Letters March 12, 2008

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

By Planet User

Life after affordable housing
 When affordable housing residents retire in 15 to 30 years, what assets will they have for that important stage in life?  Seems like: NOT MUCH.
- Stuart Sugarman
Jackson, Wyo.

Density breeds density
From a land use point of view it is easy for most people to see the problem with affordable housing, the more we build the more we need. But planning is thinking larger than yourself, longer than your lifetime. What will Jackson and Jackson Hole look like in 20 or 100 years?  Remember, humans do not have to live here. Wintering wildlife either flourish on critical habitat areas on the valley floor and on adjacent foothills or they die.

So consider the tradeoffs. I submit that the affordable housing cure is not a cure, but rather the disease of constantly increasing residential density. You must think long term to see the problem more clearly. Incremental high density real estate development has insidious consequences, especially when viewed with a 20 to 100 year perspective. The point here is overall density, not whether one agrees or disagrees with the concept of affordable housing.
- Darrel Hoffman
Jackson, Wyo.

Hospital giveaway bad for Jackson
When governmental entities granted a long-term land lease to the Art Center group, many old-time locals and others saw it as a give-a-way of valuable public land. Yet at least a private group built the Art Center, and neither public employees nor public services were impacted.

By contrast, the proposed St. John’s hospital lease to a private group would essentially be a give-a-way by our public hospital district of immensely important, valuable public community assets - land, buildings and equipment donated or paid for by the public. That is bad enough, but the public hospital district would remain in existence to tax the people of Teton County, and would turn that money over to the private group as well.
Most important of all, public healthcare employees, staff members and public healthcare services would lose the protection of public accountability and sunshine laws, which currently apply to St. John’s leadership as part of our “checks and balances.”

Furthermore, it would be extremely difficult to undo the deal in the future, and difficult to enforce some fancy lease since the public hospital district (landlord) would essentially become an empty suit.

The money given to expensive St. John’s consultants would be better spent on local healthcare needs. At a time when some of the hospital’s customer base is going elsewhere, the hospital leadership should be doing everything possible to get closer to the community, instead of doing the exact opposite.
- Peter Moyer
Jackson, WY

Ours, not theirs
<The letter was edited for length. - Eds>
Nothing, nothing at all should be allowed to happen to that forest service highly valuable public property. It belongs to “We the People.” It’s not theirs to do with whatever they want. First the Forest Service seriously undervalued this plum of a property by a factor of perhaps 50 percent so that someone in or close to this kleptocracy of Bush’s can put in a no-bid, under the table offer - maybe Halliburton wants to branch out  into the industrial high end tourist business. We’ve all seen this president is capable of doing just that in the aftermath of Katrina.

To get an idea of who is behind this ill-conceived blatant public rip-off, ill-conceived for the public, one needs to look no further than the master of the no-bid contract, the world’s most famous, invisible CEO, our own homeboy Dirty Dick Cheney. And it is consistent for a presidency that let Big Oil write its energy policy, complete with $500,000.000 retirement packages for retiring executives at the cost of the rest of the economy. Look what the aiding and abetting of the BLM and National Forest Service is giving to the Pinedale area, SMOG ALERTS! That’s right folks, the air in and around the Wind River Mountains can be hazardous to your health.

  The thinking behind this Forest Service’s push, I’m sure, is to get this deal quickly done before the next gang of liars and thieves take office in January, you got to pick those plums while they’re ripe and nobody is looking. In all the years I’ve lived in Jackson I always admired the fight in this town’s public spirit. For as long as I can remember, Jackson had the reputation around the rest of Wyoming as a place always ready for a minor squabble while it waited for a major fight to break out.

This is and should be a major fight in the upcoming elections, not just this but all sell-offs of public property. With the small army of legal gunfighters it has in its midst Jackson can stop this deal, at least until some adults move into the White House next January, and hopefully keep our We the People’s Bridger-Teton National Forest Service office here in Jackson where it belongs.
- Mike Craig
Jackson, Wyo.

Affordable housing, smart design
In Teton County, zoning regulations have been modernized to encourage affordable housing, but not at the expense of everything else.

 The affordable housing regulations (Section 2540 A.3.a) specify neighborhood development that achieves ‘best management practices for higher densities…such as Traditional Neighborhood Design as described by the Congress for New Urbanism.’
 A brief self-education foray makes obvious that Teton Meadows Ranch IN NO WAY meets the legal standard. In fact, it represents the worst of suburban sprawl that the New Urbanism movement is trying to correct. (And which our regulations indicate we are trying to avoid?)

 What should we be building instead? New Urbanism (also known as Smart Growth or Smart Design) gives clear direction. ‘Metropolitan regions should develop strategies to encourage…infill development over peripheral expansion.’

Teton Meadows is six miles from town jobs and services. Teton Meadows has no suitable water supply or sewer connection, has only one entry road, is in a wildlife migration corridor, and is on land zoned rural (maximum eight homes on the 288-acre parcel). Teton Meadows is peripheral expansion at its worst.

 Think about this. According to a Teton County travel study, residents generate 11 trips per household daily. Five hundred households in Teton Meadows translates to almost 6,000 more trips in the valley EVERY DAY.

By definition, affordable housing is dense. From an impact standpoint, that is desirable. But only if it is built in an already-developed area, where public services and infrastructure already exist. Where you have the possibility of walking or biking to jobs, schools, shopping. Where a vibrant living environment can be created for people, but which avoids fragmenting existing green space, abusing critical habitat, degrading the local watershed, further deteriorating the environment.

Short term for humans, here may be the most important point. If you build affordable housing in already-developed areas, you make a NET-POSITIVE impact on the affordable housing supply. If you build affordable housing in an un-developed area, you do not. At best, you only KEEP UP. Why is this? Because every new development node ITSELF generates the need for more goods and services. More workers, more trips, more housing, etc.

Infill development, Town as Heart, whatever you want to call it. When it comes to affordable housing, this is what we should be approving and building. It’s the only way we will make forward progress in affordable housing in Teton County, PERMANENTLY. How obvious could it be?
- Karen Langenberg
Teton County, Wyo.
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