FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2017
mtexpress.com | Volume 43 | Number 5 S U N
County analyzes property tax break Page 7
Hailey considers new housing district
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Ketchum to review paid parking Paid parking lots started in November By PETER JENSEN Express Staff Writer
After outcry from business owners downtown, the Ketchum City Council has agreed to review the city’s new paid parking system. In November, the city imposed paid parking at two city-owned lots on Leadville Avenue and Washington Avenue. The city charges $1.50 an hour to park in those lots, using a kiosk or smartphone app. The Washington Avenue parking lot is between First and Second streets, while the Leadville Avenue lot is on Sixth Street. During its meeting Monday, the council agreed to review paid parking once new Mayor Neil Bradshaw and new Councilwomen Amanda Breen and Courtney Hamilton take office in January. The council did not take a formal vote; Councilwoman Anne Corrock was absent. Karen Dickens, owner of the Primavera Plants and Flowers shop on Leadville Avenue, told the council that paid parking was hurting retail businesses downtown. She spoke on behalf of 10 business owners in a building on 511 Leadville Ave. “This is more than the city of Los Angeles charges for parking,” Dickens told the council. “Please reconsider your decision. The businesses in this town pay your salary, too. This is going to hurt our local merchants.” Dickens suggested allowing drivers to park their cars in the lots free of charge for the first hour. Ketchum Finance Director Grant Gager said the kiosks could be reconfigured to accommodate that, if the council wished. However, he said it might mislead drivers who would still need to use the kiosk to park their cars. With the first hour free, Gager said, people might walk away without using the kiosk first. Councilman Jim Slanetz agreed that the city needs to review the system. During the meeting, the council displayed See PARKING, Page 13
Express Photo by Willy Cook
Wood River High School AP computer science students Brandon Scott, left, and Steve Lapa help Bill Brand with his iPad on Wednesday at the Senior Connection in Hailey.
The ‘IT’ crowd Students, senior citizens join up for tech help in Hailey By MARK DEE
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n amplified voice climbed over the fizz and crackle of lunch hour at the Senior Connection Wednesday afternoon. “If you’re looking for tech support, the students are here!” said Teresa Beahen Lipman, the executive director. On tables throughout the dining room, iPhones were already out. And then, about a dozen students from Wood River High School’s Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles class spent an hour trying to get them right, led by their teacher, Becky Duncan, who is also a board member at the Senior Connection. That’s how this idea came to her, after a board meeting last year. “When they found out I was the tech teacher at the high school, they kept me here all afternoon,” Duncan said Wednesday. This year, she had the perfect group to help her out. The AP class takes a “global look” at computer science, Duncan said, including the
“It’s my first time doing this here, but I’m cultural, social and individual impacts of used to it,” Lapa said. “Usually, the only peotechnology. “It’s a neat opportunity to get the kids ple I help with tech is my parents.” Lapa’s family lives in Bellevue, though out, and teach them the soft skills they’ll his parents were born in Peru. need,” she said. “And, it’s great That’s one of the many places to combine a couple of different Brand saw during his stint in the generations.” military. Two of her students, senior “I was there years ago, flying Brandon Scott and junior Steve for Truman,” he told Lapa. “I tell Lapa, sat down with former Ketyou what, I’ve seen a lot of this chum Fire Chief Bill Brand, who world, and this,” he added, pointis 92, and his iPad Pro. ing to the earth at his feet, “this is “Now, why do I get these numthe best place in it.” bers when I open FaceTime?” Brand fiddled with someone’s Brand asked. cell phone, set beside his iPad on FaceTime? the table. “Yeah. See Tommy over Becky Duncan “Is that an iPhone, too?” there?” Brand said, pointing to WRHS computer Brand, an Apple devotee with the adjacent table. “He’s 94. I call science teacher and a MacBook Pro at home, asked. him every morning.” board member at The He unholstered his own—larger, Tommy waved Brand off, Senior Connection newer—from a Velcro pouch on intent on finishing lunch. In front of him on the table, where the silverware his belt. Before him—small, medium and might be, was his iPhone, set as square and large—sat the Three Bears of Steve Jobs’ dreams. close-at-hand as a gunslinger’s pistol. “Yeah, it’s like yours—but your screen is Meanwhile, Scott and Lapa ran Brand a lot bigger.” through the problem.
“When they found out I was the tech teacher, they kept me here all afternoon.”
mtexpress.com | Volume 42 | Number 92 S U N
Report: Bergdahl plans to plead guilty
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R A N K E D N O . 1 F O R L O C A L N E W S B Y T H E N AT I O N A L N E W S P A P E R A S S O C I AT I O N A N D I D A H O P R E S S C L U B
SVSEF set to take over Rotarun Both sides hope to keep skiing accessible, affordable in the south valley By MARK DEE Express Staff Writer
Express photo by Roland Lane
The Boise Highlanders brought their Scottish flair to the Folklife Fair in Hailey on Saturday. Performers from traditional sheep-herding groups, including Peruvians, Basques and Poles, performed throughout the weekend.
