By Mike Schroeder
I am responding to my friend Shaeri Richards piece a couple of days ago. I considered posting a “reply” to the article but felt it better to do a new piece and reference some of Shaeri’s comments. Shaeri is a detailed person and an asset to our community.
The reason for my review and response, is that from a historical perspective. No one knows more about Home Rule, and Permanent Base adjust that I do along with Dwight Kadar from our 2018 experience with the state. Our experience stems from being the only 2 citizens to EVER put Permanent Base Adjustment (PBA) on a ballot in the state of Arizona. It has never been done. ALL PBA ballot measures have been placed on ballots by City Councils. The manipulation of the City of Sedona’s staff and then council, which although there are different people in charge now, has not changed.
When we look at any Council and Home Rule, it is not so much the semantics on the process, like the unlimited authority to spend all the money we collect, but look at the qualifications of the people in charge to see if they have ever had the personal background experience to manage a $50 to $110 million business involving their own money or shareholders money responsibly. Or is the council and staff management playing in a sandbox where daddy brought in a truckload of sand (cash) and said “have fun.” People can and have had successful careers in their past, but that does not qualify them to manage these kinds of dollars. And if they HAD the responsibility to manage these kinds of numbers, unless it was their own business, they DID have oversight from management and could not (unlike now) do what they wanted.
Council is responsible to the VOTERS who live in the CITY LIMITS. NO ONE ELSE.
I challenge Shaeia’s comments on “What the Heck is Home Rule” as being incomplete.
“If voters turn down Home Rule, it launches a sequence of events that could force the city into difficult times. Not because the city loses its money. The money would still be there. Sedona just wouldn’t be allowed to spend it. The money would sit in a bank account and all kinds of problems could ensue. If things don’t play out in a very specific way, services will have to be cut. Grants to nonprofits like the library, the Sedona International Film Festival, the Humane Society, and the recycling center would likely be among the first to go.”
This is simply not true. And the scare tactics of the “first to lose are all our nonprofits” in order to get all these people and their friends to vote has been typical. In 2018 and today, NO on HOME RULE does in fact NOT wipe out those, UNLESS the Council CHOOSES to do it.
Budget Override is discussed also. The council can come to the public EVERY MAY and justify an override. This was also “overlooked” by our mayor at the Mary D Fisher presentation last week. Our existing Home Rule expires June 30, 2027, but in May 2027 the voters can vote on an override, and also in May 2028. May 2028 is not mentioned. So, if the council is doing its job, and listening to citizens (we have a LOT of very smart people in this town) then presenting a logical override number and what it is being spent on should not be a problem. Also note that the council can still borrow money for capital projects even if Home Rule does not pass. The current pitch is that an override ballot will cost the city $40,000, maybe, no detail provided. So what. The city drops $50K to $300K on studies all the time. That’s a bogus argument for citizen involved responsible governance. Home Rule can be voted on again in May 2028. If the city is smart, they can put PBA on the ballot in fall 2028. But understand, the CITY does NOT want PBA on the ballot now, or ever. It WAS on the ballot in November 2018, and Sandy Moriarty AND the council told citizens to vote NO, because Home had passed in the primary. They do not want anybody else in their sandbox.
Ask you self a very important question – Why does the city council run from PBA, and why does the city train its employees to make sure that they mention all the scare tactics to make people want to vote for Home Rule. (Yes – those training videos are available for all to see).
Let’s talk about money. Yes, let us do that. We do not have a city property tax. Out of the 91 cities in Arizona, 45 have city property tax. The majority do not. We had a temporary .5% sales tax, which council who loves its revenue made permanent. Probably why businesses like the VOC, and companies locate outside Sedona, like the Ford Dealer on State Highway 260. And hotels outside Sedona, VOC and others like Enchantment, save their visitors 7%, and advertise that to the tourists. The city also gets grants, and shared revenue from the state, $6.4 million a year, 2024-2025 in fact. That number is BIG, and is seldom mentioned by council or staff. Ask yourself why. The average age in Sedona is 59, fixed income, seniors etc. Why not take the sales tax down a percent to 2.5%. And you might ask the hotel industry if they would like to be more competitive with hotels outside the city regarding the bed tax.
