An item in Ketchum's budget discussions this summer could draw on German ingenuity.
With parking a continual headache—for drivers, for retailers and for people who want to use that premium space for something else—a shared car could alleviate some of the burden and free up stalls for other uses. It could, supporters hope, convince some drivers to give up their personal automobiles all together.
The idea of a Zipcar came to its American founders after a visit to Berlin. While there, they saw cars parked around the city for people to drive instead of using their own vehicles.
The car-share concept, and other ideas related to sustainable communities, was discussed at a three-day conference called "Innovative Ideas for a New West," held in Aspen May 12-14.
Elected officials and city staff from Sun Valley and Ketchum, as well as Blaine County Commissioner Sarah Michael, attended the event, organized by the Sopris Foundation.
"People there were people who love the West," Sun Valley Mayor Jon Thorson said Friday, May 19. "They want to hold the magnificent for themselves and for those that come after them. We've got a lot of problems now: transportation, land costs, development; you name it, they talked about it."
Workshops and presentations brought together academics, ranchers, planners and politicians to consider solutions regarding rural and urban interface, land use and public transportation.
Ketchum City Council President Baird Gourlay, in an interview with the Mountain Express Monday, said the notion of a shared car, available for hourly rentals by city employees and the public, is one he wants to explore.
If some residents of planned deed-restricted building in downtown Ketchum could be persuaded they don't need a car, those parking spaces, and the costs associated with building them, could go toward more living units, Gourlay said.
"For every three parking spaces, instead of that, we could provide an affordable housing unit," he said.
Some housing communities around the nation share Zipcars. As a pilot program, Gourlay said, the city could buy one for everyone to share.
At a cost of less than $10 an hour plus membership, and designated, prime parking spaces around town, the idea could catch on, he said.
The leasing cost to the city would be $1,200 per month, defrayed in part by public use, Gourlay added.
Food scraps, cut grass and wood chips could also be figured into the equation of a sustainable community.
Conference participants learned about biomass, a way to produce energy from wood, garbage, crop waste and other organic material from plants and animals.
"The Forest Service has waste from their stewardship program, and landscapers have all this mass that's going to the landfill," Gourlay said. "We have these monster houses. Every time they cut a two-by-four, there's wood left over. We could use that as burnable fuel."
Private investment could be tapped for a plant in a place such as Custer County.
Gourlay is putting feelers out to the school district to consider using a wood-burning furnace to power schools.
"Here's a program you could start getting kids involved in," he said. "Renewable resources are the place to be. The resources we're pulling out of the ground are not going to last."
A few hot issues get residents fired up, but many people feel their input is solicited only after development plans are nearly complete, Gourlay said.
Architect and conference speaker Richard Swett said the DAD approach—design, announce, defend—is not in a community's best interest, nor in the developers'.
Community workshops could be made mandatory at the outset, Gourlay said, and would provide people an alternate opportunity to offer input without speaking publicly at packed hearings.
"The development plans could integrate what the community wants and what developers want," he said.
Such a process could be applied to annexation and subdivision ordinances, and could impact potential development at River Run and Warm Springs, Gourlay said.
Thorson said Sun Valley will consider revisiting its requirements for affordable housing, both with the number of units developers need to build and stricter requirements for in-lieu payments.
"Real estate escalates so much, (developers) will step up and give you whatever you want," he said. "In-lieu fees should be a penalty on top of that, not an option for skating. It should have a little hurt in it."
Although city leaders are fresh from the idea exchange, it will likely be a while before concept turns to reality.
"We will start integrating that into discussions we have ... and ordinances we're creating now," Gourlay said.
