Recently a constituent sent a letter to me at my public tetonwyo.org account: Mark I had seen you as a strong conservationist, someone with dedication and vision. It seems that now what we are seeing is a very, very different person. Develop Federal land alongside and in the bed of The Snake River, where your […]
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On Taxes and Compensating Landowners for Community Benefit
This is the text of my speech at the Charture Institutes 22 in 21 Conference held in January, 2017: Good morning everyone. Thank you for being here today and for caring enough to be here today. And thank you, Jonathan, for creating this event back in 2012. More importantly, thank you for your passion and […]
To House or Not to House
These two graphics, the first borrowed from the Jackson Teton County Housing Authority, the second from Jonathan Schecter’s Jackson Hole Compass, are what an imploding middle class looks like: median home prices completely detached from a community’s wage reality that drive an ever widening wedge between the haves and have-nots. When the world discovered Teton […]
Community Priority Fund: The Missing Cherries
The private sector in Teton County has delivered almost 4,500 acres of conservation. But has it protected and will it protect the most important natural resources critical to wildlife? Or do private sector efforts skew towards providing the most benefit for a handful of private citizens? Will the private sector reliably protect migration corridors that […]
Community Priorities don’t Stop at Housing and Transportation
On February 1st, 2016, Teton County commissioners and Jackson town councilors voted to approve asking November 8th voters the question of whether or not there should be a sixth penny of general revenue sales tax. Since 1990 or so, Teton County voters have voted every two or four years for a sixth penny of sales […]
