Wade Williams

DRIGGS — Teton County's planning and zoning commission deadlocked 3-3 on Smash Recreation Center's appeal Tuesday, then voted 6-0 to send the decision to the county commissioners without ruling on it.

VICTOR — Victor has $3.5 million designated for sewer infrastructure, against $12.2 million of sewer work its engineers say the collection system needs by 2030.

VICTOR — Victor's city council is now expected to vote Wednesday on the AJ Trail easements, which would open a legal route from Cemetery Road onto the public land above town. According to the city, plans have changed since last week and it will now have enough council members to decide the item.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners approved a special use permit for the Spud Drive-In on September 14, and the Driggs City Council voted the next night to extend the sewer will-serve letter. Together, the two votes were the last the project needed.

VICTOR — The AJ Trail easements are on Victor's city council agenda Sept. 23, with the Bureau of Land Management and Idaho Fish and Game there to discuss them. The two easements would give hikers and mountain bikers a legal route from Cemetery Road, via the AJ Linnell Trail, onto the public land above town. Today, stepping from the trail onto that land is trespassing.

DRIGGS — The Driggs City Council approved the 180-unit Corona Valley subdivision on Sept. 1, voting 2-1 with one seat vacant. The council did not resolve three defects in the application that its planning director had conceded during the hearing.

DRIGGS — Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative has filed a second application for the Midway Substation, returning to the parcel Teton County commissioners denied in March, with the wildlife study it concluded its first application had lacked. The county's Planning and Zoning Commission is set to hear it September 8.

VICTOR — A state law passed in 2025 gave Teton County Fire & Rescue the power to strip Victor's newest urban renewal district of its share of fire taxes and to block the district the city's urban renewal agency wants to create next. The fire district agreed not to use it.

VICTOR — When the city council approved annexation for Birch Crossing in May, it attached 14 conditions for a proposed 158-unit development, but the developer abandoned the project over zoning. The property's three owners are left asking the council to strike the conditions. The council voted 3-0 on Aug. 26 to reopen the approval and send it to the Planning and Zoning Commission and a new public hearing.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners brought the valley's three city governments together on Aug. 25 and established that no wastewater plan covers the valley. Victor Mayor Sue Muncaster described it to the Victor council the following night as "spearheaded by Ron James" and as the first of a series of meetings that bring the valley's governments together on countywide questions. Driggs, Victor, Tetonia, an engineer from Sunrise Engineering, and a private infrastructure executive attended, along with the Board of County Commissioners. The meeting ran about an hour and a half.

DRIGGS — The Driggs City Council voted 2-1 Monday to defer written consent for a batch of Victor sewer connections, citing a Driggs lift station running at 98% of capacity. That station has been at or over its capacity threshold since at least February 2025, when consulting engineers put a $6.4 million fix for it in Victor's capital plan.

DRIGGS — No county or city body has voted against rebuilding the Spud Drive-In. Four years after a windstorm took down its screen, the theater still can't reopen. The rebuild is stalled by a sewer commitment that expired before its owners could use it.

VICTOR — The Victor City Council interviewed six applicants for its vacant council seat on August 12, made no nomination, and ended the night divided over whether the residents who spent the past year objecting to the city's decisions should be the ones to fill it.

DRIGGS — Twenty-eight minutes after the 911 call came in, the chief of Teton County Fire & Rescue keyed his radio to ask the dispatch center where the fire was.

DRIGGS — The Driggs City Council tabled a plan to bill Victor for a share of its own operational costs on July 21, after Victor's mayor objected that the change would skip a consultation the two cities' shared-plant agreement requires.

VICTOR — A communications contractor the city hired to help rebuild public trust asked the City Council on July 22 to drop a pending communications contract, after an op-ed he had written became the center of the meeting where he came to present that work.

DRIGGS — Teton County's housing authority broke ground last week on 175 Front Street, a 26-home workforce project. Executive Director Jerod Pfeffer floated a real estate transfer tax to fund the next one, telling county commissioners on July 13 that a voter-approved levy could give workforce housing the recurring local funding source the valley lacks. Pfeffer had raised the idea with state Senator Mark Harris, he told commissioners.

VICTOR — The Victor City Council called an emergency meeting July 14 to weigh a demand for up to $70,000 in the legal fees of residents who had opposed the city's wastewater-plant financing, then adjourned without giving its attorney any direction after members split over whether the meeting was legal.

