By [Concerned Sedona Resident]
(May 13, 2021)
We “retired” three years ago after preparing our 12th and what we thought would be final article about “selling” Sedona to the world. We felt we had exposed all aspects of the City Council, Chamber of Commerce and tourism cabal. Recent events prove us wrong.
Sedona traffic issues again swirl about. Residents, including our local newspaper editor, again propose all manner of mostly ill-informed traffic solutions that can never happen. Despite years of discussion, the lack of understanding about what is legal and possible and what is not continues to generate one unlikely traffic “solution” after another.
Possible traffic mitigations hinge on five questions. First is who owns and controls the land the proposed project would take place on? Next, does the proposal attempt to exclude some people from public services paid for with their public funds? Then there is the question of just where will the millions of dollars to pay for the solution come from? That is followed by the question; is this really a “solution” that will make enough difference to matter or measure? Finally, what are the negative aspects and perhaps unintended consequences that go with all the positive benefits being imagined?
Land ownership sets major boundaries on what the City can and cannot do. Failure to understand who owns and controls the various lands in and around Sedona is probably the most critical factor leading to the most common cannot-happen traffic mitigation suggestions.
Specifically, the city cannot build on, pave, bridge, etc. any site the city does not own without at least many years of review and negotiation – if the proposed development is even allowable at all. Most of the land surrounding Sedona belongs to the US Forest Service, a federal agency governed by federal laws, not state or local ones. Even some areas inside the city are outside the city’s control. Both of our main streets, for example, belong to and are controlled by the State of Arizona as state highways.
Just as you cannot simply go tell your neighbor you want to use a piece of their property for your own purposes, Sedona cannot just go tell a federal, state or county agency or a private owner that we want some of their land for city purposes, regardless of what those purposes may be.
All agencies owning land both inside and outside the city have their own purposes using that land. Those purposes are usually designated by law and cannot simply be ignored and often cannot be negotiated away.
True, some traffic solutions being proposed for Sedona are done in other tourist-heavy locations like national parks, major recreation sites and even congested city cores. The huge difference between those and Sedona comes down to ownership and control. Sedona simply does not have ownership or control over most of the land areas involved in most of the proposed traffic solutions.
In addition to misunderstanding ownerships, traffic schemes seeking to restrict public use of public lands also abound. Fundamentally, if the land, facility, road, etc. is built and/or maintained with public money, it is open to public use – by all publics – and the City cannot restrict that use except by agreement with the landowner. Proposals like building roads with public funds “for locals only” cannot happen even if the roads were owned by the city.
Forest lands and trails around Sedona, for example, belong to everyone. Our two main streets, Highways 179 and 89A, are public travel routes paid for and maintained with public money. City streets are also paid for with public money and tourists have as much right to use all of them as do residents. The City cannot restrict people from driving through town or up the Canyon or from using forest parking areas except in limited safety or emergency situations. The city can restrict people from parking along city streets near trailheads but not from parking lots on forest land even if it adjoins a city street unless some kind of agreement has been negotiated with the Forest Service.
The third question in evaluating traffic solutions is the inevitable one of money. How will it be paid for and by whom? Those proposing various solutions too often ignore this reality or blithely wave it off as a minor concern. It is not.
Without exception, all the proposals involving roadbuilding, paving, bridging, tunneling, parking lots, etc. would cost many millions of dollars each. The major ones come with a price tag of many tens of millions. Sedona does not have that kind of money to spend and cannot generate it. Neither do the two counties we share, nor does the state.
State gas tax revenue is the main source of funding for much of the roadbuilding and maintenance happening in Arizona. The State of Arizona collects 19 cents of tax per gallon of gas sold and 27 cents for each gallon of diesel. City and county governments do not levy a gas tax but they do get a share of state gas tax revenues. Sedona receives just under $1 million annually. That is not enough to even do initial studies on most proposed new roadway projects. Coconino County receives about $11 million and Yavapai County receives around $13.5 million each year from the state-collected fuel tax. That is still not enough if both counties spent all their money for a couple of years on just one new Sedona traffic mitigation roadway and ignored the needs of every other county road. It’s simply never going to happen.
The state is not much better off. While Arizona takes in about $1.5 billion in fuel tax revenue annually, it shares about half of that with city and county governments. That revenue declined just over 10% this past year due to covid-reduced vehicle travel. Aging state highways are demanding more and more of this revenue to keep them in usable condition and construction costs continue to rise. The projected state deficit for needed roadway work over the next decade runs way up in the many billions of dollars.
