By Henry Twombly
Sedona AZ (June 2, 2012) – The community plan has been, is, and will be a pro-business, pro-growth agenda. In spite of appearances and efforts at public input, the plan is being written behind the scenes by the Chamber, developers, consultants, and construction companies, who all benefit from the city’s growth and home-rule largess. The plan caters to the tourists instead of us residents. The April 18 SRRN article “Sedona foresees its future” told us what we want. “You want Sedona to be more pedestrian friendly.” Really? How many of us walk to the stores? “You want parking lots and garages at gateways and transit stops.” How many of us want to build these? “You want to eliminate the ‘suicide lane’,” and put up medians (which will further congest traffic). Too much tourist traffic is the problem, not the suicide lanes that have kept traffic moving during streetlight construction. The article told us that we want a convention center, “visitor centers at all three gateways,” and transitit buses in our neighborhoods. Really? I find this hard to believe.
My guess is that most citizens would rather have the city’s home-rule largess pay down the wastewater plant debt and eliminate sewer and hook-up fees. They’d rather build a Cottonwood-like recreation center for residents. Or at least keep the pool open for 6 months instead of two. They’d rather have the Council rewrite/enforce the noise ordinance, so that garbage trucks and airplanes don’t wake us up before 7am.
My fear is that if the pro-growth lobby goes unchecked, it will overdevelop and devolve Sedona into a tacky tourist town. Who is representing those of us in the no-to-little growth lobby, who want to preserve the beauty and small-town character of Sedona?
Henry Twombly
Sedona
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13 Comments
The city made its course visible at the recent city council forums, where the candidates (with one exception) said that we should not diversify, rather continue on its present course of building the tourism numbers and the unbridled growth that goes with increased tourism.
We cannot continue to make growth our objective.
I agree – I would love to have the community pool open longer than just during the summer.
I’d love to have sewer access without having to pay for the pricey hook up myself. Did you know, often times the cost could be upwards of 12,000.00. Twelve thousand. Thats not a typo.
The people crossing on 89A, stand on the yellow line and think they are safe from traffic. Until there are actual traffic lights with cross walks, nothing is going to change. But in all honesty, people are always going to jay walk.
If we are going to spend spend spend, why not revisit the Cultural Park. Its just falling apart. It was a fantastic venue. After all Sedona IS known for the Arts. Lets not subdivide it, and make it a condo complex/college classroom/shopping arcade/museum/coffee house/…lets just bring back some music, and fine arts.
How is it people endlessly make accusations with no documentation? Furthermore, the city can not do anything with the cultural park other then approve or disapprove the owner’s plans.
Attend some meetings. Enroll in the Citizens Academy. Include a few more facts next time, please. In fact, include opinions about facts ONLY.
We had our chance. Now ADOT will provide us with a commercial district in west Sedona. No safe crosswalks except intersection, no restaurants on ADOT right of way, dangerous bike lanes etc. Not to mention no Dark Sky designation. Sedona voted. We still want services from the city but somehow no one figures out that this costs money, and 40% of our revenue comes from sales tax. And I guarantee you Sedona residents do not spend that kind of money. So, deal with it.
And by the way Sedona has no auhority over the airport or it’s operations. I don’t support some of the decisions that are being made by council or the chamber however it is imporatant that anyone writing an opinion should at least be armed with facts and live in “realville”.
Great Points Mike!! Thanks! But now I have a correction: We didn’t vote for the lights. Pud Colquit took it upon herself to go to an ADOT meeting and demand that the subject be put to a vote. This would have taken longer than the time ADOT had to spend the #@!%**) Federal funds, therefore effectively forcing the Council to cave. At least that’s my best understanding. Thanks, PUD…
RE: the Airport, it’s also an ADOT issue (transportation). Go find the proposed 5-year ADOT Plan to see all the improvements they’d like to do there (boo, hisss), but don’t have funding for. Then Leave Feedback!! They are asking us to give it now!
Lastly, yes, GO to the Plan Amendment meetings! It’s called Imagine Sedona, so show some imagination! Unfortunately, the people who show up are those with lots of free time, so go figure. And beyond that, serve on a City Commission!! I do. Then you can at least vote on some things that eventually go before Council.
Right on, Henry!
