Based on my observations from 37 years of attending dozens of civic, city council and town meetings here in Red Rock country, in Sedona, the subjects may changes; the attitudes of government do not.

Recently, the city council overturned P&Z's recommendation to deny Sedona Rouge expansion plans; and a huge number of Sedonans turned out to express their opposition to ADOT's plans to light 89A.

It's always the same: you step out to your mailbox on a blistering July day and find that lethal white envelope -- another one -- from the City of Sedona that begins:

"Dear Neighbor,

You have received this notification because your Property (sic: capital "P") falls within an area that is potentially affected by this application."

The letter will blather on about how IMPORTANT it is that CITIZENS participate because their comments and questions are IMPORTANT. You will mark the IMPORTANT dates on your calendar -- which inevitably are scheduled so that you will have to leave work early -- which is impossible -- or cancel your vacation, also impossible. If you do go, you can only hope they haven't changed the meeting room location, turned off the AC, cancelled the meeting or all of the above.

But let's assume you are a serious CIVIC-MINDED CITIZEN. You actually WANT to attend these meetings to voice your serious concerns in the public arena. To dialogue. With your elected public officials. Who are eager to hear you. Who want what's best for you. Who care.

Many Sedona residents -- newcomers and oldtimers alike -- generously respond by volunteering to become involved in their community's welfare. The National Scenic Area issue, the lighting of 89A controversy, the Windsong/Red Rock Village uproar, and the Cor D'Amor debate are recent examples where residents' interest and activism emerged full-force.

But the story of Sedona development and conflict is not new. If you are to understand anything about the way things work in this city, it's crucial you have some historical perspective, a context into which you can place the disparate pieces of the Sedona puzzle.

Let's begin with "The 2008 Text Amendment," as good an example as any of how the political winds blow in Red Rock Country.

Last August 19, 2008, the local paper declared in a page one headline, "Workforce Housing Plan Shot Down."

Although the article used the more affable "workforce" label instead of the radioactive "affordable housing" term, it made no mention of the fact that a standing-room-only crowd of 250 had packed City Hall to protest vehemently the city-initiated 2008 text amendment to the Sedona Community Plan. This was the amendment that promised developers all types of enticing incentives IF they would build "affordable" housing units for all types of ordinary folk who apparently couldn't find any type of decent housing in Sedona.

The article explained: "On Tuesday, Aug. 19, P&Z voted 5-1 to deny a recommendation of a city-initiated request for an amendment to the Sedona Community Plan to increase density from 12 units per acre to 20 in some zones. Chairman John Griffin was the lone "no" vote. ..."

The article continued, "According to the density incentive, for all units more than 12, one affordable unit would be required for every two market-rate unit. If a developer took advantage of the incentive and built all 20 units, of the eight extra above 12, five could be market rate and three would be affordable."
("Because of citizen concern about higher density..."), "staff responded by lowering the initial cap of 537 units in five years to 250. Using the two market-rate to one affordable unit ratio would yield 83 affordable units -- 46 percent of the Housing Commission's goal of 179 affordable units in five years. Staff lowered the cap, knowing that only 39 of the 311 units approved in the past five years have been built."

The article concluded: "Although the incentive would be there to increase density if a developer wanted to include affordable housing, it doesn't guarantee anyone would."

Comprende? Or did you, like I, glaze over in some English language fog wherein you thought you heard your native tongue spoken only to realize you had no idea what was actually said? It is a disturbing phenomenon that occurs most frequently at town hall confabs or in the more nouveau settings of the charade...oops, I mean, "charette."

So, in the interest of public service and as a salute to English teachers everywhere, I thought we would simplify city jabberwocky and put it in words we can all understand: How does this sound? -- "Plans to Increase Density, Allow Building Height and Other Variances, Destroy Neighborhoods, Ignore True Housing Needs and Forever Change Sedona, Shot Down." Is that better?

Some Historical Perspective --July '05

For those of you who are recent emigres to Sedona and may still be in la-la land, some explanations are in order: the saga of affordable housing, major text amendments, 76 light poles (not trombones), sewer smells and other city antics might seem novel compared to the miasmas you left behind in your smog-choked, noise-filled, traffic-clogged urban playpens.

But for those of us who have been here forever and wet-nursed the city back in the bad old days of incorporation in 1988, it's a chillingly familiar story.

Back then we had to watch as our precocious little darling grew from a gangly, pimple-faced adolescent into a full-blown, mean-spirited adult, an adult who now seems bent on aiming his Winchester at the very folks who helped raise him. That's gratitude for you.

