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                  Rice Consulting (jimarice.com)                Ketchum, Idaho                 jimasv@cox.net
 

Insight Weekly

     News, opinion, and interesting bits

     for locals and other curious thinkers.  

                                                                                                                   December 17, 2014

 

For past issues of Insight Weekly click here. 
Greetings! I had a visit from one of Santa's elves yesterday. Right off the bat, she made it clear she was working for Santa on the "naughty and nice" list. "He really does check," she said, pulling out a pen held glued inside a reindeer's antler. She explained that her "quality control group" had learned I'd been naughty but, being a thorough person, she was checking the facts. 
 
Apparently, her group had eavesdropped on the Ketchum Urban Renewal Agency (URA) meeting this past Monday and learned that, according to two members, I'd been really bad: I'd criticized the URA in last week's Insight Weekly. Here's what the elf heard on the meeting's video (at 8:18 minutes):
 
Commissioner Gary Lipton: "I want to take issue with the lady that...sent out a blog that basically says the URA is disorganized and not making sense. I want to approach her and say she's being destructive towards the project. She took a shot at Starbucks, she's taking a shot at us, the Visitor's Center. And I don't think there's any place for that here. Free speech can be damaging but it also can be constructive. I'd like to invite her back here so I can have a level-headed conversation with her about what's going on at the Visitors Center so we don't get comments that we're disorganized and the Visitors Center today is an uninviting vacuum. I mean this is terrible language to be putting out there in the public. I think we need to address somebody like this and make sure it's clear that she can't randomly take shots at something she knows nothing about, she hasn't attended any of these meetings. I want to know the Board's feeling about whether we should bring her back and try to bring her up to a proper level here." (Elf bells jingle).
 
Chairman Mark Eshman: "...a little institutional memory here. This is person who never has anything positive to say about anything. She was very destructive about the Starbucks project. I think in that blog she talks about how Starbucks is horrible coffee and she spit it out or something. In my opinion she doesn't carry a whole lot of weight. She's very toxic and doesn't have a whole lot of followers. So I don't think it's worth bringing her in and rebutting her because we all know what the project is about." (Elf bells jangle). 

My elf friend paused in her recitation. "O HO HO," I said. "Quit with the Santa sounds," she commanded. I apologized but added, "They've missed the point." I explained how the agency just barely pulled back from spending $31,000 plus monthly maintenance ($10,000-$15,000/year) on four video screens in the Visitors Center that realtors and restaurant owners could use for digital advertising at a cheap monthly rate. "They pulled back because they had no management plan," I said. "No advertisers nailed down, no agreed upon lease rate, no sales person or management person identified, no outreach to other types of businesses, no set lease period, no total budget, no ROI calculations."

Now, this elf had a good head for business. Telling Rudolf to sit and relax, she agreed with me. "Nope," she said, "making a large capital expenditure of public money without an overall management plan is putting the sleigh before the reindeer." "That's what I said," I said.  She put an X in the NICE box.   
 
Then I told Elfy (she'd confided her nickname) that, even though Commissioner Lipton said that details were in place and the information was "out there," I could find virtually none in URA meeting minutes for the last several months (just posted last week, by the way). Rudolph's nose turned pink and then red when I also reminded Elfy that Chairman Eshman had said "we all know about those details," even though no Board member had been able to describe them a week earlier - or even at the current meeting (see video again)!
 
Elfy jumped onto Rudolph's back and, being thorough, flew off to read the URA's August-December meeting minutes. Upon return, she frowned a bit and showed me she'd checked the NAUGHTY box for the two commissioners. She also gave Commissioner Anne Corrock a NICE for explaining to the URA board that maybe things would be better if the group wrote down a plan that explained everything to the public and answered questions like mine.
 
Elfy confessed she thought there'd be more transparency and kindliness in this beautiful mountain valley, adding, "Perhaps I've been naïve and should have known better." With that, she whispered that even before meeting me, she had already given NAUGHTIES to Misters Eshman and Lipton. "As long as they're sounding off," she said, "you should know that Mr. Eshman has a conflict of interest being on the Board. He sold URA bonds to his clients and then became a URA Commissioner." "Well," I said, "maybe his client interests and city interests always overlap?"  Elfy replied, "Not necessarily my dear - and remember perception is everything!"
 
