By Tommy Acosta —
Sedona, AZ — At it’s March 12th meeting the Sedona City Council voted 6-1 to approve a zoning change that paves the way for the implementation of a Safe Place to Park program that would put 40-parking spaces on the Cultural Park grounds to allow overnight parking for homeless individuals working in Sedona, that sleep in their cars or vans because they could not afford to rent.
The program would also install portable showers and restrooms for those who participate, and impose a number of rules, regulations and safeguards that the city believes would curtail any illicit activities in the Cultural Park by those using it, and maintain safety in the surrounding communities.
More than 40 individuals spoke at the council meeting before the vote to approve, most of who were against it, citing the potential for abuse and danger to the community;
Opponents also called for using the Cultural Park property, which is owned by the city, for the purpose it was originally built for – to bring large musical acts to Sedona and enrich the city’s culture.
The well-coordinated and orchestrated opposition to the zoning change and the Safe Place to Park program discussed at the seven hour-plus meeting, caught the city off guard.
For proponents and the city staff that developed the idea to create a safe haven for Sedona’s homeless workers, the opposition was more robust than they expected, with some community members accusing the opposition organizers of “carjacking” the meeting.
Opponents testified and threatened that they would organize a ballot referendum next election to rescind the council’s decision to move forward with the program, if they approved it.
This puts staff in a conundrum. If the opponents succeed with the referendum, money expended or any improvements made at the site moving forward, would be lost.
Opponents have 30 days after the filing of the referendum to achieve their goal of 600 signatures.
Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow said that if the opponents are able to garner enough signatures to put the question on the ballot, that he would be against doing anything to move the project forward until after the ballot referendum is decided.
“If they get those signatures, it would go before the voters, so be it,” he said after the meeting. “You know, we can’t stop that. That’s the true will of the people, and then it goes to the voters. If they vote for or against, we’ll see. The city is in a bad spot because if you spend any money or make any improvements and you lose the referendum, everything goes out the window. I would not move forward. I would wait till after the ballot.”
He said if the opponents were not able to acquire enough signatures, he would go full steam ahead with the project.
“If they don’t get the signatures within 30 days. then we are going to move forward right away,” the mayor said. “If they don’t get it, then nothing could stop us.”
Former city council member and local businessman John Bradshaw urged the council to consider putting the brakes on the program and look for other alternatives, warning the council that the opposition will do all it can to stop it.
“Whether it’s right or wrong there is a perception out there that this is being rammed down our throats and there is no choice that any of us have,” he said. “… And you guys [the council] have done that one thing that no city council and no city staff should ever do, and that is you woke up the sleeping giant of the citizens of Sedona. And they will make sure their voices are heard one way or another.”
Proponents in the community have created a Website warning citizens not to sign the petitions against the Safe Place to Park program.
This is an advertisement
43 Comments
Excellent!
The next vote of the Sedona city Council is to make it mandatory for Sedona City residents to give their spare bedrooms to low income workers in Sedona.
Just as in the movie Dr Zhivago, “it’s more just.” Communists rejoice.
Please council don’t suggest a excess profits tax on all businesses, “from each according to his ability, to each according to their needs.”
I wonder why Sedona business will think when Sedona City council considers a $50 minimum wage for Sedona workers.
It’s more just. No one should be forced to live in their car. A living wage for all comrades !
As city staff and Sedona city council so good at giving away taxpayer money, I propose the following :
A motion before the Sedona City Council that all people living in their vehicles and working in the City of Sedona be paid at least the same as the lowest paid City of Sedona employee.
If it is good enough for city employees, it should be good enough for those poor souls living in their vehicles.
Many of the un housed are City Employees!
Comrades? You speaketh the tongue of the M’erican Maggots! What are you really so afraid of besides everything your worn filled brain sees on Parody Rusher News Programs like FOX, OAN, Brain Wars, TruthNeverTold Social, NewsHax, and the MAGGOT favorite Der Stormer?
Don’t know how you expect to wage war on your fellow M’erican’s because the Grand POO BAA Draft Dodger Treasonous Insurrectionist has you fooled and believing crazy crazy bullshit just as Un tells the North Koreans who also believe everything their DICKtator tells them.
