Counties eye joint Grand Targhee EIS workshop—$30,394 facilitation plan

Teton County’s commissioners are being asked to move the Grand Targhee expansion conversation into a more formal, cross-border setting: a proposed one-day joint workshop with Teton County, Idaho, structured around the resort’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement and its socio-economic spillovers on both sides of the line. The plan is laid out in the Ruckelshaus Institute proposal included in the county packet: Grand Targhee Joint Workshop Proposal — Ruckelshaus Institute Staff Report.

Under the proposal, the University of Wyoming’s Ruckelshaus Institute—partnering with the University of Idaho’s McClure Center—would do more than moderate a meeting. The team proposes a pre-workshop “situation assessment” with 8–10 stakeholder interviews, written case studies of comparable ski-area growth disputes, and a guest speaker to walk through the Lake Tahoe Ski Area Agreement as a cautionary/comparative model. The workshop itself is tentatively slated for Driggs in July 2026, with a written summary and suggested next steps promised by the end of August.

The price tag for the facilitation work is $30,394, including a $5,000 subaward to the McClure Center and University administrative costs. Separately—and this is the procedural rub—the proposal asks county partners to cover Driggs meeting space plus breakfast/lunch catering, costs not included in the budget. If commissioners bite, it’s an early tell that they want the Draft EIS debate to produce a shared list of “what matters” before each county gets cornered into siloed positions later in the federal review.