Idaho Fire Update

Castle Rock Costs Ketchum $200,000

By Gary Stivers, SunValleyOnline.Com, Guest Writer, 9-11-07

Without making any firm decisions, the Ketchum City Council Tuesday evening began searching for $200,000 in savings to accommodate that size of a drop in anticipated Local Option Tax revenues resulting from the Castle Rock Fire, including the difficult cancellation of Wagon Days, Ketchum’s single biggest holiday of summer.

While the sum is large, city leaders hadn’t yet adopted the budget the shortfall will affect and have time to make changes to balance the budget. But what projects and departments will be short-funded has yet to be identified, though a small extension of the 4th Street upgrade will move forward because much of the materials for it –paver blocks and street lights- are already here.

“We need to cut $166,645 to come out even,” City administrator Ron LeBlanc informed the city council, though the city’s revenue losses will be greater. “It’s about $100,000 in [the last two weeks of] August and $100,000 in September.”

After more than an hour’s discussion, the council considered a variety of cutbacks, including reducing nearly all contracts for services –donations to public service groups- to $1,000 each, saving $13,500; holding off on hiring a senior planner until January; cutting the city’s contingency fund from $82,000 to $25,000; eliminating a $30,000 salary survey and city leaders agreed to ask the Parks and Recreation and Police departments to produce 3% reductions however they deem best.

Mayor Randy Hall suggested asking Police Chief Corey Lyman to reexamine how the Police Trust Fund –comprised mainly of seized drug moneys- might carry more of the department’s operating costs. Hall noted the trust funds could not be used for scheduled expenses such as salaries, but could cover one-time purchases, as it did with the acquisition of a vehicle for assistant police chief Mike McNeil.

Parks supporter Councilwoman Terry Tracy, who ran the city’s recreation programming for 25 years before being elected to the city council, suggested the parks staff might take over more of the landscaping duties to avoid hiring contractors to do such work.

To secure the remaining cuts, LeBlanc noted he could work with the department heads to make the reductions as painlessly as possible and bring them to a special midday council meeting on Monday, September 10. Clerk Sandy Cady noted that would still leave her seven days to submit the mandatory ‘L2’ document that entitles the city to receive its portion of property taxes levied in the city.

Ketchum for the coming fiscal year will be operated on a $9.855 million budget, eight percent above the current-year spending plan.

What to do with Wagon Days t-shirts?

As a result of cancelling the Wagon Days parade and holiday, the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber and Visitors Bureau and the Wagon Days organizing committee have a number of unsold t-shirts left over. Monday evening, the Ketchum City Council considered what might be done about the overstock.

City administrator LeBlanc said ‘a couple thousand’ are ordered every year and many remain since the 15,000 to 20,000 visitors the holiday weekend usually draws never appeared.

“Did you guys see the one, ‘I got wild in Ketchum?’ Councilman Baird Gourlay asked of a custom t-shirt he’d seen. “ ‘Wild’ is [shown as] a flame.”

“We can re-screen them,” Mayor Hall said. “Send them back and re-screen them with something to hook [people] and try to sell them at some sort of event.”

North-valley resident Kingsley Murphy suggested setting up several stands at the Trailing of the Sheep event now just over a month away might be a good way to sell the shirts.

Joy Kasputys suggested ‘The Ash Bash.’

Mayor Hall said the best line he’s heard yet was coined by Police Chief Cory Lyman: Save Baldy – Back-burn Ketchum!

Kasputys, a member of Ketchum’s Community Development Corporation, said that group could assist in the matter and Hall said he’d have a word with the Chamber.

Chamber staff Sharon Ahern Wednesday said there are only 100 or so t-shirts left, to her awareness and that re-screening might not make sense for so few.

Ironically, photographer Michael Edminster’s photomontage of the Lewis String of wagons shows Bald Mountain in the background as it appeared in the smoke-filled air Ketchum experienced in the week leading to the holiday.

Check in with SunValleyOnline.com for more updates on the Castle Rock Fire.

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