By Steve Segner: —
Sedona, AZ — In an article published by Sedona resident, Tim Perry, in an online Sub Stack publication, he made strong negative accusations about the city after reviewing the salaries of Sedona city staff.
One of the things he said was, “Here is your regular reminder of the comfortable lives led by the city of Sedona’s staff, funded by your tax dollars. This year’s rundown of city staff salaries shows they have reached new heights, with forty-five regular staff—twenty-two percent—now earning $100,000 or more, up from 28 last year. These employees can afford homes in Sedona, paid for by the rest of us—if they choose to live here at all.”
Response to Mr. Perry
In his article, Mr. Perry referred to the City of Sedona and its employees as “parasites.” That kind of language may generate attention, but it does nothing to improve the conversation about how our community actually works.
Sedona functions because people do their jobs. Police officers protect the public, road crews maintain streets used by millions of visitors, transit drivers move hikers and tourists off crowded trailheads, and city staff manage the infrastructure that keeps this town operating. Calling those people “parasites” is not criticism—it is simply an insult directed at working people.
What Mr. Parry also overlooks is a basic fact about Sedona’s finances: a large portion of city revenue comes from visitors, not residents. Tourism generates the sales taxes that support public safety, road improvements, parks, transit, and other services that residents rely on every day.
In other words, Sedona has built a system where the people who enjoy the town help pay for the services that keep it functioning.
Reasonable people can disagree about how government should operate. Sedona is not an inexpensive place to live and work; the salaries the city pays reflect the wages needed to attract and retain seasoned, responsible individuals. That debate is healthy.
I’m sure you’ve heard stories about the challenges of recruiting for the school district, the city, and other organizations, which end up with loosely qualified candidates because they can’t find an affordable place to rent or buy that fits their budget.
But when criticism such as Mr. Perry’s is reduced to name-calling, it ceases to be a serious discussion of policy and becomes little more than political theater.
Sedona deserves a better conversation than that
—Steve Segner, Sedona resident
12 Comments
Yes this is a interesting as I have to explain to my very young Sedona friends. See back in the day, the 60s and 70s people worked for government as their first job, to get experience. Boy have times changed!
Now listening to experts had we raised minimum wage with inflation for the last 50 years, it should be $35 and hour or more. This is the start of the problem.
Now government jobs have always followed COLA, and appear to the not paying attention crowed very high.
See starting in the 80s, was a big change. Destroy good blue collar jobs, get ride of unions, outsource those good jobs so CEOs can get millions. At the same time they made it so pensions could be the thing of the past, and healthcare if you got it, consider yourself lucky.
So when so few make millions and billions, the rest wonder why. Can you imagine what it is like to be in your 20 or 30s now? Wages low, no perks or benefits. Maybe a 401K?
To bad so many people voted for the outsourcing, cheered the elimination of unions. To only pass down to generations work harder make less. I guess the same anti-government of the 80s is alive and well. Bitch about it, point fingers, but not pay attention to when it happened and by whom?
I find it interesting when the solution to everything is a free market. The free market that will cut corners for profits. A free market that suppresses wages for more profit. Government isnt about profits, its about helping people. If you dont see that, that is sad indeed!
“Reasonable people…” are no longer out there and “…name calling..” is no surprise. “These” name calling people reflect the president who has a very long history of showing disrespect to his perceived enemies. (With him you kiss his a– or you are a Cockroach.) If you are an elected official he will call for you to be ” primaried” in the next election rather than accepting another persons point of view.
What is worse (as if that could happen) is the only Republican politicians willing to call him out for his lack of respect towards others are those not running for re-election.
So America, keep it up and act like a president. Tell your child’s referee to (________) , tell your spouse to (________), and children it is time to act like an “adult” and tell you parents to (____).
What is going on with “…name-calling,..” is people just acting “presidential” instead of acting civil.
