Public Trust is a Public Resource
and once it’s spent, it’s hard to earn back
That principle shaped my lone dissenting vote against the master site plan for Northern South Park in May of 2025.
I support workforce housing. Our community needs housing opportunities for working residents: young families, firefighters, teachers, tradespeople, retailers, non-profit service providers, artists, service workers – all the people who make this valley function.
But support for housing should not be blind and does not eliminate the responsibility to ask hard questions when extraordinary public approvals are sought.
Northern South Park was presented to the public as a unique opportunity: a private-sector housing solution powered by philanthropy rather than taxpayers.
Over and over again, the public was told this was “not a taxpayer funded development,”^1; that it “will not require taxpayer subsidies,”2 that the community should “let the power of philanthropy go to work,”^3 and that additional funding would come from “grants, foundations, and individuals.”^4
That narrative and those promises carried the day, and the county commission approved extraordinary public concessions: an upzone that significantly increased the number of lots while relaxing requirements that new development usually incurs. These concessions were based on the understanding that private philanthropy — not taxpayers — would carry the burden of providing workforce housing.
That was the civic bargain.
But far-reaching public decisions should not rely on assumptions of goodwill alone. They should include enforceable accountability, because circumstances always change.
I voted no on Northern South Park because I did not believe sufficient guardrails were in place to ensure that the promises made to build deed-restricted housing were realistic.
Specifically, there were:
no meaningful accountability mechanisms if the project’s economics changed
inadequate assurances that the deed-restricted housing would get built concurrent with market housing
insufficient safeguards ensuring the original housing commitments would remain intact over time, especially should the legislature intervene
Call me a skeptic, but asking even this community to raise $400 million in philanthropy to subsidize deed-restricted housing (and enable market housing) seems far-fetched. And now, even before the project is fully permitted, or development rights are sold, we are beginning to hear conversations about the merit of public financing for NSP. With the ability to return to the voters in 2028 for a new batch of SPET funds, and with whispers of selling off the Virginian RV Park housing site as another way to raise public dollars, these ideas may gain traction.
That does not automatically make it wrong to have this conversation, but it does make the original commitments relevant. If a project is approved based on promises of private philanthropy and no taxpayer burden, those promises should not quietly disappear after approvals are secured.
The public trust in local government and the integrity of the political process matters too much for that. At a time when nation-wide confidence in public institutions is already eroded, communities cannot afford a local political culture in which asking legitimate questions or seeking legitimate assurances is treated as obstruction, or where skepticism about the enforceability of major public decisions is dismissed as opposition to the broader goal itself.
Strong communities function on trust: trust that public officials ask hard questions when necessary, trust that commitments made to the public will remain meaningful after approvals are granted, and trust that political urgency and pressure campaigns will not replace accountability. Once that trust is broken, it becomes much harder for communities to come together around the next important challenge, whatever it may be.
— Luther Propst
Footnotes
¹ Jason Wells, Letter to the Teton County Board of County Commissioners, May 5, 2025
² Northern South Park Area 1 Master Site Plan Application, Cover Letter, submitted to Teton County Planning & Building Services, October 11, 2024
³ Berte Hirschfield, A solution to housing crisis is in sight, Jackson Hole News&Guide, February 21, 2024
⁴ Dick Lummis, Letter to the Teton County Board of County Commissioners, February 8, 2024
** If you believe public trust is built through accountability, thoughtful decision-making, and asking the hard questions—even and especially when they’re unpopular—I hope you’ll support my campaign.