Oh my we have a City Government taking care of employees of Sedona who keep Sedona functioning every day! Oh Jesus and baby Jesus help us the Mayor is human and humane and doing his job Of the people for the people which includes the un housed unless you like the Orange Dump believe them as non human and unworthy of life in their own country.
You morons think M’erica will be an Aryan Utopia under Dumpster Fire for King Nothing! Wait until you cannot breathe without surveillance cameras watch your every move(s) like Xi’ China, Un’s N Korea, Putanna’s Rusher and the Ayatollah’s Iran. Nobody can fart without the DICKtatorShit knowing. And the Cherry on the Bigliest Beautifullestly Chocolately Cake will be when neighbor can eat on neighbors and have them wrongfully jailed, imprisoned, tortured and killed like Nalvany not just for speaking out but also based on lies, vengeance and general scumbaggery one can expect from their fellow citizens these days. The Eastern Europeans, N Koreans, S Vietnamese, Poles, Ukrainians, Bosniaks etc. can enlighten you on Demagoguery Motives and Methods of being evil to their fellow citizens. It’s gonna be a GAS for sure! Hope you’re proud of yourselves!
Wow JB…pour another strong one before you continue to pontificate ;》
Don’t DRINK but sometimes wish I did so I could drown out the Insurrectionist Commie Loving MAGGOTS on here. OBVIOUSLY the TRUTH hurts and angers them even though they are unable to justify their Self Anointed King Nothing Draft Dodging Racist Misogynist Treasonous Commie Loving Orange Jackass!
Very SAD that M’erica is becoming everything M’erica has Nuked, Fire Bombed, Carpet Bombed, Cruise Missile Targeted, Bunker Busted, Invaded other DESPOT countries to eliminate THEM And now we are THEM thanks to the Orange KING MyASS COMMIE Loving Twice Impeached CRIMINAL!
I know the TRUTH hurts and the slap of FACT BASED REALITY is incomprehensible to the FEEBLE MINDED who support his ongoing attempts at INSURRECTION and TREASON against our RULE of LAW and DEMOCRACY while bending the knee to DESPOTs like Putanna, Un, Orban, Xi, Assad, Erdoğan, the Saudi Royal 9/11 and journalist killing family.
So deflect, side step, ignore all of those FACTS and continue the assault on the TRUTH tellers and our Democracy!
I’m not going anywhere and will continue my daily WAR on the IGNORANCE of MAGGOTS!
Every city council member who voted for this should be required to take in 3 or 4 homeless “workers” into their homes to prove they are not just virtue signaling.
Because the safe park affects you how exactly?
Our illustrious Governor Hobbs is planing to shove illegal aliens into Springerville, AZ. Population 1700.
You actually think that something like that can’t happen here? Springerville is one of te poorest cities in AZ. We have a reputation of being wealthy. Want to paint a target on our back for the crazy Governor? Council, you just did.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/a-small-arizona-town-prepares-to-fight-state-over-illegal-immigration-5583851
There are 150 parking spaces per acre with 10’ by 18’ spaces. So the city needs to provide the full 900 spots!… Republican should ship the city of Sedona 1000 illegal in protest of the unjust treatment of the working class poor
Can you smell the arrogance of the shitheads who deign to let the “workers” sleep in their cars so that they might continue to service them appropriately? Sedona is filled with wealthy hard core libtards. The ones who tell you they love the poor. They want to help the poor. Their solution to the housing crisis is that the poor can serve them better by sleeping in their cars.
900 parking spaces coming soon !!
Again with busing migrants to Sedona (which BTW all the MAGGOT buses of Screened Migrants being bussed to “Libtard” cities actually is counter to what the Orange Insurrectionist Treasonous Insurrectionist Draft Dodging Commie Loving Manchurian Candidate and Elon Rocket Boy Musks claims that migrants are being brought into the country to vote for Democrats! So why would Child Killing Governor aBUTT and his child killing minion morons like tough guy Silver Star recipient JAG Lawyer child killing DeSatanist be sending votes to Democrat cities and states? Why oh why would they do such a thing? Gotta ask yourself some tough questions about your thought process!