Is the City Spending Well? More police needed. 9,700 residents “Blooming up to 35,000” because of tourists? We had 10,300 residents in 2000, and according to Chamber number in the late 2000s we had 2 to 3 million tourists a year. Nothing has changed. But now we need more? The transit system for the trail heads, moves a lot of people. Not a bad program. Why is it free? Most the places you go as a tourist in the world you buy transportation, you pay for parking. You have and app, add a $5 per car. No money changes hands, credit or debit, get an all day pass for all the trial head parking. Why are we leaving $500 to $600k or more a year on the table? People spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to come here. And based on local ID verification offer free parking to residents, like Hawaii does for many programs. Win win.
TRAFFIC – City decisions, what has been accomplished so far.
Extra Southbound lane in Uptown. $4.8 MILLION. Oh, and fancy laser cut steel divider, cost the city several $100s of thousands when a lady cut her hand on that, but it looks “pretty”. Reason for the lane change? So people didn’t have to sit for an hour coming back to Sedona in the canyon. Here’s is an idea, post time from to Sedona from the roundabout at I 17 and 89A at the top of the hill so people could make that decision, 89A or I17. Result? FAIL. The city did not add an additional lane, they took the two lanes OUT OF TOWN and switched it to TWO LANES into Uptown from the canyon. Result is win for UPTOWN residents and a nightmare for South Sedona and West Sedona. An unbelievable horrible traffic decision. Amateur. It was easy to pass through Sedona to go up the Canyon, as a lot do as they are on the way to the Grand Canyon. Three lanes turned into 1, the traffic light at Forest is another block. As a result, the double roundabout at the Y is all jammed up, nothing moves as nothing is going into uptown, and that backup goes all the back on SR 179. Makes that fire station on SR179 unusable unless they go South on SR179. Safety issue. You think Sedona traffic “engineers” though that one through? AND then they threw in the new “ZIPPER”merge lane which just compresses traffic more, into very small roundabouts. The total “improvements” to Uptown came in at around $7 million. The city was advised prior to construction that the new traffic flow would not work. And now they are talking about installing traffic signals to regulate flow into the roundabouts?
More improvements on the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVFE8-Ida9Y
Until you get a bypass in, all the fancy roundabouts, the latest on Brewer wiping out local retailers and endangering a historical building, the patchwork stuff is just that. Think about it, if there was really “long term” strategic planning, maybe an improvement to Schnebly, a bridge to hit the 89A roundabout at the north end of Sedona for residents and tourists going up the canyon or to Uptown, huge problem could be solved. Ship has sailed – maybe. Cost – yes, but not so much the cost, but look at what strategic planning COULD have done. Forest Road extension, Uptown, Zipper – Add all that up.
The Parking Garage – an $11 million projected cost, and a $26 final cost. Interesting to note that some surface lots will be closed. And the revenue analysis of the new parking garage just does not make sense, but we won’t go into that now. Why6 can’t the city issue a contract? DO they start small to please residents and then blow it out with change orders and other “necessities”? Is that done on purpose, or just incompetence.
Forest Road Extension, initial projected cost, $2.77 million, final $17.6 million which included $2.2 million for property acquisition and easements, most which had to be litigated, city lost every one of them by the way. The original approved budget was $2.77 million as mentioned. Sounds good to the public right?
We are running local transport busses for $1 and $2 fee, a trial program according to Webber, who just retired as transit manager. It is not successful so that they want to expand it. Electric vehicles, expensive, to “protect the environment” when tour busses run through the streets as you would expect for a tourist community. $31 million estimated “Vehicle repair station”. Were not Phoenix. Building codes that make the construction of “affordable housing not affordable.
We had the solution to a commonsense path by putting PBA on the November 2018 ballot with a starting number that equaled the spending of the previous year. Home Rule had ALREADY passed in the primary and was the RULE for 4 years. Oh, by the way, we had to SUE the city at a personal cost of $17,000 as they tried to invalidate out signatures. See a pattern here? City sues citizens when they do not like the outcome, we just went through that again with the Cultural Park. The sitting city council in 2018 told the citizens to vote NO on PBA. The city does NOT want a safety net, they do NOT want citizen input. They demand panic to keep the cash and spending rolling along. Talk to some of the citizens that have been on the citizen budget committee. Don’t believe me.
It is their sandbox. You can continue to fill it with cash or put some limits on them. If a city like Palm Desert California, with 53,000 people, 14.7 million tourists a year can run the city for $2200 budget per citizen, we do not need to spend almost $11,000 per citizen. Vote NO on Home Rule.