Are they putting something in the water at Ketchum City Council meetings? You folks continue to be more fantastic each month.
You adore your $200,000-a-year consultant and want to rehire him. Is he hypnotizing you? I read what he had to say. It sounded like a mixture of new age speak and a nonsense military briefing.
I need to be a consultant.
I would appreciate one newspaper reporter doing an investigative story instead of a simple report. I suggest a story investigating consultants hired over the last 10 years, to what purpose and how much money has been spent on them by local governments.
Along with each new council needing to take a field trip to Aspen to see how they do things over there, it seems that the solution for any divisive decision that the council is unwilling or unable to come to a decision on, they hire an expensive "outside expert" who knows more than we do and who can be blamed for a failure.
We tore out vital middle-of-town parking spaces to put in lawn, toilets and a kiosk. Who but dogs uses this new park? Nobody staffs the information booth, except possibly on July Fourth or Wagon Days. Families are not picnicking in that park. The unsightly toilets, ironically, are halfway between the two nicest and most accessible public toilets in town, Giacobbi Square's basement and Beppe's Courtyard.
If I was king, I'd put up a three-level, all-weather, affordable parking structure on that huge space, but only if I was serious about giving people a central, convenient place to put their car while they walk around town spending money. I'm not king.
We now have under construction an attractive block so pedestrians will eventually be able to saunter in style between Atkinsons' and the cleaners, Tully's and Jane's. There was a need for this?
A consultant, no doubt, talked us into subsidizing flights from Denver to Hailey. I'm sure the only thing stopping Colorado-area skiers and mountain bikers from coming to our tiny, isolated, expensive Idaho resort has been the lack of direct flights.
We have had expensive direct flights from Salt Lake City for ages. Are skiers forsaking Utah powder to fly into Sun Valley for a week? Most of them can't even find Sun Valley on a map.
Was it a consultant that we can blame for that absurd three-lane bridge on Highway 75 and enduring two and a half years of dreadful construction to build one mile of road?
Are consultants telling the council to promote banks and not build hotels?
Will your consultant next year suggest we all park in the River Run lot and take a shuttle bus into town to facilitate becoming a community of happy pedestrians and employees spending money in town supporting struggling small businesses?
Perhaps there will be reserved parking for City Council members and consultants.
We posture that our economy is based on attracting visitors, yet there are few affordable places for them to spend the night.
Our fortunes are based on continuous construction, development of empty, untaxed speculative condos and office buildings, seldom-occupied mansions and big banks to finance them. Every one of you knows that this land rush is where the real money is in this valley.
Hundreds of workers commute 750 miles a week up and down that highway from the three counties south of us to fuel this boom. They are our workforce of construction workers, housekeepers, landscape laborers, service and retail employees.
At least give them a place to park when they come in to town to spend money for lunch, not an empty park or a lovely block of attractive sidewalk.
Your consultant will take your money and go home.
Mike Bernardi
Ketchum