And for those of you who despise South M’erican’s, they were in and owned much of the US long before M’erican heroes Andrew Jackass, Davy Crock O Shite and other war criminals ethnically cleansed the land so Aryan Embarrassments like yourself could take their rightfully owned and occupied lands from them like the Israeli’s and Serbs did with Muslim homes and lands in Bosnia and Israel in recent years.
Jess how can you NOTsee that you have zero point there? You whine because the city is going to provide a safe place for its EMPLOYEES to stay. Since you are soooooo against helping them you should absolutely refrain from ever using a Sedona based business ever again because whether directly or indirectly you are using in housed labor for your personal needs and yet you want to run em all outta town and likely much worse. Well gee who’s gonna feed you then, dry clean your clothes, cut your hair, stock your groceries and so on?
I know you MAGGOTS can’t see the forest for the trees but helping Sedona’s unhoused employees helps Sedona to function and thrive. Take em away and you have shuttered shops and a dying economy and town.
Also from the responses I’ve seen here and NextDoor, Sedona is most Definitely NOT primarily mostly wealthy Liberals. That may have been 30-40 years ago but most of todays wealthy Sedonites are MAGGOT a-holes who hate their fellow man, live in fear of their own shadow and have become zombies of Russian propaganda! Our sworn enemy and all for an Orange Buffoon Draft Dodging Commie Loving Insurrectionist. How SADDDD! How Bigly SADDDD our Nation has become.
Can you smell the arrogance of the shitheads who deign to let the “workers” sleep in their cars so that they might continue to service them appropriately?
“To secure a spot in the lot, individuals must be full-time workers in the city.”
Full-time workers?!?!?! ObozoCare killed full-time work.
So only full-time city workers?
I avoid the tourist trap Sedona has become. Run by greedy people who refuse to pay a living wage.
Then they started their own Bidenville for the slaves.
Call it what it is: servant/slave quarters [and let the CoC fund it.]
It’s safe housing for free gainfully employed adult workers of Sedona and their families if they have children enrolled in school. Hardly slavery! Slavery is wealthy farmers, Mar a Lago owners and meat packing facilities using migrant child and adult forced labor while paying them Pennie’s a day for 12 hours of physical labor M’ericans depend upon but feel it beneath them to do if they get paid at all! Sedona’s employees whether un housed or not have to provide proof of legal residency to garner employment and I’m certain their status will be verified by the city to be permitted to stay in the Safe Park at the Cultural Center which should have long ago been repurposed.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/housing-affordability-crisis-solved-sedona-let-homeless-workers-sleep-cars
Not a positive look for a previously upscale tourist town. Instead of using Switzerland as a target Sedona looks to Mumbai, India.
Switzerland has social medicine, housing for all of their citizens and is one of the cleanest countries on earth. Sedona hardly compares!
Why doesn’t the city council have a professionally done poll of the city residents done now to find out whether the majority wants to do this and then follow the will of the majority?
Wouldn’t change anything unless MORONs unanimously oppose it and our un housed workers decide it’s not worth serving Sedona and leave the town struggling to function like Safeway during its two mass walkouts. They have since managed to hire a few people but are struggling to keep the shelves stocked, bakery, meat department and registers operational. But fools being fools who only believe propagandist bullshit don’t care about anything or anyone but themselves and will end up actually destroying Sedona rather than doing what is right and keeping the ship on course as this Mayor has been trying to do for “the people” rather than some phobic conspiracy filled MAGAS who are afraid of themselves and everything around them.
Paul you know that’s not how it works for a representative on the college board. Into mob rule. Your comment coming from somebody that worked on a board is amazing. The job of our elected officials is to look at all the facts. Compare them to the community plan and make sure that the health and safety of people is not a endangered. votes taken by people that show up at a public meeting. You really want the most valuable piece of property in sedona and turn it back into a music venue as most people at the meeting. Is that the people? at the council meeting, many of the people were self identified as not living in the Sedona, so Paul, if the majority of people at that meeting want the city to spend 10 or $15 million on event center with your thought process, City Council should just do it is that correct?
Cause the “RED” crowd won’t take the poll as fact anyway… unless of course they get thier way or outcome
How it it the City of Sedona, which means taxpayers, job to supply housing for workers?
