Politics & Government

Jackson approves two ballot issues and defeats one

Wyoming Public Radio | By Rebecca Huntington

Published November 7, 2012 at 7:04 AM MST

Teton County voters resoundingly approved a 14-million-dollar tax
proposition to close the county's landfill. Hailey Morton, the top
vote-getter in the Jackson Town Council race, called the proposition a
no-brainer.

"If it didn't come from the sales tax, from the
SPET tax, it would have had to come from property tax, which you know
whether that was from the general fund or raising property tax, I
think constituents realized that's not what they wanted to do."

Jim Stanford, who also won a seat on the Town Council, said the
proposition will ensure tourists help foot the bill.

"That action has been mandated by the state, we're
facing a deadline from the DEQ, we could either pay for it with sales
tax or pay for it with property tax. Tourists help pay the sales tax,
and they also generate a lot of the trash."

Meanwhile, voters rejected a more than thirteen million dollar
proposal to buy 10 acres of U.S. Forest Service land in downtown
Jackson but approved four million to build pathways.

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Rebecca Huntington

A multi-media journalist, Rebecca Huntington is a regular contributor to Wyoming Public Radio. She has reported on a variety of topics ranging from the National Parks, wildlife, environment, health care, education and business. She recently co-wrote the one-hour, high-definition documentary, The Stagecoach Bar: An American Crossroads, which premiered in 2012. She also works at another hub for community interactions, the Teton County Library where she is a Communications and Digital Media Specialist. She reported for daily and weekly newspapers in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Wyoming for more than a decade before becoming a multi-media journalist. She completed a Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado in 2002. She has written and produced video news stories for the PBS series This American Land (thisamericanland.org) and for Assignment Earth, broadcast on Yahoo! News and NBC affiliates. In 2009, she traveled to Guatemala to produce a series of videos on sustainable agriculture, tourism and forestry and to Peru to report on the impacts of extractive industries on local communities.

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