Crowds flock to woolly weekend Trailing of the Sheep returns the valley to its ranching roots “How long have they been doing this, running sheep? Look at the Bible and see how long. It’s as old a job as there is in the world.” Robin Sommerville Blanco, Texas, resident
By MARK DEE
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ancher John Faulkner drove his sheep down from winter, from the high summer pastures now brushed with October snow, white as wool. But during the sheep parade on Sunday in Ketchum—the capstone of the annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival— winter followed close behind. His band of more than a thousand animals marked the end of the five-day festival, celebrating the area’s ranching heritage and sheep in all their forms. They followed the route Faulkner had taken for the past 75 years, every fall since he was 10—the route his father and grandfather had taken before that, through Ketchum and Hailey and on to Gooding in the south. The setting has changed since then. The ranching outpost that his grandfather knew has grown into a resort town.
Express photo by Roland Lane
A guard dog leads some 1,500 sheep down Main Street in Ketchum on Sunday afternoon, capping off the 21st annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival. And on Sunday, the once-sleepy path through Ketchum’s downtown was lined with thousands to see the sheep make their annual passage. Some were in folding chairs, or sheep ears, or swaddled by blankets. Others roamed with coffee in hand for warmth, or as a balm against the night before. (“I guess those sheepherders know how to party,” someone said from the sideline.)
Temperatures in town hovered in the low 40s, capped by gusty winds. Drafts blew down from the north, snapping and straightening the flags as the parade came onto Main. They pulled thin leaves from the trees, yellowed by fall. And beneath them, crowds massed four- to six-deep along the five-block stretch of Ketchum’s downtown, waiting See SHEEP, Page 14
The Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation will take over operations at Rotarun this winter, bringing increased beginner programming— and a stronger ski-team presence—to the southvalley hill. The deal, announced late last week, will take some strain off the Hailey ski area, which has become more and more demanding to keep afloat in recent years, according to Jesse Foster, president of Rotarun’s board of directors. “To me, it’s the ultimate way of making the mountain sustainable,” he said. “It’s an amazing training ground for kids. Last year, we’d have 20 or 25 people come to open ski on a typical Saturday. Their program guaranteed us 70 kids—that’s huge for making Rotarun workable.” Jesse Foster The board will President of the Rotarun maintain its lease with board of directors Blaine County, as well as its arrangements with neighbors and its water rights. But starting Nov. 1, the Ketchum-based nonprofit organization will bear the expenses and claim any revenues—which, according to SVSEF Executive Director Sam Adicoff, hardly cover costs. “On its own, Rotarun is not financially viable—and we’ll never get to the point where it will be financially viable,” he said. “We’re seeking, and have received, support. But we need the community behind us on this.” Looking at the back bumpers of cars valleywide, it’s clear the SVSEF has the network to drum up support. That’s one reason why Rotarun has been courting this relationship for years, working to get the ski team involved in the south valley, Foster said. “The fact is, Ski Ed has connections—to equipment and financial backers—that can expand the sport to new demographics,” he said. The foundation—whose mission is to provide ski and snowboard training and competitive opportunities for Wood River Valley youths— has already announced one new program, called Rota-Rippers, directed toward getting young, first-generation skiers out onto the hill. The sixweek program will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays in January and February. According to the
“We don’t compete with Sun Valley—we can’t. But we can give kids access, and get them hooked.”
See ROTARUN, Page 15
mtexpress.com | Volume 42 | Number 78 s u n
Eclipse impresses, causes few problems
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Eclipse blankets northern valley in daytime darkness
By PETER JENSEN
Express photo by Roland Lane
This photo of the sun and moon during the total phase of the solar eclipse on Monday shows the sun’s corona, a plasma atmosphere surrounding the star, shining from behind the moon. The photo was taken from the top of Bald Mountain, above Ketchum.
Express Staff Writer
or Salt Lake City resident Michael Chardack, 98 percent of a solar eclipse wasn’t good enough. That’s why Chardack and his son, Andy, trekked to a spot on Dollar Mountain in Sun Valley on Monday morning to view the total solar eclipse. The Chardacks drove up from Salt Lake City over the weekend, joining thousands of other visitors that came to the Wood River Valley and Sawtooth Valley to see the rare celestial event. The crowds were a fraction of the mass influx that was predicted, but that didn’t seem to bother the visitors and residents who turned out to watch. The total solar eclipse started shortly after 11:29 a.m. Monday, and turned a bright, summer day into near darkness throughout the northern Wood River Valley. The air temperatures started dropping in the run-up to totality, and as the sunlight dimmed, the atmosphere resembled twilight. Finally, the moon passed completely in front of the sun, casting a shadow that traveled from the western coast of Oregon, across central Idaho and over the Midwest until it reached the coast of South Carolina. On Dollar Mountain, a crowd of onlookers howled like coyotes as totality approached, and cheered when the last bit of sun was finally blocked out. See Eclipse, Page 17