In a free market system there is supply and demand, If people don’t willing pay enough to pay workers and support a profit making business, it goes out of business. It seems the Sedona City council thinks its job is to supply cheap labor. Why not just arrest people and make them prison labor? Or organize press gangs and kidnap tourists off the street and as they are captured make them free labor? The British Navy used to do that, you can claim that example.
I’d like to have a Sedona business where The City of Sedona guarantees me a profit and guarantees I won’t go out of business. Is that what the council thinks is right?
If enough places go out of business we might have less traffic. Is that a bad thing?
Or is the city only concerned with tax revenue not quality of life of it’s residents ?
You go out of business when your in houses employees get run out of town for living on the streets, in cars or tents or whatever the circumstance may be for them! And the City is attempting to remedy that so you can stay in business to make your almighty PROFIT! Ever THINk of dat?
Whoever is responsible for creating the no2culturalpark.com website should get ready to pay some legal expenses.
One would think so but they’ll likely plead insanity and it will be true.
Is anyone surprised that Steve Segner, one of Sedona’s biggest special interests, is so heavily involved in this? It’s always important to connect the dots and follow the money with anything he has his hand in. I have heard some say that he is once again doing Scott Jablow’s dirty politiking for him on this issue , just as he did in the past with Sandy’s mayoral campaign with his “gorilla (sic)” tactics in an email to the Sedona Lodging Council when he was President. The shallow website posted in this article reeks of Segner through and through. Too bad that Jablow did not stay disassociated from him. Now, people in town are labeling this homeless worker camp as Jablow’s Folly. Indeed, it certainly is. As a result, this very well may cost Jablow his second term as mayor. Hopefully it does, and ends his political career for once and or all.
Lacey,
Wow that’s a whole lotta slander! Hope you have good legal advice!
What’s your definitive proof of either “Special $ Interest” “Dirty Politiking” or “Guerilla Campaign Tactics”?
You the minority MAGGOTs are the ones with the CLEAR AGENDA of destroying Democracy for a DICKtatorship! You call the Safe Space a folly! Smart people would say he is doing his job to protect the community to include ALL of it’s employees and you jackasses cream your chinos over it equating safe open air fenced in housing with the hysterically phobic Migrant menace or M’erican lust for drugs made opioid crisis and one has zero to do with the other.
The people to be permitted to reside in the safe park are M’erican CITIZENs and FULL TIME Sedona EMPLOYEES who just happen to be unable to find any brick and mortar housing because A) there is none available and B) if it were it would be BIGLY over priced in either mortgage or rental fees and therefore is not attainable. You call the Gestapo on them if they are seen living elsewhere I. Their cars, tents or under the stars and then you BITCH and Moan and stomp your feet over them having a single known safe location to stay rather than them staying Willy Nilly throughout the community.
So the bottom line must be that you do not consider these fellow M’erican’s as humans and you just want them all to go away somewhere you never have to see or interact with them. So you should IMMEDIATELY Cease utilizing them as employees, cease utilizing any of their services or products or anything associated with the businesses that employs them!
Not sure where on the Planet you can go and not have to see such un housed employee horrors? Perhaps Rusher since the Orange Insurrectionist Draft Dodging Putin Puppet, Fu#ker Carlson and Stevie Seagull think the ALL WHITE Rusher DICKtatorship is BIGLY better than a DEMOCRATIC M’erica! You know the one we’re going to have to re-write this for if the INSURRECTIONIST DRAFT DODGER dodges Justice and get crowned King Idiot for life-
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the REPUBLIC (for which it stands) one nation, (indivisible), with LIBERTY and JUSTICE for all.”
To-
“I pledge allegiance to the MAGGOT and DRAFT DODGER STALLONE/RAMBO bod 30 year old Roid Rage image/INSURRECTIONIST DRAFT DODGER Flag of the Un United States of MAGGOT and to the DICKtator for which it stands, one KING Nothing , highly DIVISIBLE , with NO liberty and NO justice except for the WEALTHY WHITE MAGGOTS who have sold their Souless Arses to the Treasonous Insurrectionist Putanna Puppet Draft Dodging Criminal”
JB – Are you ok? I’m trying to make sense of your nonsensical word salad rant. Dude, take a chill pill and breath.