Actually, we almost got hoodwinked four years ago into thinking this kid was really looking out for our welfare. Our optimism soared after noticing a little article in the "B" section of the Red Rock News one sunny morning -- June 3 of '05 -- that exclaimed, "Plan Change Could Benefit Harmony Hills Subdivision."

I mused to the cat that anything with the word "benefit" in it had to be good, right?

Wrong!

The paper said the Housing Commission was proposing a major Sedona Community Plan amendment for a portion of Harmony Hills subdivision and, "according to Michael Raber, associate planner in the long-range planning division, if passed, property owners would have some incentive to build multi-family units when redeveloping their land."

"Property owners could build duplexes or triplexes and the amendment could preserve some of the city's dwindling affordable housing stock. ...They are not proposing a change in density, Raber said, just a change to allow multi-family."

The cat and I were thrilled. But then I thought, "Wait a minute. I can't even pay my sewer bill. How could I pay for a triplex? This isn't going to work...and I'm not too sure about that density thing. Seems like if you add another house on and you call it "multi" something, you're making it dense-er. But what do I know about this highfalutin' language from the 'experts'?"

Shortly after hearing the news about their beloved neighborhood, a group of approximately 150 Harmony Hills residents showed up at the adult community center on a hot July evening for a showdown with then-Mayor Pud Colquitt, city councilors and staff. The "city" told us they didn't know anything about the plan. Mayor Colquitt promised it would go away for good. That was 2005.

Wrong again.

Fast Forward to 2008

It's July. Again. 2008.

My neighbor and friend, Jenna, calls and is in tears. "Have you gotten this letter from the city,?" she blurts out. "They're doing it again!"

"Doing what again?" I naively ask.

"I'm not really sure. It has to do with re-zoning, I think. Something about a major amendment ... "

My heart skips a few beats.

I check my mailbox. I do not have a city letter. I discover that only folks within 300 feet of the proposed areas are notified. Conveniently for the city, who can put that 42 cent stamp savings into their rainy-day fund, my property is 310 feet. Upon further investigation, I learn that 1,494 folks have received the letter; 823 more folks did not get notified because they were already in the proposed area. Few if any of the "notifyees" had a clue that any other "notifiyees" had been notified.

Months and months of city-sponsored citizen meetings had not prepared us for this. The meetings, seductively embellished with the Affordable-Housing/ Motherhood and Apple Pie mantra, were seldom concise or even comprehensible. Understandably, any establishment trying to communicate a message openly and honestly first has to have an open and honest message to communicate; the city seems especially challenged when the message itself is as convoluted as a Greek hydra.

Yet the bureaucrats soldiered on. Despite an aggressive sales campaign by city planning czars and their single-minded and obdurate housing commission, Sedona citizens weren't buying. Despite reams of city position papers stacked neatly next to the coffee and donuts and enough charts and graphs to make the Pentagon weep, Sedonans weren't buying. Despite a glossy and expensive publicly-funded PR campaign that among other items touted a brochure with a 20-something teacher on the cover and the treacly blurb, " She Can Teach Your Child, Can She Be Your Neighbor? Affordable Housing -- it Can Help Educate Your Child," Sedonans still weren't buying.

But the city was unrelenting. Attempts by residents to get to the truth -- to peel off the mask of deception -- was greeted, if not with overt contempt, at least covert disdain. Afterall, what could we ordinary folks know about grand visionary planning? legislation? finance? economics? environment? budgets? HOUSING? We decided to put shoulder to the wheel and test ourselves.

Two of our pack -- one with 45 years as a tax accountant and the other with an economics degree from UC Berkeley -- spent days weeding through pages of the mind-numbing, often obscurely written "Proposed 2008 Text Amendment to the Sedona Community Plan" and myriad supporting documents. What they uncovered would fill more columns than we have available in this publication so we will just highlight the main points.

For starters, housing had been identified as a city need in '90, '98, and '02. In 2003, the city council responded by establishing a housing commission.

In 2006 the housing commission paid a tidy sum to yet another consulting firm, Kuel Enterprises, to assess Sedona's housing needs and prepare what became known as "A Baseline Housing Affordability Report for Sedona."

According to our expert, there were major flaws in the report, not the least of which was use of old, staledated statistics such as a 2003 survey of 244 employees living outside Sedona and therefore not qualifying as city-based employees. The report, she observed, was padded with weak primary data sources and incomplete, often meaningless statistics having little to do with the actual conditions then current in Sedona. With minimal effort, our expert actually found quite a bit of the same data on Google. Today, in light of the financial hurricane that has engulfed most of the world's economies, the information in this report seems about as relevant as Katrina beach flotsam.

