JACKSON, Wyo. — Election season is heating up, and all six candidates vying for three open seats on the Teton County Board of County Commissioners participated in a voter forum at the Teton County Library on Sept. 30.
Democrats Karyn Chin, Ali Dunford and Luther Propst joined Republican candidates Vicky O’ Donoghue and Melchor Dylan Moore plus Independent candidate Alex Muromcew for a lively conversation. All six of them will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot. The candidates fielded questions covering a range of topics including affordable housing, immigration enforcement, property taxes, campaign donations and much more.
Below, see one key quote from each of the candidates, presented alphabetically:
Karyn Chin: “I would love to see more varied [housing] projects, whether that’s in partnership with community organizations or also thinking about potentially more smaller-scale projects. I see Northern South Park and the amount of time that it’s dragged on. I see the Virginian and the disaster that that has become. It occurs to me that these very large-scale projects are, perhaps, suffering under their own weight. … I live in a tiny house on wheels. This is a collaboration between myself owning the home and leasing the land from the land owner in a very unique situation. I hope to take what I have learned from that really unique situation and potentially open up more opportunities like that for other people.
Ali Dunford: “We are moving in the wrong direction on housing, in terms of the percentage that are housed locally. If you look back over the last 10 years, we’re going down, so we’re currently at 57% of our workforce being housed locally. It actually wasn’t that long ago that we were closer to the 65% goal. To me, what really needs to be talked about is job growth. With every new hotel that we commit to, we’re digging ourselves deeper in the hole. Where we have the legal ability to say no to new growth, we need to do that.”
Melchor Dylan Moore: “Moving forward, I am a big fan of voluntary private philanthropy. The Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust is a very good way to put money into [more housing], and they’ve provided a lot of housing for us already. I’d like to see some of that moving forward rather than government taxation.”
Alex Muromcew: “This is certainly my nightmare, that if I’m elected and Prop 1 passes, what am I getting myself into? As Luther pointed out, we’re the only county that still has the ability to raise our mill levy. If Prop 1 passes, it’s going to be DEFCON 5 at the legislature in Cheyenne starting in January because a lot of counties do not have the budget flexibility that we do. One thing I would love to see happen in Cheyenne is a reallocation of how that Travel and Tourism lodging tax money is allocated to the counties. I don’t think we need to promote Jackson Hole any more, ever again, but I can think of a lot of better ways that we could use that money right there. I would be reluctant to raise the mill levy. … I want to preserve affordability for all of us so that more people aren’t forced out of here.”
Vicky O’Donoghue: “I really believe that we need to support ICE because they are only coming here for the ones that are criminals. They pulled over for DUI — I’m a driver’s ed teacher — and they had the DUIs. Do you know how many people have been killed by DUIs? … I believe that we need to do more to help these immigrants, not fight between each other, not do protests. Help them become legal. Help them learn how to become citizens. … ICE is good because they’re only taking the criminals. They’re misleading you in a different direction.”
Luther Propst: “[The proposed baseball game in Grand Teton National Park] has been a story in how to deal with our federal partners. First, we have to take this seriously. This is part of a pattern. We see it with an effort to dispose of portions of Yosemite National Park. We see it with bulldozing a wall through Big Bend National Park. … We see it in cage fighting on the White House lawn, which is a national park as well. So we need to take this seriously as part of a program to diminish and eventually destroy our public lands. I don’t think I’m overstating that. It’s a problem. And this is one example of efforts to make our public lands something that is not what Teton County or the American public bought into.”
See the whole forum unfold in this video recording:
These candidate forums are presented by the League of Women Voters of Wyoming, Teton County Library, the Jackson Hole News&Guide, KHOL Radio and Buckrail. News&Guide reporter Jasmine Hall moderated the conversation, and questions were posed by Buckrail’s Hannah Trask, KHOL’s Evan Robinson-Johnson, and Charley Sutherland with the News&Guide.
