Mr. Levitt believed Mr. Hanson said consensus meant everyone had to agree to a recommendation, meaning even one dissenting member could nix a recommendation. Mr. Hanson confirmed this definition in a Feb. 14 email to Mr. Levitt: “If there are items on the recommendation list that you cannot live with, then they should be removed.” If he had realized that, Mr. Levitt said, he would have used that power to veto certain items in the report instead of passing on them under his understanding of ‘consensus.’

Mr. Hanson applied different definitions of consensus during the panel’s process – including removing street lights from the list because one or two people were against them. “I did this because if we used the traditional ‘political process’ and voted on each item, there would be winners and losers but no real agreement,” Mr. Hanson said in a Feb. 13 email to the panel.

In the same message, Mr. Hanson acknowledged that lighting is the only issue the panel is “hung up on.” Ironic, since lighting was the initial reason the panel was assembled.

Wednesday, Mr. Hanson told Sedona.biz that he applied his definition of consensus because there was concern from some panel members that there was more governmental representation than public representation on the panel, which might lean toward lighting when the community might not want it. “It could have been a 12 -3 vote for lighting,” he said.

Mr. Hanson said he would do it differently in hindsight. Instead, he would have included contested recommendations with a notation that there was not consensus, he said.

Unfortunately the damage was done. Mr. Levitt left what was supposed to be the last committee meeting on Feb. 11 unsettled because street lighting had been removed as a recommendation from the draft report that night. Five of the committee members, including Police Chief Joe Vernier and Sedona Fire Chief Matt Shobert, could not attend.

To Mr. Levitt, the panel had not reached consensus. On Feb. 12 Mr. Levitt emailed the panel at about 12:30 p.m. on Feb. 12, asking that his name be removed from the report.

Mr. Levitt’s withdrawal from the report prompted discussion of an additional panel meeting and delayed the city council’s review of the draft report; which in turn caused a flurry of heated emails.

“Objecting after adjournment of the process is completely improper. Throwing out the entire study and report and withholding it from city council consideration is totally inappropriate,” Mr. Ochser wrote on Feb. 13.

Mr. Levitt said he spent a sleepless night Feb. 11 because some people believed they had consensus and that the council couldn’t “go against the report.” He wrote the email so his dissent wouldn’t surprise anyone when the report went before the council, he said Wednesday.

Almost concurrent to Mr. Levitt’s withdrawal, local media released details of the contested draft report; and Keep Sedona Beautiful President Barbara Litrell emailed a letter to local media and KSB members, urging the public to press the city council to accept the report as written. Copies of her email given to Sedona.biz were dated Feb. 13 – after Mr. Levitt’s withdrawal; however Ms. Litrell said she sent them on Feb. 11 after the panel meeting.

In a Feb. 25 email to this reporter, Ms. Litrell stated, “My letter to the editor (I sent it before I left and have not seen it in print) simply encourages the council to accept the recommendations of the committee which they themselves authorized ... At the last meeting of the group, someone asked Eric Levitt if the council might choose to not accept the recommendations and he said that could happen. I believe that's when it became clear to all of us that the council just might still want to maintain their vote for 76 street lights.”

Yet, an April 2 email to City Hall from resident Eddie Maddock included an excerpt from Ms. Litrell’s recent message in a KSB newsletter which announced the panel’s April 9 meeting and stated, “While we thought continuous roadway lighting on 89A was a dead issue in favor of proven safety measures … lights are not a dead issue.”

Others had apparently gotten mixed messages, too, including John Neville, president of Sustainable Arizona, who sent an email to Sedona City Council members on April 1 that in part stated, “Now I understand that … a very few people are insisting that we reconsider the installation of 76 lights along the Hwy. 89A corridor.”

So much was happening behind the scenes that local media began asking the city for email communications under Arizona’s public records laws. On April 4 the city produced more than 940 pages – more than could be absorbed before Wednesday’s meeting.

In preparation for the meeting, Mr. Levitt had asked the panel to submit a list of pros and cons for each recommendation so that the city council could see the background behind each option.

Mr. Levitt and panel member Doug Blackwell, a KSB member who opposed street lighting on Feb. 11, had also negotiated a compromise before the meeting that put some street lighting back on the table as an option for the city council to consider. This compromise does not mean the city council will choose lighting – only that it remains an option; just as doing nothing remains an option.

Under the compromise, the panel would recommend any street lighting be targeted to specific areas prone to pedestrian accidents roughly between Madole Road and Harmony Drive rather than continuous through the corridor.

This reduced the number of potential lights from 76 to between 10 and 20, depending on engineering and design issues.

However, the panel’s compromise is conceptual. It does not include factors such as height, wattage and type of bulb; which were debated Wednesday but would actually be determined in a design phase. And if the city council were to choose street lighting, it is possible there would be more lights on shorter poles if that accomplished both increased safety and the community’s desire for less illumination.

“Many people are not so concerned with the number of poles as they are with the height,” said former Vice Mayor Ernie Strauch.

Mr. Ochser and Ms. Litrell said that any street lighting options should be qualified as a last resort to other options. Several members of the public concurred; however, the panel did not immediately take a position on this suggestion.

Mr. Ochser said statistics and data from outside Sedona should not be considered in deciding whether street lighting should be an option unless it was applied to actual statistics gathered from specific intersections where lighting is proposed, such as at Andante Drive.

Mr. Levitt said the city has specific data: at least two out of three fatalities on Hwy. 89A were specifically attributed to poor lighting by police investigating the crashes.

From a planning perspective, fatalities are random and any crash has the potential to be fatal, according to panel member Kohinoor Kar, ADOT’s safety section manager. “So we must look at solutions to all crashes,” he said.

The public should understand that ADOT controls the road and will ultimately decide what action will be taken, according to emails between panel members. Some people said the council should accept the panel’s recommendations without debate; however, Mr. Hanson said the panel had decided to present its report as options – not recommendations. This is consistent with how the council normally considers issues.

The city council will make recommendations to ADOT based on the panel’s final report.

ADOT came to the table Wednesday willing to make compromises, too, as long as the treatments address fundamental pedestrian safety features. “We will have to defend our design; that means not just a median, but a barrier so pedestrians may never be able to cross [at a given point] again,” said Seth Chalmers, an ADOT staff consultant who replaced another panel member who left ADOT after the Feb. 11 meeting.

Mr. Hanson polled the panel members for any further discussion on the compromises. No one dissented.

Now the city manager’s office will refine Wednesday’s discussion into a revised list of options with pros and cons and circulate copies to the panel members for approval. Mr. Levitt estimated the issue could be agendized for a city council hearing in late spring. “If there’s too much discussion, [the panel] will have another meeting,” he said.

© 2008 Cyndy Hardy. This article may not be reproduced, republished or distributed without written permission from the author.

[Home Page] [News Home Page] [Back to Community Page]