Make our newscast part of your daily listening routine. Subscribe on Spotify (or wherever you listen to podcasts).
Down the street from a new school district employee apartment complex, one-bedrooms at The Loop are renting for just more than $3,500. After five years of planning and ahead-of-schedule construction, educators and staff of Teton County School District will pay less than half of that: $1,460 for a one-bedroom.
Emotions have been high for those who had been selected from a lottery weighted by experience.
“I had at least three staff ask if they could hug me because they were so excited,” said Charlotte Reynolds, the district’s director of communications and services, at a recent school board meeting “We had at least two employees with tears in their eyes.”
Teachers, paraprofessionals and office staff will start moving in next month to the district’s 24 apartments on South Park Loop Road. The additions triple the number of employee homes in the district’s stock.
A ribbon cutting ceremony at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 23 will mark the first finish line for a slew of employee housing projects voters approved in 2022.
The school district received $16 million in sales tax funds. It later received a state loan that sped up construction. St. John’s Health received $24 million for its 72-unit Hitching Post project, also from voter-supported taxes. The town and county received $10 million each for their employees and will manage an additional $20 million total for housing that won’t be specified to an employer.
This week’s ribbon cutting will celebrate not just the on-budget and ahead-of-schedule construction. It could also preview future projects on the same site.
“The plan was to do three of these and there’s space there to do three,” Trustee Keith Gingery said at an April 15 meeting, referring to the 24-unit complex. News of more housing could come as soon as 2028, or whenever elected officials decide to slate the next vote on an extra penny of sales tax.
While Reynolds had to say ‘no’ to some, the list of those who applied and didn’t receive housing was under 10 she said.
