PRIMARY ELECTION 2022 - JACKSON HOLE NEWS&GUIDE, Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - 3
Town Council: 7 candidates; 4 advance Jackson Town Council is a nonpartisan race. Four candidates are running for two seats, held by incumbents Arne Jorgensen and Jonathan Schechter. Answers culled from News&Guide questionnaire.
Arne Jorgensen
increase of meaningful property tax relief programs structured to provide relief to those on limited or fixed budgets, renters and small business owners. This would then permit both the town and county to strategically use the current unassessed property tax. These programs could include a homestead exemption, capped or limited rate of growth in tax increases, create different classes of residential property, and more robust refund options for small businesses and lower income renters. This being said, an optional property transfer tax should take priority. This is the tool that most directly targets the source of the issue, high property values, and can be structured to reduce impacts on the vulnerable in our community.
Lives: East Jackson Years in Jackson: I am a Jackson native and have spent a total of 43 years in Jackson, I was fortunate to return home permanently in 1989. Occupation, and how it has prepared you to be a town councilor: I’ve been an architect working in Jackson since 1989. I’ve also served on multiple public and nonprofit boards; including a founding board member and emeritus member of the Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust, a Wyoming Community Foundation emeritus board member after serving on the board for over 20 years, past governor-appointed member of the Wyoming Board of Architects and Landscape Architects, where I served for 12 1/2 years, and many committees of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. Each of these experiences prepared me to be a thoughtful and effective member of the Town Council, including awareness of both the intent and implementation of regulations and working with widely diverse groups of public and private stakeholders to efficiently implement appropriate policy direction.
What is the most important conservation issue facing Jackson?
About the candidate Jackson’s housing crisis is at the top of the list of items Jackson Vice Mayor Arne Jorgensen wants to keep working on if he wins a second term on the Town Council. Jorgensen lives in East Jackson with his wife, Teresa de Groh, and is the son of longtime state Rep. Pete Jorgensen. He has witnessed firsthand the difficult challenges facing a town where many cling to Jackson’s Western heritage and character, and the amount of wealth is driving longtime residents from the area. “During my four years in office — and especially in the last two years — I have seen the real-life stressors and pains of making ends meet in an increasingly more expensive region,” he said. “I will continue to provide a thoughtful, positive voice to our dialogues in a way that improves the place that we have been fortunate enough to call home for all community members, not just the loudest in the room.” He added that with the challenges come opportunities. “Throughout much of our history, our potential is really a combination of our community and the amazing place, the environment where we live, the place where we live, and that hasn’t changed,” he said. “It also represents the challenges, right? How do we maintain that community? How do we respect the place we’re in? “So I think we’re poised well to take advantage of our opportunities, but there’s a lot to do.” While Jorgensen cited housing as one of the greatest challenges the town faces, he also listed progress made since his election in 2018 on housing among the achievements of which he’s most proud. “One of the things I’m most proud of is the lowincome [rental] tax-credit project on West Snow King,” which will break ground in August after the Teton County Fair. “That one took a lot of effort, working with the state of Wyoming to unlock those funds, those federal funds. And this is providing new housing, rental housing, at a truly affordable level. It’s something we’ve not been able to do at this scale in the past.” Jorgensen also emphasized ecosystem stewardship; the town’s ability and willingness to connect failing wastewater treatment systems outside the town’s service area to the town’s wastewater plant; successfully navigating pandemic-related issues; and effective and efficient budgeting processes as other points of pride during his current term.
Why are you running for town councilor? I am running because Jackson is a community of people in an incredible community of place, and it is critical that we retain a sense of — and protect — both communities. When I was growing up in Jackson my parents instilled in me an awareness and deep appreciation of our environment. While spending time both in and out of Jackson, I have come to recognize the uniqueness of our people and that many are not represented in our political discourse. I have the appropriate interests and skills to ask the unasked questions and would be honored to continue to serve on the Jackson Town Council.
