public that would dovetail with new ordinances and regulations that would enable the plan. Several members of the public noted that the goal appears lofty considering that the end of the county development moratorium is only eight months away. The county has yet to develop a countywide water conservation policy, one of the original driving factors for calling the moratorium and the ultimate link in any regional planning program. Others expressed concern that ultimately it is the culture of second-home ownership that will dictate the view of the county in the future.
Despite the county's longstanding rules that have kept development off state Highway 75, some expressed that for true hamlets to develop where people actually gather in some kind of establishment, more commercial development needs to be allowed in the county.
The current planning process endorsed by the county will wrap up with a final countywide round-table meeting Nov. 30 at the Community Campus in Hailey. Although it is open to the public, the meeting is geared toward city elected officials. The goal, Herman said, is to invite city leaders into the fold. He emphasized that for a successful county vision to surface, input from the cities is essential. County Commissioner Tom Bowman said some 70 to 90 elected officials and city planners have been invited to attend.
Overwhelming feedback Tuesday and during the road show of town hall meeting has been that density should be focused mainly in the existing cities. Increased concentrations for the cities, which could include some annexation of adjacent county land, would require changes in city ordinances to accommodate projected growth and sustainable building practices that satisfy both density goals and livability, said Developing Green partner Martin Flannes.
Herman said that the goal in the county is still to get the work out and build partnerships as plans for growth move forward in 2006.
Dozens of citizens weighed in Tuesday in Ketchum with a computerized polling exercise similar to that used in the television program "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire." Facilitated by Ben Herman, of Clarion Associates, Karen Yacos, of the Vermont-based Orten Family Foundation, and Peter Kenney, of Civic Results, the polling exercise kept audiences in Ketchum and Hailey busy voicing their values for two hours Tuesday. The survey is part of the outreach component of the "Blaine County 2025: Where and How Will we Grow?" campaign. The planning process initiated by the county is an effort to get citizen input as part of the county's quest to create regional solutions for growth in the county as a whole. Express photo by Matt Furber
