With the increasing outrage among citizens of Ketchum and throughout Blaine County over the Ketchum City Council's apparent future acceptance of the Hutchinson application (with, hopefully, one and, more hopefully, two members in opposition), I want to register my concern about the rezone of a portion of Block 11 for community housing on the south-end of the Bigwood Golf Course.
This is not a question of community housing (affordable, workforce, you name it! It is, rather, a question of a government that is not enforcing the law. Thunder Springs, for its PUD approval, has to intersperse anywhere from 16 to 19 community housing units among its multi-million dollar units "on the hill" on Saddle Road. A year or two ago, Ketchum's P&Z approved perhaps the last Thunder Springs multi-million dollar inclusion in the subdivision. It included 4 community housing units. P&Z questioned where the other 12 to 15 units would go; nevertheless, with no answer, P&Z still approved the subdivision.
Last night, that mysterious $600,000 payment to the City of Ketchum caught my ear. It came up often at the June 30 public hearing and Council President Baird Gouley intercepted it, offering to discuss it "at another time." Could that $600.000.00 to the City possibly be a payoff from Thunder Springs for not fulfilling the original quantity of community housing "on the hill?" That, plus all the money Hutchison 18 going to make by squeezing 16 community housing buildings on rezoned land, makes me only hope that a lot of it (money!) isn't going to be spread around City Hall!
Ruth Lieder
Ketchum
