Commissioners:
I have been reflecting on the April 2 BOCC meeting and the decision to support Ricketts’ Homestead Resort development.
Commissioner Mack Bradley goes on and on about Big Piney losing jobs. But Big Piney has the situation of being tied to oil and gas employment with its boom-and-bust cycles. Yet, Bradley would sacrifice Bondurant and the county vision in some alternate universe where Big Piney will prosper because of Ricketts’ resort 60 miles away.
If local workers are going to build the resort, why is there a six-acre workers’ camp being planned? Will local contractors build the facility and roads? Or will a national company come in and do the job, bringing most of the workers along?
Mr. Bradley was asked to recuse himself because of his admitted relationship with Ricketts. What was traded during his dinner with Ricketts? Bondurant for Little Jackson Hole?
If Mr. Bradley is so worried about Big Piney, perhaps he should ask Ricketts to set up business there and bring the jobs to Big Piney instead of being complicit in destroying the values Bondurant residents and community have tried to protect.
I digress. In looking up current employment stats for Sublette County, I found it to be three percent, a level generally considered full employment but none among Rickett’s supporters brought that up.
So, if Mr. Bradley’s vision is realized and we get rampant growth and a McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner, Home Depot to run Pinedale Lumber and Bomgars out, and Kroger to get rid of Ridley’s, what have we gained? Just another American strip development lined with chain stores. As I read about growth, it is like a dog chasing its tail, always promising, always costing more with never an end while local values are drowned in an influx of people who have no clue about those values.
I recently looked up my old family farm in North Carolina on Google Earth. A place where you could farm, raise your livestock, walk in the woods, fish the creeks and enjoy the quiet. It has now become subdivisions and shopping malls, mostly paved over and that is so-called “progress.” Our farm could no longer be found.
Before the Board of Sublette County Commissioners goes along with more of this “development at all costs approach,” it should consider where all this is going. I didn’t buy wildlife habitat here to then have to live in a Jackson Hole look alike with the TikTok generation and parties at Airbnbs.
Bondurant residents deserve respect, not disdain.
John Carter, Bondurant
