Get accustomed to hearing this word: Zipcar.
It's an idea whose time may have come for Ketchum and its city council members who are grappling with the real problems of downtown parking.
A Zipcar is a community vehicle available for spontaneous use by drivers who buy a membership and pay an hourly fee to drive it on errands, then leave it for another user.
The idea has spread from Germany to other world cities, including some in the United States.
Ketchum may consider buying one and experiment to see if a small fleet might be one solution to drivers leaving their own cars at home, thus freeing up valuable space now used for parking for other purposes. (If a community car sounds familiar, Ketchum for several years parked yellow bicycles around town for use by riders on short errands.)
Zipcar is one of a number of ideas that officials from Ketchum, Sun Valley and Blaine County picked up while attending an Aspen conference, "Innovative Ideas for a New West."
What about all that scrap lumber and building material from the Wood River Valley's feverish construction boom? That could be recovered and used for furnaces that supply energy at a cost far less than that of fossil fuels. The revenue generated could fatten the public purse and reduce taxes as well.
Attending the conference was a wise investment of public funds. One of the few drawbacks of living in an idyllic, small and relatively isolated community such as the Wood River Valley is that officials are out of earshot of cutting-edge ideas that could bring new efficiencies to city and county government.
