Thank you to everyone who supported me in the campaign. I greatly appreciate it. Although I did not win, I feel I raised the bar on the discussions surrounding affordable housing and maintaining a viable community in Jackson Hole. There is one candidate still remaining who supports my goals of promoting affordable housing and restricting commercial development and that candidate is Louise Lasley. Louise is a mother and grandmother. She is a biologist. She has been a biology teacher and now works for the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance as their public lands director. Louise understands the challenges we face as a community and is prepared to take on those who would seek to put short term profit over our values and lifestyles as a community. I have signed on as Louise’s treasurer and I fully support her candidacy and I ask you to do the same.

Louise is the only candidate who supports all of the following:

* Restricting commercial building sizes to slow the exacerbation of our affordable housing shortage and slow growth
* Raising affordable housing mitigation rates to the levels identified as a necessity in our Housing Needs Assessment
* Supporting private/public affordable housing partnerships
* Protect open space and wildlife habitat

Jackson needs Louise and Louise needs our support. In the primary, our top competition out fund raised us by almost 10 to 1 fueled almost exclusively by large developer donations. So what can you do to help? We need people to:

* Put yard signs in their yard - reply to this email and I will get you one!
* Go door to door placing door hangers and encouraging people to vote
* Throw a meet and greet party to help more people get to know Louise and raise funds
* Make a donation to Louise’s campaign so we can run newspaper and radio ads. You can donate through this website using a credit card or send a check to:

The Committee to Elect Louise Lasley
PO Box 1147
Jackson, WY 83001

* SPREAD THE WORD! If you want Jackson to continue to be a viable community and not just a luxury resort, you want Louise!
* VOTE on November 4th for Louise Lasley for Town Council (if you are in town of course!)

Lets not lose this important opportunity to elect the only candidate who supports all of the top community goals as identified in all 4 of the polls done in our community!

Thanks!

Matthew Lee

I have frequently been asked over the past month, why am I running? The simple answer is because I want this community to continue to be a community and not just a resort. But behind every simple answer there is a deeper, more complicated one. I would break my reasons into three categories: community, business and family.

Community:
I like the fact that Jackson Hole is made up of people who rally behind each other community when they are suffering. I like the fact that I feel my daughter is safe. I like the fact that I don’t always have to lock my doors and car. I like the fact that wherever I go here, even in summer, I see people I know. I like the fact that I get greeted by name in the businesses I frequent. All of these things are true because I know many of the people who make up this community and I trust them. How could that be true if the people who “live” here are only here for a season or a year or a couple of years before they accept that they will never be able to make a life here and move on? I have already seen that happen with way too many people. How could it be true if there are too few locals to support businesses that cater to locals? Already local businesses are struggling with the difficulty of finding employees and are choosing to close during slower hours or slower days or have just closed down completely. It will only get worse if we don’t take decisive steps to prevent it.

Business:
12 years ago, I did something that is unheard of today. I came to town with few assets, in fact I had lost money on the sale of my last home, I rented for a few years, got my business off the ground, bought a small piece of property and built myself a home. I was able to make enough here to get into the free market. Yes, it was tight and, yes, it was a stretch, but it was possible. For a number of years after that, all of my key employees were able to do the same. I am quite proud of the fact that we paid our people enough in salary and bonuses to make that possible. But times have changed. The real estate market has escalated at a rate far beyond the rate at which even the strong construction market will support increased pay. So we are faced with the same issue I hear time and time again from employers, how does a business attract and retain quality employees in this market?

Family:
I have a young daughter, Charlotte, who is five years old. Next year she will be entering Jackson Elementary. I would like her to grow up with a consistent group of kids. Of course I recognize that there will always be some families leaving and new families coming, but I would not want to see it become most or even all of the families. I want her to enjoy the feeling of knowing and being known in her community which only exists in a small town with a consistent population. finally, I would like her to have the hope of staying in this community when she is an adult without having to live with mom or dad. I am not saying the right to or a guarantee that she will be able to or that it would be easy, but at least that she could hold out some reasonable hope.

The answer to all these questions is affordable rentals (aka employee housing) and affordable housing. Without creating a pool of deed restricted rentals and houses that the people who work in this community can afford in perpetuity, there is no chance that the free market will provide that pool. None whatsoever. Will there always be some people who can afford a free market house here because of outside money who also work here? Of course. But unless things change dramatically from today, they will make up less than 5% of our workforce. What about the other 95%?

Well I just had the pleasure of meeting with three of the gentlemen with Save Historic Jackson Hole. I enjoyed the conversation and the opportunity to present my platform to a group of citizens who have clearly demonstrated their willingness to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to this community, hmm that doesn’t work as well in the plural does it? Anyway, my thanks to them for the opportunity. Toward the end of the conversation, I was asked a very interesting question. If I could pick one new building that I like and I feel represents the character of Jackson that I would like to see, what building would it be? I mused over the question and finally came to the conclusion that I did not have a good answer for that. To me that question gets into whether I like the architectural design of the building more than its use and who it serves which is of much greater interest to me. Don’t get me wrong architecture is important, extremely important. But I have to say that I really like the architectural diversity represented in our town, even if I don’t always like all the individual buildings. Any attempt to too closely regulate the architectural styles would too easily result in a very “manufactured” and fake old west feel to our town. Take the new post office for example. They tried to keep with “community character” by adding stone veneer to the exterior, but due to budgetary constraints they went with lick and stick cultured (aka fake) stone and it shows. Darrel Hoffman expressed his liking for setbacks and in general I agree. But when I compare the new post office with its setbacks and even some open space with the old post office which lacks them and is architecturally dated, I still like the old post office better. It is what it is and does not try to be anything else. And it is much more pedestrian and bike friendly than the new post office which you cannot even approach without crossing the Indianapolis Speedway, I mean, parking lot. So which one is better? I don’t know. One could certainly argue, other than the use of fake stone and that funny green roof, they both fit in with the character of their surrounding neighborhoods. The new post office is a buffer between commercial and residential and reflects the character of both. The old post office is in an entirely commercial area and fits in nicely there. I guess my point is that there is no one size fits all building size, style or type that would work everywhere in Jackson. I personally love strawbale buildings, but would I want the entire town to be strawbale? No… well maybe, ok, no. What about you? Can you pick one new building that represents what you would want Jackson to look like? One building that characterizes the direction you would like to see Jackson move in?

