Tribal Trail: bad timing for a big price tag
The Tribal Trail Connector – a half-mile segment connecting the existing Tribal Trail Road to Highway 22 in northern South Park – has been steadily working its way through the county’s approval process. As the date for the Board of County Commissioners to decide whether to advance the road process nears (on June 2), so do budget decisions in a fiscal crisis. So far, the projected cost to the county ranges from $2-3M, with a total project cost ranging from $8-17M. Given the controversial process thus far, and the commissioner’s own time, bandwidth, and funding constraints, we asked commissioners to put Tribal Trail on the back burner and not to fund it this year. Not to mention that the future of Tribal Trail is also closely tied to future development plans for northern South Park, which (if now is the time to consider its development) needs full funding for holistic planning.
May 20, 2020
Teton County Board of County Commissioners
RE: Please put the Tribal Trail project on hold
Dear Madam Chair Macker and Commissioners,
Thank you for the extensive time and detailed considerations each of you has made into determining next year’s budget given the COVID-19 funding crisis. We last wrote to you expressing our support for fully funding a neighborhood plan for northern South Park, if you believe now is the time to consider development there. In contrast, please put the Tribal Trail road on the back burner and do not fund it now.
Road building is a costly process, whether in staff time, consultant services, stakeholder facilitation, or construction. The cost to the county alone was last budgeted at $2.4-$3.2 million, and the entire project could reach $8-17M. Of course, you have not yet made a decision on whether or not to build the Tribal Trail road, let alone decided on the design that would determine final costs – so these numbers are rough guesses.
This discussion has long been controversial. We find it extremely significant that most of the stakeholder group asked that the process be halted – and that their request was not honored. A controversial proposal like this places a real burden on our community members to engage meaningfully during an ongoing public health crisis. And it adds a cost to your own decision-making bandwidth when you clearly have higher priorities.
Right now, and in the coming year, our community and our elected leaders should be most focused on core government services that provide for human health – whether that’s public health, human services, water quality planning and management, responsible planning, or conservation. These last few months have repeatedly demonstrated the fundamental value of these services for our mental and physical health. Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves, where can this money, whether several thousand for facilitation or many million for a road, be put to better use?
Please focus your limited budget and limited time on more-important, less-controversial projects, and put the unnecessary Tribal Trail project on hold for at least a year or indefinitely.
Sincerely,
Brooke Sausser
Community Planning Manager
Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance
This letter appeared in the JH News and Guide and was reposted on the JH Conservation Alliance website
This letter to the Teton County Commissioners can be download it here.
Press Pause on Tribal Trail Connector
Hell-bent to Build Connector
Letter to the Editor from Armando Menocal
This is the third time the Teton County Board of County Commissioners has attempted to ignore its commitment in the Integrated Transportation Plan to conduct a comprehensive study on a redesign of the “Y” intersection and other alternatives before building the Tribal Trails Connector.
This attempt is circuitous and disingenuous: Commissioners are turning over engineering and design of the connector to the Wyoming Department of Transportation before studying its necessity, impacts and alternatives. They expect the public to believe that after WYDOT designs the connector, the commissioners may still say, “no thanks, we’re not going to build it”?
Isn’t it time we ask the electeds why they keep pushing to build the connector without a study? Who stands to gain financially from the connector? What is the public benefit in putting all of South Park into the county’s major transportation network? Isn’t the connector really to permit new development of the area?
Armando Menocal
Jackson
Decisions Must Be Logical and Science-Based
Letter to Teton County Commissioners from Patrick W. Hattaway and Mallory A. Smith
As property owners in the immediate vicinity (860 Whitehouse Drive) of this proposed road we are requesting your consideration of the following points:
1. When this issue was previously before the Commissioners, it was agreed that work at the “Y” and traffic modeling would be completed prior to construction efforts on the Tribal Trails connector. The “Y” has now been modified once by WYDOT and traffic modeling is supposed to occur this year. We object to a contract that includes any construction commitments prior to the completion of the modeling project. We strongly believe that this project and others facing the town and county must have logical, numeric based science backing decisions and not simply our local beliefs (for and against).
2. We strongly urge you to use the language in Appendix L of the Integrated Transportation Plan as guidance for the connector road. Our understanding of the future connector road was within these terms when we acquired our home and this would allow the neighborhood to maintain it’s residential nature, help to protect the soundscape, and enhance safety.
3. We do not know how the connector road could be built to a larger standard than described in Appendix L without additional construction to the south of Indian Trails. In the intervening years the planning commission has allowed a open market housing development and affordable housing to be built within five feet of South Park Loop. While there is clearly easement for a wider roadway, major construction (removal of the cottonwood trees and adjustments of the just completed pathway) of a larger road through this area would truly devastate those residents – some of whom live there due to our community’s ongoing efforts to house local employees.
4. Jackson now exists on a tourist based economy that several of you base your living on. Having been raised in a California winter/summer resort community, and having spent careers in major units of the National Park Service, we understand local emotions over traffic congestion and the frustrations this can bring. However one road is not going to alter the fact that WYDOT has determined they are going to expand the highways to the south and west – without local ability to route additional traffic in Jackson itself. If someone truly wants to be frustrated – try coming from the north on a summer evening as the Yellowstone visitor traffic backs up past the National Wildlife Museum and sometimes to the National Fish Hatchery. Those of us who work in Grand Teton NP and drive that route have come to expect the traffic, and either accept it for the three months of summer or seek alternative modes of transportation (bicycles). In all honesty, how many months does traffic at the “Y” truly back-up to an intolerable level? This is what the modeling study will hopefully tell all of us.
We look forward to attending the April 10, 2018 meeting to hear each of your thoughts and representation on this issue.
Sincerely,
Patrick W. Hattaway and Mallory A. Smith