Neither city, county nor state government are in any position to fund new local road projects. Forest Service budgets have been consistently cut every year by congress for some time putting the Service in no position to assist with roadwork either, even on their own lands.
Cost of maintaining any new traffic infrastructure are also part of the money question. The price of planning, designing and building new a travel route is only part of the financing question. Climate issues, deterioration from vehicle use and strata under the road all impact maintenance costs. These may run as high as ten percent of the initial construction costs annually.
The fourth question in deciding a “solution’s” viability is whether the action will really solve anything at all. Just what level of traffic use might the new route get and is that enough to make a detectible difference anywhere? A lot of proposals sound good to the proposer who is often thinking about how they might use a new travel option but not about how many others would do likewise.
Traffic car counts on 89A in the middle of Sedona average over 30 thousand cars a day. On 179, those numbers reach a daily average of over 14 thousand. That’s daily average over a whole year, not what we experience during higher seasonal levels. Most of those trips happen in daytime over about a 10-hour period. Do the math. What proposed backdoor, cut across or bypass route could handle enough cars to make a difference in those volumes?
Finally, everything has tradeoffs. That includes new traffic routes. What is spent on one of these means less is spent on other community needs and programs. Taking vehicles off one route most often leads to jamming more onto another. Bypass and connector routes destroy neighborhood livability and diminish property values. Routings past institutions like schools ramp up safety issues while those through forest lands mar scenic views, drive away wildlife, destroy their habitat, raise the wildlife-vehicle collision rate and impact other recreational uses of that land.
These five issues must all be calculated into the equation of cost vs benefit and the decision to pursue or not pursue any proposed traffic solution.
So, how do the main proposed solutions measure up against these criteria? We’ll look at that in our next (Over) Selling Sedona article.
(Over) Selling Sedona: Decision Points
How Do They Measure Up? Part 1 • Part 2
The Fallacy of Transit
Simple Solutions
Selling Sedona – One Year Later: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3
Selling Sedona, 2015: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Epilogue
12 Comments
Welcome back Mr. Resident. It’s such aa pleasure to read paragraph after paragraph of proper sentence structure, punctuation, proper word usage, and informative, cogent arguments.
These have been lacking on this formerly useful blog. I look forward to more from you.
Hey Mudguts! You speak of proper punctuation etc., yet you make a typo in your second sentence. Tsk. Tsk.
BFD
Thanks for the article, Mr. Concerned. Well done. But has anyone besides me noticed that since last Friday there has been a conspicuous absence of traffic in Sedona? It’s been almost eerie. I’m out there driving every day doing this or that, and not once did I run into any substantial traffic to speak of. Hmmmm.
Traffic is back to its weekday normal, the Easter break is over and we were back to our regular pattern of busy weekends.I like to say were a beach town we’re gonna be busy on the weekends,there’s no building our way out of traffic. Locals you’re just gonna have to come to deal with it because it’s not going away.
There’s less traffic because fewer people are traveling.
They don’t want to be caught in the riots.
They don’t want to be caught away from home with no gas.
They don’t have extra money to spend – inflation is going up faster than paychecks.
They don’t want to be around the recently vaxx’d.
They don’t want to wear a mask outside.
The whole world is on edge right now. Best to stock up and stay home.
Spoken right from the mind of a true delusional lying paranoid … Predictable.
Mudguts, Sandy’s citation of your typo ,” aa ” as an error is BS according to my daughter, an IU graduate of the school of Journalism located in Bloomington, Indiana. She also possesses a masters in education as does her younger sister. Both tell me Schorr has to be a nutcake sticking her neck out like she did. But then about everybody reading her posts in Sedona.Biz know she is a blooming stupid nutcake anyhow.
Too bad we contend with the likes of Sandy and waste our time rectifying dumb comments.
John
This is why we have traffic: Not the chamber Not the city it’s Your Governor
Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona has signed SB 1350, a law which prohibits cities and municipalities from banning the listing and use of short-term rentals like Airbnb, HomeAway, and others.
Signing the law isn’t solely about gaining political points, it’s also another step in the Arizona governor’s stated plan to develop public policy in the state that encourages a sharing economy.
From the governor’s perspective, the law helps travelers who, instead of turning to hotel chains, can inject the profits of tourism directly into local economy by paying locals. It’s a win-win situation, essentially.
Advocates for the lobbying group the Travel Technology Association support the new law.