Lacey I had Ben’s post mixed with yours. In any event what I’ve said stands. I know the Mayor and he’s definitely not corrupt if that is what you’re insinuating about your perceived affiliation between he and Mr Segner .
JB – Dirty politics in this town is rampant and has been for a long time,
especially for the special interests who have their hand in the till of projects being proposed. Please re-read that I did not name Scott as a special interest. It’s a shame that Scott can’t break the sick simbiotic relationship, since the optics don’t bode well for him, given the perception of Segner’s reputation. Scott can be a nice guy, I guess? But, I have seen a really rude side to him unbecoming of an elected official with constituents at public community planning meetings. If he can’t take the heat, then get out of the kitchen.
Think if you were Mayor you’d find yourself losing your temper as well. Other Arizonan’s see Sedona as Chocked Full O Nuts! And that it most definitely is from those who think Commercial Airliners have the ability to spray “Chem Trails” via their engines, to those who think Biden is an android, all birds are really government surveillance drones, vaccines have mind control chips in them, Chinese Forces are staged inside the US ready to enact Marshall Law should Biden lose the election. I can go on and on listing the bat shit crazy things people here say and think but most normal people are very aware of this.
I do NOT know Mr Senger but whatever you feel he may have done you should leave the Mayor completely out of the equation unless you have evidence to present showing some violation of law having occurred otherwise it may be inferred that you were inferring just that?
Jamie Beeler. Your father would be proud.
If you pay enough people will commute. I commuted from Sedona to LA for years because LA payed well. That was before Sedona was a tourist trap. I certainly would not commute to Sedona now.
If you want to pay slave wages, people won’t make extra effort or spend the gas money.
It’s not the citys job to provide cheap labor.
Ben your point was valid pre- COVID (you know that fake made up virus that has caused at least 7,006,256 deaths in the world) and the the economy and has prices were stable and our Nation was only partially brainwashed by the Putin MAGGOT propagandist movement! Nobody is paying the kind of money required to compensate employees for overly lengthy commutes such as you described doing most likely in the mid 80’s early 90’s when the world was not at war with demagoguery despots except in places M’erica doesn’t care about unless it has oil, gold and or diamonds!
Sedona has EMPLOYEES and primarily very professional ones. Some of them happen to be in housed and the MAGGOTS cannot stand the un housed even if they are providing them with necessities to include business owner PROFITS (which SHAMEFULLY is the only thing some Sedona business owners care about especially those who do NOT even reside here) on a daily basis!
JB,
The job I commuted for pays twice as much now. I quit commuting because I retired.
Look at how much prices for everything have gone up, food almost twice as much. Rents have gone way up, not only in Sedona. Yet Sedona employers want their slave labor to sleep in their cars.
Segner charges $500 plus a night for his rooms. Yet employees should sleep in their cars. Jablow’s folly indeed.
Ok I think you are upset the the Mayor isn’t providing brick and mortar housing to Sedona’s un housed full time employees and is only providing a fenced in security patrolled, well lit space for those folks to stay whether in a vehicle or Tent that has amenities those folks would not otherwise have? Is that correct?
If it is you misunderstand the Mayors intent to help not hinder and is limited to providing the space being offered because if he went outside that box he’d catch far more misguided flak than he has been over the current plan. So don’t blame him for the limitations.
People have been screaming for two years that we need to do something for housing. So the city does something for housing and the people who have Fox News toxic syndrome are going crazy. It’s a good plan and people who live in motorhomes are not homeless. They just have different ways of living. Jesus people live and let live and let live.
Oh good God. Is that the best you have “people who have Fox News toxic syndrome”? I would have thought by now your paranoia would have subsided. You have a big piece of property in the canyon. Why don’t you invite a few folks? I’m sure some of them work for you.
They cannot! They have to control others by taking away their rights and freedoms one by one while maintaining their own rights and freedoms which is called hypocrisy and self righteousness!
https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1770486545214251441
Illegal immigrants have a plan.
Once again, the last of Sedona’s great dinosaurs have gathered to stomp about the community – raising an inordinate amount of dust to cloud the facts and the issues at hand.
Fear not, as they will be extinct soon enough and leave the rest of us to pursue happiness, prosperity, and equity in our magnificent city.
WRR,
one can only hope you are right!