I wonder when the city of Ketchum will have a forward thinking, logical thinking Mayor and City Council that represents their residents.
The present Mayor and City Council certainly don't meet those criteria. Take, for instance, the Thunder Springs affordable housing controversy, where the city officials are entertaining, indeed encouraging the building of said affordable housing on land that has been designated as open space. Approving such development creates a massive distrust of said city officials. Why has Thunder Springs been allowed to avoid providing the required affordable housing on their land? Allowing someone else other than Thunder Springs to build affordable housing means that such affordable housing will be that much less affordable, defeating the intent of providing affordable housing.
Further, after reading the letter to the editor from former Mayor Ruth Lieder, who has accounted for the $600,000.00 received from Thunder Springs?
Now, with regard to the affordable housing controversy, there was a comment that the City Council would resign if the Mayor were recalled. Now, that would be a good deal for the citizens. Imagine that, a five-fer-one deal! The city has never before given such a good deal. The most recent statement does not say that the whole City Council would resign, but that Baird Gourlay would! Now, that is not as good as a five-fer-one deal, but a two-fer-one deal isn't too bad in the dealing with the city.
The Mayor has countered with the comment that there was no spending beyond the budget. Of course, that does not matter, the budget was too big and wasteful without any extras! Imagine taking a perfectly good street and spending millions of dollars to create an inferior street! And imagine giving away millions of dollars to private enterprise so that they can advertise themselves and companies in another city!
John D. Jacoby
Ketchum