In a statement, Matt Kiessling, leader of short-term rental policy for the Travel Technology Association (a trade association with members ranging from Airbnb to Expedia), said the following about the ratification of SB 1350:
“With SB 1350, Arizona has proven itself to be forward-thinking when it comes to public policy, willing to embrace the peer-to-peer economy while also balancing the interests of all stakeholders,” and that, “This bill truly is a win for everyone – it ensures that short-term rentals remain an option for travelers to Arizona and provides enormous economic benefits to local communities, while streamlining the collection of tax revenue.”
So far, this is one of the first major steps towards protecting, and essentially, promoting the use of short-term rentals in the U.S., while also laying out some framework should other states decide to follow suit.
,
Any proposed changes to SB1350 (that removed City regulatory authority for STRs) have “grandfathered” existing STR operators. Meaning that if any of the proposed legislation would have passed, it would have merely allowed the City to cap the current number of STRs, not remove any currently operating STRs. This is really just a function of how zoning changes work. Any existing, approved use prior to the new zoning ordinance taking effect becomes a legal nonconforming use.
Now why it will never go away.
Prop 207, the Private Property Rights Protection Act, passed in 2006. That Prop requires the City to pay for any diminution in fair market value that occurs because of a City regulation or zoning change. Currently, STRs are allowed in any residential zone. If the City were allowed to change that, and again limit or restrict the number of STRs in a residential zone, property owners would have up to two years to file a claim against the City alleging a reduction in the value of their property because of that change. The property owner would have to prove the decrease in value. The City would then have to either omit application of the STR restriction to that individual property (in the form of a permanent waiver that runs with the land) or pay for the diminution in value.
As you know, even if the State legislature were to return some regulatory control to municipalities, there would be no quick, easy, or inexpensive path for cities to reduce the number of STRs from their current levels.
Thanks,
Kurt
Kurt W. Christianson
City Attorney
City of Sedonat.
The state of Arizona and our Governor with support from the Goldwater institute stuck it to Sedona 23 now have over 1,700 new places to stay in Sedona. and no amount of money will fix the damage .
The above post is from an article in AZ central and a letter of comment from the city attorney the comment is a post by Steve Segner president of the Sedona Lodging council. WE are going to need to learn to live with out new State supported traffic.
everybody reading her posts in Sedona.Biz know she is a blooming stupid nutcake anyhow.
Too bad we contend with the likes of Sandy and waste our time rectifying dumb comments.
The above is from John Roberts……..a regular contributor
In a newsletter letter where an exchange of ideas are encouraged it is a shame that John Roberts takes time for a personal attack.
Perhaps his educated daughters could suggest to him a way to write his disagreement w/o being disagreeable.
Michael Johnson
Not sure how much credence is due to “Concerned Sedona resident”, easy to comment like so many others when you are ‘anonymous’. Lot’s of “why you can’t do something”. Pretty weak position if you are trying to do a deal.
It takes leadership to bring the City, County and NFS together. Have not had that in a long time – if ever. Everybody has their little silo. And there is the NIMBY disease all over the Valley.
We talk about “millions” we do not have; we can start by improving the tourism experience by taking $3 million from the Chamber that the bed tax generates and put it into programs that help traffic, locals and everyone’s experience. That’s close if not more than $30 million over the last 10 years. Maybe the Chamber should run on member dues like most Chambers do. There are millions in bed taxes for programs, and with guaranteed revenue you can bond a big project(s).
And the city NOW wants to keep it’s .5% “temporary” sales tax. Politicians love to spend other people’s money. How do you like paying more for your tourist experience? I don’t recall a “get out of tax liability” if you are a resident. They create a problem, then want to tax you to fix it.
There was someone who commented about weekday traffic being pretty much normal, apparently they do not live in South Sedona on SR179 where it was backed up to Chapel today. Pretty much daily.
What’s really tiring is blaming this all on Ducey. Please give it a rest, especially when those “blaming” have Short Term Rentals that want them “grandfathered”. Hypocrisy run amok.
We got a good guy with our new Transit Manager, Robert Weber. 20 years experience I believe in Santa Monica. Now; will the council listen?
Let’s see, the Council had an opportunity about a month ago to fill an opening on the council that actually knows about, and has been successful in developing work force housing…and they chose to put Jon Thompson back on the dais so we could listen to bloviating about how Sedona is going lead the country in sustainability and “climate change”.
Don’t hold your breath on solutions folks – but let’s give Mr. Weber all the support that he asks for. Maybe he can get some things done for the benefit of our residents as well as our tourists..