Actually the question ultimately raised a more important question in my mind. How do I like neighborhoods to feel and work? I have lived all over the town of Jackson in the last 12 years. I lived on North Glenwood St, then moved to Creekside Village close to the new post office, then I lived in Indian Trails off of South Park Loop Road, then I moved to the Gill Addition in East Jackson, then back over onto North Millward St and finally I have just recently moved back to Creekside Village. All of them have had their pluses and minuses, but if I had to pick one purely from a lifestyle perspective, I have to pick Creekside Village. Yes, the units are not very well built. Yes, the development lacks visitor parking and, yes, it is very dense with little open space. But all of that is eclipsed by the fact that I can ride my bike or walk to a coffee shop, or to the grocery store, or the post office, or the dentist, or K-mart, or the library or the movie theater or pretty much anywhere I want to go as I am on the bike path and very close to Snowking Ave. So if you asked me is there a neighborhood that represents what I would like to see for all of Jackson, this is it. I mean look at it. We have a wide diversity of housing types in close proximity to one another with single family homes on the other side of Powderhorn Lane and on Crabtree. We have nice twin homes and town homes in Elk Run. We have the fourplexes in Creekside, we have condos in Ponderosa and we have employee housing and other apartments in Webster Laplante. We have a wide diversity of commercial within easy walking or riding distance and it all works. Wow. I would love to see everyone have what I have. I would love to see east Jackson get these things back. And I think it is possible. We just need to make sure that a diversity of housing gets built as things are redeveloped and not just high-end houses that will mostly be purchased as vacation homes and continue to provide for some commercial development, particularly along Broadway. If we are smart about it we can maintain and restore Jackson as a community and not just a resort.

So thank you Save Historic Jackson Hole! You got me to think about the issues in a way that I might not have otherwise. And isn’t that what dialogue ultimately is all about?

Yesterday Noah Brenner with the Jackson Hole News & Guide called me to get my input on the issue of the PMUD (planned mixed used development) regulation and the rate of commercial development in town.  He asked me whether I felt the rate of commercial development was excessive and whether the PMUD works well as a planning tool.  The simple answer to the questions are yes and no, the rate of commercial growth is excessive and the PMUD is not an effective planning tool.  But I think we can all agree there are no simple answers to these questions.

Is the rate of commercial development excessive?  Well, that depends.  Is the development that is taking place meeting community objectives?  Is it mitigating its own impacts?  Currently I would have to say no to both of those questions and thus I feel the rate of commercial development is excessive.  If the development were mitigating its own impacts, providing employee housing, providing sufficient parking, helping to preserve community character, etc than I would not feel that it was excessive.  After all if we have written our land development regulations to reflect the goals of the community anything built under those LDR’s should be a good thing, right?  Right.  The problem is, of course, our current LDR’s do not help support our community goals and thus new development is hurting our community.  Which brings me to the second question Noah asked me, should we keep the PMUD or do something else?

The PMUD is a seriously flawed piece of legislation and a totally ineffective planning tool.  The concept behind the PMUD is sound.  Provide developers, planners and elected officials with a flexible development tool to tailor projects to provide maximum community benefit while maintaining profitability for the developer.  Sounds like a win-win scenario at least in theory.  In practice it has proven to be a highly subjective tool that causes confusion and angst for developers, neighbors, planning staff and elected officials alike.  Developers spend so much time and money putting together applications that ultimately may be rejected that by the time they have approval they are unwilling and out of money to provide anything that is not absolutely mandated by the regulations.  Neighbors have to keep a close eye on all development applications to make sure that something they never anticipated or wanted does not get built next door to them.  Planning staff must run itself in circles trying to out guess the council.  I read recently that when asked why the planning staff had recommended approval of one PMUD application for a lot under the minimum size the answer was because the application was consistent with past ones that had been approved by the town council!  Finally the town council must make every decision in light of the possibility that they may be sued by the developer!  Hardly an environment for responsible planning decisions.  And who loses?  We do.  We get development that looks like whatever a developer can slip through the system without a public outcry rather than development that advances our goals and values.  So what’s the answer?  Set the bar high for community benefit, make the standards clear to all stakeholders, developers, neighbors, planning staff and electeds, and enforce them consistently.  The market will adjust.  It always does.

Welcome and thank you for coming to my website! I am excited to be running for Town Council. I appreciate the opportunity to present my vision of the future of Jackson Hole for your consideration. I will also be posting my comments on the issues affecting Jackson Hole and the news that crops up over the next few months. Most importantly, I would like to know your thoughts, comments and suggestions. So please email me, call me or post comments on this site. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks again!