VICTOR — Former Teton County commissioner Cindy Riegel urged the Victor City Council on July 8 to respond to a Driggs invitation to open joint wastewater talks, one the city had received by email hours earlier, before it was public, and that its acting mayor had already accepted.

VICTOR — Victor and Driggs have reopened wastewater talks over the plant the two cities share, and Victor's new mayor, Sue Muncaster, is setting the pace. She has told Driggs that Victor wants to understand what the plant now costs and requires before taking up its draft partnership agreement.

DRIGGS — Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative wants to build its Midway Substation on residential land it already owns, the same site Teton County denied three months ago, and told county commissioners on June 23 that it passed on an industrial parcel nearby over a price it called too high.

Former Teton County commissioner Cindy Riegel is among the first named donors to the Victor Valley Collective, the political committee formed by the group whose recall drive pushed Mayor Will Frohlich to resign, according to the committee's first monthly finance report.

VICTOR — Victor's city council made its mayoral appointment on July 8, naming Sue Muncaster interim mayor, and several residents told the council it had set aside the open, public process it adopted a week earlier. The record shows July 8 was the council's original date for the vote, an option it kept open when it moved the date to July 22.

VICTOR — Victor's monthly sewer rate would fall by more than a third, from $98.47 to $62.98, under budget direction the City Council set July 8 after dropping the city's plan to build its own wastewater treatment plant and cutting the $520,000 it had budgeted for that work.

DRIGGS — Teton County asked the Driggs City Council on July 7 to help pay for its Sheriff's Office, requesting $150,000 for two dispatcher positions, $5,000 toward a data dashboard, and, later, money toward more deputies.

VICTOR — The Victor City Council appointed Councilmember Sue Muncaster interim mayor Wednesday night, filling the seat Will Frohlich left when he resigned July 1, after the only other candidate, Councilmember Amy Ross, withdrew her nomination.

VICTOR — The Victor City Council voted July 1 to drop both its lawsuit against the City of Driggs and its petition to court-finance a wastewater plant of its own. Dropping the lawsuit clears the condition Driggs had set before it would reopen talks on a single plant for both cities. Both dismissals are without prejudice, so Victor keeps the right to refile.

Teton Valley sheriff blotter, the week of June 14–20. Three hundred ninety-seven calls came in to the Teton County Sheriff's Office. Most were patrol, traffic enforcement, and after-hours security checks.

DRIGGS — Five weeks after Teton County commissioners agreed to stand up an advisory committee to rebuild the county's 911 dispatch arrangement with the fire district, they spent much of an hour on July 1 relitigating what the committee is, who belongs on it, and when it should meet. They pushed their first full meeting to early August.

DRIGGS — Teton County's three commissioners spent June 23 closing a $130,000 hole in next year's budget, trimming and shifting the few lines they are allowed to touch. Idaho's property tax cap left them no room to raise the money: a 1995 law holds the growth in a county's collections to about three percent a year, even as assessed values double.

DRIGGS — Late in a budget work session on June 23, County Administrator Billie Siddoway raised an idea she had discussed before with the clerk: ask voters for a permanent property tax override, one that would lift the county's tax base for good. The board made no decision. But it put on the table the one move the county otherwise can't make: reset the ceiling on what it collects. It surfaced even as the county holds savings, its own auditor has called larger than it needs.

VICTOR — The residents who pushed Mayor Will Frohlich to resign have registered a political committee, the Victor Valley Collective, to carry their campaign past the recall and into Victor's city elections.

DRIGGS — Driggs' attorney told Victor's lawyers last week that the city will reopen negotiations over the wastewater plant that has split it from Victor only after Victor dismisses the lawsuit it filed against the city. Victor filed that lawsuit in March, after nine hours of mediation between the two cities ended in January with no deal.

Teton Valley sheriff blotter, the week of May 31–June 6. Four hundred eighty calls came in to the Teton County Sheriff's Office, the busiest week logged this spring. Most were routine patrol, traffic enforcement, and after-hours security checks.

DRIGGS — On May 1, 2026, Mayor August Christensen told the Jackson Hole News & Guide that re-engaging Victor on a wastewater partnership was "a no-go" because of the lawsuit Victor had filed against Driggs eight weeks earlier. Three weeks later, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) rescinded its approval of Driggs' Driggs-only treatment plant design. Five days after that, Driggs City Attorney Sam Angell wrote to Victor's lawyers. He cited the cities' 2011 contract, put Victor on notice that it could owe a share of the upgrade's debt service, and invited Victor's representatives to the June 2 Driggs council meeting.

