So here's the thing.
The back and forth, pro and con testimony on the proposed Warm Springs Resort Hotel was not the most remarkable part of the five-hour public hearing in Ketchum on Wednesday night.
The most remarkable thing was that of the estimated 150 people who attended, the number of people under the age of 40 who testified could be counted on one hand.
And therein lies the problem.
The decision to be made on the hotel is a decision about the next 30 years in Ketchum—a future that desperately needs the energy and creativity that young people bring to a community.
A new hotel is not a panacea for the struggling local economy, but it is key to answering the question of whether any existing or new business that is not a bank or a mortuary will survive.
The hard truth is that the majority of people protesting the loudest about the proposed hotel are not part of the future. They are the past, and any viable vital future will be created by those not on the brink of becoming dust.
The buzz among young people who are trying to stake out lives in the valley is one of dismay.
They know they are an endangered species, stagnant in even their raw numbers for the last three decades and declining as a percentage of the valley's population.
Young people still come to the valley with high hopes only to find themselves hopelessly stymied by the lack of entry-level housing and faced with enormous economic obstacles.
Even though they have done all the right things—armed themselves with college degrees, good training and a strong work ethic—the majority find they cannot possibly work hard enough or long enough to ever own a home or raise a family. The price of entry is too high.
They talk with sadness about friends who have left and with resignation about the possibility of their own departure from the place they love.
Communities that do not enable the young to succeed sentence themselves to death—and Ketchum is fast filling out that death certificate in self-righteous discrimination against the young.
Taken together, arguments against hotels, against tourism and against entry-level housing in any neighborhood boil down to a community that is becoming notoriously anti-youth.
Not only are the objections discriminatory in nature, some carry a disturbing undercurrent of racism.
Ketchum must change. It must embrace youth and embrace life—or be embraced by tumbling tumbleweeds.
