In its rejection of a community housing development north of the city cemetery, the Ketchum City Council followed in the footsteps of many cowardly councils that preceded it.
Worse, the three-member council failed to debate the development.
Instead, each council member arrived at the meeting with prepared statements as to why they were going to sink the project and hand off responsibility to some unscheduled, unplanned and totally uncertain court declaration in the future.
The city's attorney had strenuously insisted in previous meetings of the Planning and Zoning Commission that the city was on firm legal ground if it chose to disregard a plat note that called for the property in question to remain as open space "in perpetuity." Yet, the council chose to disregard the advice and abandon its zoning power.
In doing so, the council put out the notice that is nearly always fatal in politics: "Threaten to sue us, and we will back down."
The council further ignored its own Planning and Zoning Commission that recommended approval of the project.
The council also rejected the spirit of public service that calls for the public's business to be deliberated upon in public.
Instead, the council's decision was like fast food: prepackaged, preprocessed and designed to take the path of least resistance.
That means that the so-called public hearing during the meeting was a sham.
It means the public was deprived of the benefit of hearing the council debate the shortage of community workforce housing and the zoning questions involved.
With the rejection, the council abandoned the valley's workers, particularly the young who have precious few options for gaining a financial foothold in a valley that desperately needs them.
The council abandoned businesses that have consistently described for the city the difficulties they face in recruiting employees because of huge housing costs.
The council even abandoned Ketchum's own police and fire departments that have told the council of their desperate need for housing for emergency services personnel to ensure fast responses.
The council indicated that it might allow the developer to pay fees in lieu of constructing affordable housing.
Such fees are a joke in a city that can't find any place to locate more than token numbers of community housing units.
Like the in-lieu parking fees the city once collected, they are likely to lie dormant in a bank account and have all buying power shredded by inflation.
If the council didn't strike the death knell for community housing in Ketchum, it surely bought the coffin and the nails.
