Longtime Ketchum city employee Jen Smith seeks City Council seat
By Eric Valentine
After 17 years on the administrative side of city business, Jen Smith is stepping into the political arena this coming November. The longtime City of Ketchum staffer and executive director of the Sawtooth Botanical Garden announced she will seek election to a seat on the city council, filing her petition of candidacy Monday. It will be her first voter-elected position.
Smith began working for the city in 2001 for the Parks and Recreation Department, seasonally. By 2003, she was promoted to the position of parks and natural resources superintendent and city arborist. In 2010, she was named director of parks and recreation. In 2018, she left the city to take on her current role with the Sawtooth Botanical Garden. Smith also serves as board chair at Boulder Mountain Clayworks—a nonprofit providing pottery lessons and pottery making—and is the conservation and sustainability sector representative on Visit Sun Valley’s advisory committee.
“I think my career gives me some credibility. I haven’t been elected to a city council before, but I’ve managed city operations, I’ve developed city budgets,” Smith said.
Monday marked day one of the candidacy filing period for the two open city council seats. The filing period runs Sept. 6. According to the city, Mickey Garcia also filed Monday. The Weekly Sun plans to publish a profile article about Garcia in an upcoming edition.
On the issues
Although Smith said there are myriad important issues facing councilmembers, she pares her key issues down to two: affordable housing and fire protection services.
“Affordable housing is at the top of my list—everybody’s list—as it should be. It’s a huge issue nationwide and it’s magnified here in Ketchum,” Smith said.
In 2006, Smith was able to purchase an affordable home as a city employee and wants to help provide the same opportunity to others if she is elected.
How matters were handled by the city council when it came to the failed merger between the Ketchum Fire Department and the City of Sun Valley and Ketchum Rural Fire District also triggered Smith’s decision to run for office, she said.
“Overseeing public health and safety is the number one obligation of a city council and this is a situation that needs creative problem-solving. It will be a challenge, but I believe I can help get things done,” Smith said.
A natural background
Smith’s love of plants and nature began at a young age when she grew up five miles from town in western Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Her parents instilled a work ethic and love of the outdoors shaped by working in their huge vegetable garden and living, for the most part, off the land.
Smith finished up her education at Oregon State University with a degree in recreation and natural resource management with emphasis on Wilderness and Wild & Scenic Rivers management. Following a stint in the desert southwest of northern New Mexico, she relocated to the Wood River Valley in 2001 after an initial ski trip to Sun Valley in 1987.
“I love my town and want to see it succeed as a creative and innovative community. Our town has wonderful roots in forward-thinking ideas and imaginative solutions. I’m ready to engage on the governance level for Ketchum.”