But let's for the moment push past such pesky details as "timeliness" and "relevance" and get to the meat of the matter: Who and how would one qualify for affordable housing?

According to the report the only folks who could afford affordable housing would have to be earning an annual family income over $50,000. Even if they did qualify -- and we don't see many folks earning even a third of that amount these days -- one or two people (they'd have to be small) could move into a one bedroom, 500 or 600 square foot unit; two to four people (preferably those who enjoy close relationships) would get more -- 800 square feet with two bedrooms. Who would oversee this program, how it would function, and how it would benefit the city's inhabitants was never addressed. That's not the case for developers, however. Their section of the report is much more specific.

For example, the city, in its own words, offers "bonus incentives" -- to encourage developers to build, so long as they do some affordable "units." One of those lures is "fast track" permits; another is fee waivers for inspections. Other incentives include modifying lot area, dimensions and building height. Additionally, developers can get their own staff person to snip through annoying red tape. They can also request "in lieu" -- a foreign word that means paying cash instead of actually building affordable units. And they can even build these units someplace else away from their project. Finally, they can use "displacement" where folks are actually moved out of their houses for "reasonable reimbursement."

So, there in a nutshell, is the story. It is by no means over. Whether you call it "long-range planning," "form-based codes," "special-planning areas," "major text amendments," or "rezoning," and whether you're talking about stringing lights up and down 89A, protecting priceless scenic landscapes, or redeveloping properties like Windsong/Red Rock Village or Cor D'Amor, it all seems to boil down to the same thing:

We, the citizens, apparently are only here to serve. We are here to attend -- and approve -- pro-forma meeting agendas where plans already have been put in place, "visions" already inscribed. We are graciously invited to witness the unveiling of developments that have been evolving for years in the hatchery and then asked for our baptismal blessing, even while these developments are often in our face, staring at us from our backyards or climbing our spectacular hillsides.

There could be no more egregious example of this roboticized citizen participation and business-as-usual politics than the Windsong development. For years this eyesore has begged for atonement. There are few residents in this city who wouldn't have jumped at the chance to form a true community alliance and offer positive and practical solutions that could have pushed the creative, forward- thinking, environmentally-savvy envelope and make Windsong a lynchpin for 21st century innovation.

But no. That would have been too democratic. We would have had to have been called upon at the inception of this project; we would have had to have had debates and dialogue and the exchange of information. We would have had to challenge each other with ideas -- and that would have been messy. Better we stay with old, worn out, dried-out formulas. At least those are predictable.

And that is precisely what we got at the Red Rock Village "charette" -- predictable. The charette is a new name for an old game: unfurl your architect's plans, discuss the outrageous housing densities, parking spaces, light fixtures -- whatever, arouse the wrath of your audience, allow them to spout off for a set amount of time, promise them you will revise your plans and then return another day for another go-round. At the second charette, unfurl your drawings, display your newly downsized densities, parking spaces, light fixtures -- whatever, and voila! You are approved.

"Citizen involvement" as it now appears in Sedona, is no longer a grassroots, community-based and community-initiated function. Although many of we "ordinary folk" continue to make the effort to "get active," "stay involved," and "deploy" for the greater good, we now know in the deepest recesses of our cynical soul that the powers that be, the powers that rule in this city are entrenched, intransigent. They defy public scrutiny; they decry public outbursts. They "listen" to their constituents as they are directed to do by law, but it is most often the letter and not the spirit that guides their moral compass. Check out the latest mailer you received on the "lighting" controversy and you will understand. You already know what the outcome is. You have not been listened to; you have told the city time and again you do not WANT the lights at all, yet you are being "invited" to "participate" in deciding what type of lighting you want. You are being granted a "voice." You should be grateful.

For years, it appears that the "ruling class" in Sedona has operated behind the scenes and in back rooms. Elected city councils have come and gone. Mayors have come and gone. Yet Staff remains, orchestrating ever more grandiose programs and projects whose one assured benefit is securing staff career paths within the city. Unlike national and state officials whose staff's fate is tied to the will of the electorate, Sedona has no such rituals. Maybe it's time, now that a new city manager has come on board, to shine a brighter light on this growing bureaucratic juggernaut.

Maybe it's time we ask if it's the will of the people, or the will of the people's public servants that is guiding this city's fate.

If nothing else, let's hope history will illuminate dark places.