We need to CLOSE the airport and move it to a place where airplanes don’t need to dump fuel to land, a place where tourist planes and helicopters can fly without disturbing their neighbors, and open airport mesa to a new venue.
The Cultural Park closing the result of a past City Council. The current owner got the property by default through back-door dealings. This property should be taken back by the City of Sedona through eminent domain and reopened. (ps the problem with the Cultural Park is that it could seat 5,000 people, and there were about 400 parking places – in order to reopen, a parking garage is required.)
The “improvements” to uptown did not address the problems of heavy traffic backed up into the canyon, no place to turn around in uptown after tourist suddenly find themselves in the canyon, and the hoards of jaywalkers. The round abouts still create havoc, have distracting (although beautiful) artwork, and further confuse tourist trying to get around. I dislike the “improvements” on 179 – you can no longer pull off to let lead-footed drivers pass, or to stop to enjoy the view, take photos — now traffic is highly controlled.
There are few people in Sedona who want to end up where we are going.
I do not agree with this article at all. It is unfair, mean spirited and just plain incorrect to say that the organizations listed in the article above are secretly writing the community plan. They aren’t. Our Commnity Plan Committee will write the plan for City Council approval and then the people of Sedona will vote to approve or disapprove it. Our Community Plan’s citizens committee is and has been working hard to find out the will of the majority of the people. Our citizens community plan committee has not reached any final conclusions on what to recommend to the City Council.
The citizens working on the Community Plan Committee deserve our thanks and support. I believe most citizens are grateful to their fellow citizens who are taking on this task that has taken hundreds of unpaid hours on the part of each member of the committee. Let’s show them our support.
Paul Chevalier
Thank you Paul!!!!
I couldn’t agree with you more.
I’m new here and just getting familiar with the town and, to a small extent, the politics. Without commenting on the other issues, I certainly agree about the pool. What a beautiful facility is our Community Pool! I couldn’t believe it was closed for almost all of May. I’d love to see extended hours and a longer “season.”
As far as “pedestrian friendly” is concerned: I DO walk to the stores. I remain extant, largely due to the remarkable (to an East Coast native) courtesy of the drivers and a bit of judicious scrambling on my part. Do we need improvements? Ask me in a year, assuming I haven’t succumbed before then.
Richard
Residents should not kid ourselves,’ this city is animated and controlled by business rhetoric with results to their benefit, on the backs of its majority of residents.
As Chairman of the Citizens Steering Committee for the New Community Plan, I’d like to clarify that no writing has begun on the current Plan. The process we are following is designed to elicit citizen comments and ideas, which we have sought out every way we could imagine. Our current activity is turning the extensive input we have received to date into complementary visions of Sedona that the public can again evaluate and comment on. Only then will a single vision for our city be written, subject to still more review and eventually a public vote.
We record, respect, and take into consideration every comment we receive. A complete list can be downloaded from http://www.SedonaAZ.gov/PlanUpdate. We will be more than happy to add the views of this letter writer and/or his respondents to that set of comments, should they wish, so that every opinion will be heard.
More of the same thinking I have heard here for almost 20 years (the plan caters to the tourists and not us residents) and (I never go Uptown, that is for tourists). Without tourism we would be a dusty little town and all the citizens would be paying much money to get anything they wanted and there would be few amenities here. Probably most of the current residents would not live here. Remember residents do not pay property taxes in town, in fact if all you buy is food you pay no local taxes, but the tourists do. We need them to keep coming or else we will be a “wide spot in the road” like Crown King! I agree with Paul, we need tourism but we have the ability as a city to control the expansion if we care to, that is what the Community Plan is in place to do..
If people are passionate about how they feel about their city, and their observations about how their city “functions,” how can that be considered “mean spirited?” In fact, if one takes the time to look back at a good representation of City Council minutes, it’s pretty apparent that Uptown interests and Its fantasy definition of “tourists” who have lots of money and come to buy art, is the engine that drives local politics.
Others of us who relocated here because of Sedona’s natural assets; dark skies, tranquility, etc. would have liked to have had them embraced and preserved. This would have been possible with the IDA Dark Sky Designation.
There are still some opportunities not being utilized for businesses that serve recreational tourists for anyone with the imagination and the money to serve those interested in being in Nature. Too soon, this will be a rarity as well.