Rudolf was getting restless, but Elfy had one last thing to tell me about her NAUGHTY score for Mr. Lipton. "I don't think service on an economic development agency for Ketchum is appropriate for someone who isn't registered to vote in Blaine County, doesn't claim a homeowners exemption, has no Idaho driver's license, and shows no vehicle registered in  the state." 
 
"O HO HO," I said, but quickly shut my mouth. She smiled ever so slightly. Then, putting a finger to her lips, Elfy and Rudolph took off. As she disappeared from sight, I heard Elfy calling Santa on her cell. "NAUGHTY marks," Elfy said, "for Eshman and Lipton. I think we're going to have to cancel the presents."
 
Until next week...Jima Rice

Capitalism vs. the Climate: Guest Commentary by Kerrin McCall.

Kerrin is a long-time valley resident, a member of the Ketchum Energy Advisory Committee (KEAC), and a passionate advocate for respectful long-term stewardship of our earth. I invited her to write about what guides her thinking and how the KEAC is working to better manage our local energy future. She begins with comments about a new book by Naomi Klein and tells us about relevant KEAC activities.  

 

By Kerrin McCall:  "Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war," contends Naomi Klein in her powerful and urgent book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Klein says we are living in a hyper-consumptive, big-carbon world where the dominance of corporate interests and the "fiction of perpetual growth on a finite planet" have put us on a desperate trajectory. 

 

Klein's page-turning expose is a passionate and brave portrait that many will challenge. Among her many fact-based arguments, she quotes annual subsidies of $600+ billion to the fossil fuel energy-extraction behemoths who treat the Earth and her atmosphere, our life support system, as a global "waste dump."

 

"There is still time to avoid catastrophic warming," Klein contends, "but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently construed." She devotes much of her book to the growing momentum toward climate justice around the world whether it's the divestment movement against carbon-consuming corporations, indigenous peoples' treaty rights to protect their lands from exploitation for fossil fuels, or local efforts to promote solar and wind farms as well as rooftop solar photovoltaic and thermal energy installations.

 

Bringing the focus close to home, the Ketchum Energy Advisory Committee (KEAC) has been appointed by Mayor Nina Jonas to advise and encourage the implementation of projects addressing energy security and self-reliance. We are moving full steam, or should I say "full sun," ahead. Our first project will be to cover the roof of the Ore Wagon Museum with photovoltaic solar panels capable of providing 20% of City Hall's electrical use. The City has also just received a grant from The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) which will provide valuable assistance for Ketchum's energy future planning.

 

Additional efforts include the Wood River Renewable Energy Working Group which consults with Idaho Power to identify and support pilot projects for renewable energy in our valley. Its inaugural project will be a solar farm in Ohio Gulch to provide the valley's first megawatt of electricity produced by the sun. Sagebrush Solar, a local entrepreneurial company, is hard at work to realize this project next summer.

 

What keeps us going in the face of current challenges? We engage in action, what eco-philosopher Joanna Macy calls "active hope." We journey as a group with intention, passion and optimism to reshape the formidable world in which we find ourselves in the twenty-first century. We feel fortunate, and believe Ketchum and the Wood River Valley are fortunate, to have an abundance of people here with active hope capable of joining a global effort to transform our approach to Big Carbon and Mother Earth.  
3-D Printing About To Go Mainstream. I wrote about 3-D printing several years ago in Jigsaw's Business Weekly. I thought it was a brilliant invention and a solution for the small entrepreneur with a mind for creating boutique products that did not lend themselves to mass manufacturing. It seemed it would be  manufacturing's eventual replacement. But never did I dream it would enable the construction of human organs, food, and prosthetic limbs, as well  as cancer treatment. This Entrepreneur article on 3-D printing will perhaps surprise you with the hyper-fast advances in the technology and its amazing promise.