I use the shameless POTUS’s name calling and hatred right back at them and they go nuts and call me a hater then defend the hate and drool coming out of their leaders bigly orange mouth. They’re using his hateful Modus Operandi against everyone and anything they hate and then consider themselves good little Evilgelicals who slander the word of Christ himself in order to achieve perceived “ownership” of the people they attack. 400% (as King Numb Nuts likes to say) of them never served this country or community a day of their lives just like their cowardly leader. So they think to somehow be better than those who have because they became wealthy off of their self serving interests just like their bigly orange daddy does.
100K per annum is probably one of the lowest major tourism city employee salaries of tourist towns. Those name callers and haters likely made 4-5 times that sitting on their asses being asses while their employees made them the wealthy stingy hate filled asses they very much are.
Thank you Sedona City employees for doing the best jobs you can despite continual harassment and hate from those of Epstein Class in their high castles. Hopefully Sedona PD pulls them over legally and shows them just how dedicated they are to their jobs and community by showing them zero leniency for their violations. Or they ask for a building permit and it gets denied for typos or other minor issues.
What they want is a city government that permits they and they alone to make the decisions that impact us all just like MAGA has done with our Federal Government.
So I say give them back just what they are giving everyone else and then some!
Wow! After working my ass off for the City of Sedona for 24 years, 15 of those years as the Community Development Director, I had no idea my title was actually “Community Development Parasite”. Thanks, Tim, for letting me know I was only a parasite for all of those hard working and stressful years.
Thanks for your service John! Hope your situation is less stressful now.
Thank you, Sean! It was a very good and long run with the COS! Terrific place to work and terrific community to serve!
City employees making $100K and $150K a year can afford some criticism. or does that kind of money not buy thick skin or a spine? Don’t think it’s enough? Quit. I used to run an HR department, I’ll take your job happily for that salary. So would half of Sedona.
How much did they pay lobyist “Steve Segner, Sedona resident” for this drivel?
Why does one’s salary make them eligible for criticism rather than their performance and track records? Seems like a lame assed excuse to be a lame assed hater to me. Now if they were making 500k to a Million per annum as you and most other haters likely did off the backs of your employees then maybe there’d be some justification for some added criticisms of their salaries. Love your Snowflake user name. If anyone has proven themselves to be Snowflake Pansies it’s MAGA as a whole who have the thinnest skin on earth when it comes to tolerating name calling.
Why don’t you volunteer your time, energy and mouth to the community rather than tearing it apart based on the generally very low incomes the people doing the work are actually making in comparison to other Southwestern tourism community administrators in other towns and states? Perhaps you’ll learn how wrong your justification for attacking people truly is. I doubt you will do either of those simple things.
Sticks and stones and all that impede us in deciding key issues. I recognize that base behaviors certainly feed the addiction to invective. Sadly, there is a market for invective (hopefully not in the voting majority!)
Recently, a book was recommended on Nextdoor that examines the insidious effects of this style of civic engagement. It’s well worth the read. Available for free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription:
Performative Outrage: How Manufactured Fury Undermines Local Government and Public Service
by Mr. Brooks Williams
ISBN-13 : 979-8282012866
I hope we can find a way to put performative outrage in the past and only have civil discourse. That would require the community somehow coming together and insisting on decorum. Technology for sure is needed as an aid. Nextdoor has policies in place to get us most of the way there. Currently, there is little chance of quelling the fury, due mostly to a select few here that would rage against, then laugh at, then ignore, any attempts to have them share with us their talents (which for Tim are considerable) without damaging themselves.
Nextdoor is a biased platform managed by biased site managers who allow vitriol that is pro MAGA and pro Trump while blocking and banning anti messaging about either. Sedona Biz is the model for open un biased discourse, not MAGA’s Nextdoor absurd very biased censorship.
“In a time when criticism can be loud, I want to thank the Sedona City Council for their tireless work and dedication to our community. Sedona is fortunate to have leaders willing to serve with commitment and care.
Tim Perry has called local residents like myself barbarians in city meetings are now city Council employees Parasites.
We do not need locals like him living in our amazing community.