For the week of February 20 - 26, 2002

Wanted:
Ideas and opinions

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There’s a whole lot of listening going on this month.

Ketchum’s mayor and council will be on hand at an old-fashioned town hall meeting this evening to find out what’s on residents’ minds. Planned state Highway 75 improvements will be featured at the meeting, rather than the city’s park and ride lot as previously announced.

The meeting will consist of an early open forum and the Highway 75-targeted discussion, for which highway consultant Diana Atkins will give a presentation.

It will start at 5:30 p.m. at the American Legion Hall at 220 Cottonwood Street in West Ketchum.

Valley residents should take the city up on the invitation to offer up their best ideas for the community.

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In the south county, the question before the public will be whether or not the Little Wood River below the reservoir should be put into a pipe.

The Little Wood Irrigation District wants to know what concerns people about doing away with the open stream, canals and ditches. Delivering the water through a pipe to sprinkler systems on 12,000 acres of farmland around Carey could cut down annual water loss by 30 percent. It could also reduce erosion.

However, cottonwood trees that now line the stream banks would die, and birds like the white-faced ibis may be affected. Farm production would also be interrupted during construction of the $20 million project.

A meeting to discuss the proposal will be held on Thursday, Feb. 28, at 7 p.m., at Carey School.

No stream should be piped without a great reason and a lot of thought about the consequences.

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Residents concerned about Blaine Manor’s struggle to stay afloat will want to take pen in hand and let Gov. Dirk Kempthorne know what they think about unnecessarily increasing costs at the county’s only nursing home.

To save Idaho money, Kempthorne wants to require Medicaid recipients to get state authorization prior to receiving more than four prescription drugs. The governor says it will keep people from stockpiling drugs and wasting public money.

The proposal angered Blaine Manor officials. They say it may save the state money, but it will drive the nursing home further into red ink. Getting state authorization would be time-consuming, expensive and unnecessary in the manor’s professionally supervised setting.

Could the rule of unintended consequences at work. Or maybe a foxy cost shift.

 

 

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