There are nails protruding from the walls in Ron LeBlanc's second-floor office at Ketchum City Hall. The framed photographs and plaques that hung there are packed up and gone. Before the week is through, the office will be empty.
Following five and a half years as the city's chief executive, the Ketchum city administrator is moving to Durango, Colo., where he will take the reins as city manager in early January. And while his personal belongings are going with him, he is leaving behind a record of accomplishments that he said speak for themselves.
LeBlanc, 54, will leave Ketchum City Hall on Thursday.
He is a man not apt to waste words. Rather than explain city finances with a barrage of colorful rhetoric, he would prefer to hand over a spreadsheet detailed with numbers. Rather than talk at length about burying power lines throughout the city's downtown, he would prefer to walk the streets and point out where the power lines used to be.
LeBlanc has a long resume that spans tenures with a number of medium-size cities—Arvada, Colo., (population 95,000); Springfield, Ore., (population 43,000); Olathe, Kans., (population 65,000); and Groton, Conn., (population 45,000). Ketchum, with a population of 3,100, is by far the smallest city he has worked for.
But it comes with its own set of challenges.
"I think the estimated population of Ketchum at Christmas week and at Wagon Days is around 20,000, so you have to beef up staff to handle the bigger crowds," he said. "I think consistently we have 12,000 people here day-in and day-out. There's 8,000 cars on the highway every day."
LeBlanc's point is that Ketchum's $10 million budget does not accurately reflect the number of people for which the city must build infrastructure and provide services.
"It's a challenge," he said. "It's a challenge to try and understand the population ebbs and flows. And a seasonal homeowner has different demands when they're in town than a resident does."
LeBlanc continued to explain more of his accomplishments, things like ushering in the first phase of the Fourth Street Heritage Corridor and developing more details about burying power lines throughout the city. But one of the things he's leaving unfinished helps give a picture of the man behind the administrator.
"One of the things I'm anxious to do, and I regret that I won't be here to help with it, is a seminar on ethics for all public officials," he said.
LeBlanc is a member of the International City Management Association, a Washington, D.C.,-based organization that adheres to a strict code of ethics.
"We believe that we should be doing work for the public good in the light of day, and we should set the standard for others to follow," he said.
Posed with a question challenging how seriously he takes the code, he answered that he is "dead serious."
"It's all part of good government," he said.
He said codes of ethics have elements that are common among all professions, "but a code of ethics—that's what makes a it a profession."
"When you go to a doctor, the doctor takes an oath. Lawyers. Engineers. But you don't have codes of ethics for all professions, and that's how I would define a profession. If you have a code of ethics you have a profession. If you don't, then maybe you're not a profession."
During his years in Ketchum, LeBlanc said he is proud of a number of his accomplishments.
"I think there are about three things that are all related that I can link together," he said. "The first step that I took was to assess the city's finance systems. We revised them, improved them, and now they can stand on their own. Included in that is implementation of development impact fees."
On LeBlanc's watch, Ketchum became the first city in Idaho to implement all impact fees that are allowed by Idaho Code.
"Ketchum was the first to have a street impact fee, park impact fee, water impact fee, sewer, fire and a police impact fee," he said.
The fees took about two years to implement.
"The first full year we had the fees we generated $435,000," he said. "These impact fees are a way for new growth to pay its own way, and the citizens don't have to pay for growth when you have impact fees."
Conservatively, he said the impact fees should continue to bring about $500,000 to the city each year.
Also, during LeBlanc's time at Ketchum, the city's bond rating rose considerably.
"We were a triple B. We were not a good credit when I arrived here," he said. "We are now a good credit (A1). That will benefit the city when it borrows money. It will benefit the Ketchum Urban Renewal Agency. And it will benefit the citizens because we get lower bond rates when we go to the bond market."
As an example, he said the city recently refinanced a property from a 10 percent note to a 4 percent note.
"These are the types of things I do that I do very well, and I hope whoever replaces me will continue that effort," he said.
He compared finance tasks to being confronted with a plate full of food that includes peas.
"You've got to eat the peas first and get them out of the way," he said, adding that he hopes the city will consider hiring a full-time finance manager in the near future.
"We are very complicated, and we will have a large number of capital finance projects in the next five to 10 years that will require a lot of financial knowledge."
LeBlanc has also presided over a stem-to-stern transition of the city's computer and telephone networks, essentially bringing it into the 21st century.
"When I arrived here, the computer on my desk was an IBM 386," he said. "It used three-and-a-half-inch floppy disks. Now we use e-mail. We also have GIS. We have a new phone system. We've developed standards for city computers, and that includes training for employees."
As it moves forward, he said, Ketchum should remain focused on implementing its downtown master plan, and contended that the city's growing recognition of a need for affordable housing will pay off.
At the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, in Durango, LeBlanc said, he is looking forward to new challenges, like managing an airport, something he hasn't yet faced in his career. Also, he has considerable experience working with Native American tribes on the East Coast, and the Ute Mountain and Southern Ute tribes near Durango could give him the opportunity to put his past experience in that area to work.
LeBlanc is not a downhill skier, but he enjoys cross-country skiing, hiking, fishing and mountain biking. And he has particularly enjoyed the Wood River Valley community.
"I think it's a great community," he said. "I have quite a few good friends, and I will hopefully maintain their friendships forever. It's been a great experience to meet the people who live here. There is a very unique set of individuals who I hold dear to my heart."