ZOOM — More than 20 officials on a June 10 planning call converged on how to scope the interstate workshop the two Teton Counties are co-funding. They treat the U.S. Forest Service's May 28 draft Record of Decision on Grand Targhee Resort's expansion as the workshop's catalyst, not its subject, and sort regional responsibility across four axes: federal, state, county and municipal, and the resort itself.

DRIGGS — Two letters now in the public record give the clearest look so far at what each city wants. Driggs gave Victor until Oct. 1, 2030, to disconnect. Victor wants joint powers instead.

DRIGGS — Driggs Council President Allison Michalski told Victor's representatives on June 2 that the city cannot enter a wastewater partnership through a joint powers agreement (JPA) because Driggs alone holds the federal permit and the consent decree behind it. Earlier in the same meeting, the city's public works director and its attorney had told the council the opposite: that state and federal regulators are open to moving that permit to a jointly owned entity. The council voted unanimously to table the decision to June 16.

DRIGGS — Teton County Fire & Rescue Chief Mike Maltaverne asked county commissioners Wednesday to "amicably terminate" the 2024 dispatch services agreement between his district and the county and replace it with a multi-stakeholder advisory committee. Commissioners agreed at the table. The new committee will first draft a replacement agreement before the BOCC winds down the 2024 contract.

VICTOR — The Victor City Council voted 2-1 on May 27 to annex the Birch Crossing parcel, a 13.38-acre county island east of downtown, and zone it for single-family houses, closing off the 158-unit workforce-apartment project D&B Partners, LLC had spent three months trying to build there.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners tabled their vote Tuesday on the Centennial Estates settlement, a proposed agreement that would approve a 14-lot subdivision near South 2000 East, which the county denied in 2023. Chairman Brad Wolfe said he had "a lot more questions now than I did before the public hearing," and the board sent the matter to executive session with its attorneys rather than vote.

The Victor Watch Dogs mailer arrived in Victor mailboxes between late March and early April. The semi-glossy, one-sided card carried a dog-logo masthead, the words "Victor Watch Dogs," and a four-point case against the city's wastewater decisions. In a box at the bottom of the page, under the small-type attribution "Paid for by Greg Davis," the third of three action items instructed readers to "sign the petition for a recall election" by emailing a recall-campaign address.

Three hundred and three calls came in to the Teton Valley sheriff's blotter this week. Someone set off a firework in a Driggs field on Friday morning, and the field caught fire. It burned a couple of acres before crews knocked it down. A separate unpermitted burn went up in Driggs the same afternoon. No arrest or citation followed either.

An independent CPA examination jointly commissioned by Driggs and Victor concluded that Driggs overcharged Victor for years on the cities' shared wastewater loan, used a cost-allocation method the inter-city agreement does not authorize, and could not reconcile two of three quarterly bills the auditor tested. The report, signed by Cooper Norman in Idaho Falls on February 9, 2024, became part of the public record on March 27, 2025, when the Victor City Council voted to end the 26-year partnership and build its own treatment plant.

VICTOR — Victor City Treasurer Jasmine Griffin told the City Council on May 13 that if Teton County voters reject the road levy on May 19, Victor will open its next budget year about $200,000 short on road funding, a gap the city would cover from its Local Option Tax. Update, May 20: The road levy passed.

DRIGGS — Driggs is borrowing $25 million to rebuild its wastewater treatment plant without a bond election. The Driggs City Council adopted Resolution 421-24 on Sept. 3, 2024, authorizing outside counsel to file for judicial confirmation in district court. A confirmed judgment is the city's legal authority to take on the debt.

VICTOR. The Victor City Council rescinded the Evans wastewater land deal at a special meeting, repealed the January annexation, and adopted an ordinance to exclude the parcel from the city limits. The City Attorney's April 29 staff report says the city and the seller "have agreed in principle to terminate" the contract; the rescission agreement includes de-annexation as a term. The council voted unanimously.

