Evan
START OnDemand Operations Manager
Evan serves our community as the Operations Manager for Jackson Downtowner LLC which manages the contract for the START OnDemand service in Jackson. This means he runs day-to-day operations managing personnel, community member engagement and fleet management. More often than not, you’ll also find him driving shifts if someone is out sick or if there are staff shortages. Evan grew up in Kansas and got his Bachelors of Science and Technology in Automotive and Industrial Science. He has now been a part of Jackson for over 16 years, working for a variety of employers.
Before coming to Jackson, Evan has always had a love of wintery places with access to the outdoors, when he met a local gal everything fell into place. Evan loves Jackson because it’s a small, big town, full of community-minded people and with lots of opportunities for volunteering and community involvement. When Evan’s not outside taking advantage of all the outdoor sports, he’s volunteering with Hole Food Rescue and the Animal Adoption center. He also loves attending the myriad of community events and live music that Jackson provides.
“At times, early on, it was difficult to be part of the community and contribute. That feeling of ‘why try if you are going to have to leave’ was an easy one to feel. But, I’m glad I’m on the other side of that, I’ve been here long enough and feel that I’m connected to people. This said, to have an opportunity at stable, Affordable housing at a place I’ve made home would create a feeling of stability that you can’t find trying to rely on free market housing."
For now Evan has a stable housing situation, renting in Jackson. He’s been in the same home for six years, which he rents from a local business owner.
“I moved in thinking this was temporary, but I am so thankful that this has continued to pan out for the last six years. I’m in a unique situation. There is a lot of disconnect that’s based on housing. I have entire friend groups that now live in Teton Valley and I don’t feel like I know them because I don’t see them anymore. They come here for a limited amount of time, just to work, and then they go back home. Some of that is effort, but if they’re an hour away, it’s hard to form connections and keep them. I worry that overall, the lack of Affordable housing affects our social services or lack thereof – people administering services to our community but not being part of it.”
Evan’s hope for the community is that we are able to focus on development that serves the needs of the community and incentivise developers to look more holistically at our community rather than just an investment or something to extract value from.
“We don’t need to focus on bringing in more and more service type facilities, which digs our housing hole deeper. I feel that we’re at a fork in the road where we decide as a community whether we value people who work here, living here. Or if we’re just happy with a commuter type of arrangement with people in our community, then the predominant amount of people living here are more in the retirement / investment home which I think is fragmenting our community by having the predominance of people who live in the community, not participating fully in the community.”
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