Arne Jorgensen
What will you do as councilor to make headway on our affordable and workforce housing shortage? I’ve worked hard under the guise of “all of the above” when it comes to a discussion of housing tactics. My efforts with affordable housing for nearly 33 years have been based on four guiding principles from which I have never wavered: 1) Provide opportunities to those who are committed to our community, 2) Develop and support efforts that deliver housing security and stability, 3) Ensure that any homes that are presented as affordable or available to community members are protected as such over generations of residents, and 4) Be respectful. I support the three-pronged approach our community is pursuing: 1) Shift density to appropriate locations, 2) Mitigate for impacts of our individual actions, and 3) Wide community-based efforts such as private donors and public tax support.
What is the first initiative you would work to put in action to ease traffic congestion? Possibly, more than our other challenges, easing traffic congestion is something we can all impact with the personal choices we make about how we move around our valley. As a community we should be considering how we incentivize fewer singleoccupancy vehicles, how we use the corridors we have, expand alternative means of transportation, and address redundancy, particularly related to public safety and acceptable levels of service. Using federal dollars and unexpectedly high sales tax revenue, I am proud of the efforts to invest in additional START services in South Park, on commuter lines, to Teton Village, and to increase the level and quality of town service.
What would be your strategy to manage growth in Jackson Hole? Our first Comprehensive Plan was adopted in the late 1970s and, along with subsequent Land Development Regulations, has been updated to reflect our community goals of managing change in Teton County and Jackson. These documents, with town and county budgets, serve as foundational documents that should be reflective of our community priorities and should establish our community vision. They are not static and require ongoing review and work to ensure that our path forward achieves the goals we have set for ourselves. It is critical that LDRs should be designed to achieve clearly articulated goals; we should not rely on intended or unintended consequences of regulatory action to achieve indirect growth and change related outcomes.
Should the town look to more property tax as a revenue source? Why or why not? Yes. Although this should be dependent on an
We need to do better on recognizing that we are at the center of the largest intact ecosystem in the lower 48 states. This fact, along with a history of large landscape conservation, is what distinguishes us from nearly every other gateway or resort community. Our stewardship of this place must always be in the forefront of our policy discussions. How we balance the needs of our ecosystem with those of our community is our greatest challenge — the new Housing Preservation Program is a great example of how this can be done. This is a voluntary program that purchases restrictions on existing homes, thus providing ongoing affordability and access while removing an existing home from the speculative market without the addition of a new home.
Do you support implementing paid parking downtown? Why or why not? Yes. Any such implementation must be based on a community-wide effort to actively manage our parking infrastructure. The town currently has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our parking and street infrastructure. Such investment should be more actively managed. Whatever the details of long-term solutions are, they should be based on the most updated tested technology.
What can the town do to improve its pathways network? Address “last mile” connectivity, infill missing segments, and improve budgeting to better account for maintenance and management.
What else should voters know? I’ve sat down with business owners, nonprofit directors, town staff and community members to hear about our collective goals for Jackson’s future. One critical element that is consistent that has been barely addressed with this questionnaire are questions related to budget. These are the resources needed to provide our core services along with investing in our priorities of housing, conservation, transportation, and health and human services. Our discussions need to be more than policy goals and have to include budget impacts. I am proud of the increased transparency of the budget process and presentation of town programs in a way that provides for a much higher level of clarity than we have seen in the past. The other budget reality that the town is beginning to highlight is the challenge faced by our reliance on sales tax revenue that is just not keeping up with the community’s expectations for addressing our priorities. I will work to continue to raise these budget questions and focus on longterm budget improvements. A second topic barely touched on in the questions are issues related to COVID. We have lived through a worldwide pandemic and are arguably in a transition from epidemic to endemic. For the most part I am proud of how our community conducted ourselves: how we supported each other, how our institutions of government, nonprofits, health care, and businesses conducted themselves, and how we stepped up to support our residents and visitors. I am particularly proud of how the town of Jackson gave voice and weight to our local and state public health experts. Yes, there were disagreements on how we were responding yet we have been very successful as a community that hosts literally millions of visitors in keeping in check the most harsh outcomes such as deaths and hospitalizations. Any death or significant hospitalization is a tragedy; our rates of occurrences are lower than national or state averages.
