The Ketchum Planning and Zoning Commission wants a new leader.
That's according to Commission Chairwoman Anne Corrock, who said in a Tuesday afternoon interview that three of her fellow commissioners asked her to step down from her leadership role during a Monday morning executive session. Corrock said she declined.
"They felt I was biased and represented a group of people," said Corrock, who has served on the P&Z for four years. Her term expires Dec. 7, and she indicated she does not plan to seek reappointment. P&Z members are nominated by the mayor and approved by the City Council.
Tuesday afternoon telephone calls to commissioners Sam Williams and Deborah Burns were not returned by press deadline, but Commissioner Curtis Kemp characterized the meeting as something like a family argument best kept behind closed doors.
"We felt that it was a private matter and that it should be handled privately," he said. "We talked things through. And I'm not talking about discussing aspects of a particular application. I'm talking about aspects of our handling duties as commissioners."
Corrock said she wished to share some of what happened behind closed doors on Monday morning because she believed her colleagues' complaints should have been aired in a public forum.
"They didn't specifically say what group, but they felt I was working for an organized group of neighbors who were opposed to the (Warm Springs Ranch Resort) project," Corrock said. "Their request to have me step down was in direct response to my comments at the Tuesday (Nov. 13) hearing on the Warm Springs (Ranch Resort) pre-application, design-review hearing."
Warm Springs Ranch Resort is a massive hotel, recreation and residence project slated for 77 acres of land at the northeast corner of Bald Mountain, at the site of historic Warm Springs Ranch. Anticipated for the property are a 380,000- to 540,000-square-foot hotel, 75,000 square feet of townhomes, up to 400 above- and below-ground parking spaces and up to 41 units of affordable housing. Building heights would push 90 feet, a full 60 feet above the grade of Warm Springs Road.
The proposal has come at a time when Ketchum city leaders are actively courting high-end hotel developers. During this fall's elections, all six City Council candidates supported construction of a new hotel.
At the Nov. 13 hearing, P&Z commissioners displayed a range of concerns and feedback, but Corrock, a resident of Warm Springs, was the most outspoken critic.
She said in a follow-up interview that it's unlikely the project would ever get her support as proposed last week.
"It's too big," she said, "especially for its location, which is right in the center of a residential part of the community where we have working people and full-time residents living, and I don't want to run them off."
Corrock said she felt that differences of opinion, regardless of what they are, are healthy for discussion on any issue.
"I'm surprised that they felt so strongly about my statements at that meeting that they were compelled to take it into a private meeting and ask me to step down," she said. "I don't feel it needed to be done in private, number one; and number two, I was doing my job as a commissioner."
Even with Corrock's apparently imminent departure from the P&Z and the unlikely chance that Warm Springs Ranch Resort would return for another public hearing before then, Kemp said he, Burns and Williams believed the matter was of sufficient importance to discuss now.
Corrock said she has enjoyed her four years on the P&Z and hopes qualified candidates will step up to fill her place, as well as that of Kemp, who will be sworn in to the Ketchum City Council in January.
Anne Corrock
