Strong leadership

Last week, the council reaffirmed that it will not support a highway bypass just to calm down traffic on Main Street. A city employee had mistakenly indicated that the city might like a bypass. The council castigated the employee and made it abundantly clear it didn’t like the idea at all.

The council knows only too well what a bypass would mean: An old tree-lined neighborhood that now lives peacefully with the valley bike path would suddenly be bifurcated by a strip of roaring traffic. Access to Hailey’s downtown would become inconvenient and businesses would suffer.

The council also tabled a design for a new gas station because it looks like it came straight out of suburbia. The Planning and Zoning Commission had rejected the design.

The city learned this lesson the hard way. For many years, it did not regulate design in any way. It had no power to protect its lovely 19^th-century-style downtown from erosion by cheap box construction and tree-free seas of asphalt. Finally, the building that houses King’s got residents’ attention and regulation soon followed.

Hailey has no desire to look like everywhere else. It shouldn’t have to.

Planning consultant John Parr told an enthusiastic local audience this week that valley cities have the power to fight the sameness that threatens to engulf every town in America. However, he said fighting the push toward sameness takes strong leadership.

Hailey has it. The council should stick with its vision of the town and insist on getting it.