Each of the nine candidates vying for a seat on the Jackson Town Council believes the town needs more housing for its work force, but they have different ideas on the appropriate way to get that housing on the ground.

Candidates were asked how they would address the issue Thursday night during a forum at Snow King organized by the Wyoming Conservation Voters Education Fund.

After making a brief introduction, candidates were given less than a minute each to say how they would address what is arguably the biggest issue facing Jackson. Some looked to increase the town’s housing mitigation rate, which requires residential and commercial projects to build 15 percent deed-restricted affordable housing. Others looked to more free-market solutions and incentives.

Incumbent Mark Obringer said the town could accommodate hundreds, if not thousands, of additional units by making the zoning districts more compatible with the town’s land-development regulations.

“Right now the [land-development regulations] are not allowing the underlying zoning to work,” he said.

He also said elected officials need to make sure the comprehensive plan gives them a clear idea of what the community would like to see from its affordable-housing program.

“What will the community accept, where is it going to go, what will it look like, and how are we going to pay for it?” he said.

Louise Lasley said current housing mitigation efforts are inadequate if the town would like to keep at least 65 percent of its work force in the valley, a figure the Teton County Housing Trust says is the minimum needed to retain a sense of community in Jackson.

“It will be hard to sustain that if we continue with our current policy requirements for mitigation on development,” Lasley said of the town’s 15 percent mitigation rate. “We need to increase that.”

Greg Miles, who currently sits on the Jackson Planning Commission, said the town should raise the mitigation rate to 25 percent. He also questioned the Teton County Housing Authority’s practice of “banking” property in the county.

“I am a little disappointed we are land banking in the county and not building on the ground in Jackson,” he said. “Land banking is not a good idea to me.”

Kyle Burson said he thought the housing mitigation rate needed to be increased, as well, but also said the town needed to protect rental opportunities.

“Those of us that live in apartments don’t want to see them be transferred all over to condos,” he said. “We need a place for temporary and local citizens to stay, and I would like to see more of those.”

Tommy Wood said he supported the current program but thought it could be expanded beyond simply the mitigation rate.

“I am all for a seasonal-employee dormitory and putting it on top of a new START bus facility,” he said. “I would like to see subsidies for the working class in town to bring what they are paying for housing back to a reasonable amount.”

Incumbent Abe Tabatabai said he saw some shortcomings in the current affordable-housing program but was not supportive of increasing the mitigation rate.

“Going from 15 percent to 60 percent is going to have a reverse effect,” he said, explaining that developers will not build as much and therefore fewer total housing units would be created. “I would deal with it by incentivizing through density bonuses versus to increase that percentage.”

Matt Lee disagreed with Tabatabai, saying mitigation rates needed to be greatly increased, among other things.

“If the goal is 65 percent of the work force living in the valley, we need to raise mitigation rates and do it in a phased manner, but we need to raise them dramatically,” he said.

Lee also said he was against allowing the conversion of apartments to condominiums and would support a policy that allowed no net loss of housing units during redevelopment projects.

John Bickner said the believed an appropriate place for some, but not all, future affordable housing units was within the town limits of Jackson.

“I believe town is heart, but affordable-housing needs to be spread out a little bit,” he said.

Bickner said the problem of creating enough work-force housing has been going on for more than 30 years and the town was running out of options as land becomes more scarce.