DRIGGS — Two of three Teton County commissioners questioned the breadth of exclusivity in a proposed new RAD franchise agreement at a Friday work session, with the third reluctant to disturb a working relationship. Commissioners declined to act, pushing the discussion toward amending the existing contract. The fallback is putting waste collection out to competitive bid for the first time since 2015.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners on Monday tabled the Sweetwater reconsideration petition to May 11, holding off on a ruling until they receive further legal counsel on whether the 12 people who filed it qualify to be heard. The petition challenges the board's March 9 approval of an expansion of the Sweetwater Subdivision from 18 to 44 lots on the parcel adjacent to the Driggs-Reed Memorial Airport.

DRIGGS — Teton County commissioners voted 3-0 Monday to adopt Ordinance No. 2026-04-27, creating a "Drive-In Theater" land use category in the county's Land Development Code (LDC) and giving the long-stalled rebuild of the Spud Drive-In Theatre a clear regulatory path forward.

VICTOR. The Victor wastewater fight reached its next milestone Wednesday when City Council voted 3-1 to amend the fiscal 2026 appropriations ordinance by $2,625,366 and to disburse $1,984,035.25 to close the Evans purchase, a 40-acre parcel at Highway 33 and 7000 South, the site of the city's planned independent Class A treatment facility. Councilors Sue Muncaster, Emily Sustick, and Stacy Hulsing voted in favor. Councilor Amy Ross dissented. Mayor Will Frohlich was absent.

VICTOR. City Council on Wednesday directed staff to discontinue Victor's standalone public records policy and administer requests under Idaho Code Title 74, but left the substantive questions driving the work session to a future meeting, including how the city treats third-party IT pass-through charges, who reviews disputed bills, and whether resident Ashley Coletti will get another hearing on the balance she is contesting.

The Victor City Council voted 3-1 Tuesday night to approve a $2 million Evans land purchase for the city's planned wastewater treatment facility and, in a separate vote, ratified the city's pending lawsuit against the City of Driggs on the same margin.

Two hundred and eighty-one calls came in to the Teton Valley sheriff blotter this week. A white horse spent part of Tuesday evening weaving through Highway 33 traffic north of Victor while the sheriff's office worked its way through five possible owners, none of whom owned the horse. The animal left the highway on its own; its fate is unknown.

The Birch Crossing zoning decision landed on April 16 when the Victor Planning and Zoning Commission recommended approval of the annexation but assigned RS-7 single-family to all 13.38 acres, closing off the 172-unit rental project D&B Partners LLC had scaled down and resubmitted over the previous month. The recommendation now goes to City Council, which has final authority on both the annexation and the initial zoning.

VICTOR — A Victor ethics complaint against the city's one-person consulting firm prompted two attorneys to examine whether a conflict of interest exists. Both concluded it does not. The consultant, Troy Butzlaff of Athenian Partners LLC, has held overlapping contracts as interim city administrator, capital and special projects manager, and executive director of the Victor Urban Renewal Agency since 2021. Out of "an abundance of caution," City Administrator Jeremy Besbris wrote in an April 8 email responding to the complaint, the consultant was asked to make a disclosure to the VURA board.

VICTOR - The Victor City Council voted 3-0 on April 8 to deny the Market Street rezone, a proposed mixed-use rental development on 7.4 acres between Highway 33 and Grand Teton Brewing, overriding a staff recommendation and Planning and Zoning Commission approval. Councilmembers cited unresolved questions about wastewater infrastructure and a comprehensive plan they say needs updating before the city approves more density.

DRIGGS — A statewide petition drive to put reproductive rights on Idaho's November ballot enters its final 24 days, and Teton Valley volunteers are collecting signatures at four local businesses through the April 30 deadline.

VICTOR — The wastewater numbers in the Victor-Driggs fight start at $35 million, the figure that has dominated the debate since Mayor Will Frohlich announced plans to build an independent treatment plant. Critics call it reckless. The recall petition cites it. Councilmember Amy Ross, the lone dissenting vote on the judicial confirmation, warned in January that she doesn't think "anyone understands the full financial implications of $35 million in debt."

DRIGGS, Idaho — The Teton Creek Resort settlement approved Monday will cost Teton County $3 million. The county faced a $19 million judgment. The current Board of County Commissioners negotiated it down.

DRIGGS — The Teton County Board of County Commissioners voted 2-1 on Monday to deny Fall River Electric Cooperative's application for a special use permit to build the Midway Substation, a new electrical substation between Driggs and Victor. The cooperative argued the valley's growth rate, roughly 2.3 percent per year, requires new infrastructure to prevent outages. The commission disagreed.