The July 21 election will show whether Sedona still believes in representative government — or whether organized outrage has become the city’s new political force.
By Bear Howard & Associates
Sedona, AZ –The July 21 election will reveal whether voters trust representative government, or whether direct-democracy outrage has taken control of the city’s future.
There is an old American argument hiding inside Sedona’s 2026 election. It is the argument between representative government and direct democracy.
Do we elect people to study hard issues, sit through endless meetings, hear from experts, balance competing interests, and make decisions for the long-term health of the city? Or do we believe every major decision should be thrown back to the voters whenever a loud enough group says, “You are not listening to the residents”?
On paper, both ideas sound democratic. In practice, one can easily be used to damage the other.
Sedona is now living inside that tension.
The city’s July 21, 2026 election is not just another local election. It is a convergence point. Home Rule is on the ballot. Proposition 403, the Cultural Park Preservation Act, is on the ballot. The mayor’s seat is on the ballot. Three City Council seats are on the ballot. In one election, Sedona voters will decide not only who governs, but what kind of government Sedona will have.
That is why the moment feels so unsettled.
Home Rule, formally known as the Alternative Expenditure Limitation, sounds bureaucratic, but it is foundational. It is the mechanism that allows Sedona to spend the money it legally collects, rather than being forced under a state-imposed formula that does not reflect Sedona’s modern needs, visitor economy, infrastructure demands, or public-service responsibilities.
It is not a new tax. It is local spending authority. Without it, Sedona could still collect substantial revenue but lose the ability to spend much of it on the services, projects, staff, roads, safety, parks, transit, and community programs residents expect.
Then there is Proposition 403. Its supporters describe it as a way to preserve the old Cultural Park property as public open space. Its critics see something more troubling: an initiative that would block housing on a major city-owned property at the Western Gateway, tie the hands of future elected councils, and force long-term obligations onto the city without the kind of full planning, budgeting, and tradeoff analysis representative government is supposed to provide.
That is the heart of the problem. A city council can spend years studying land use, housing, infrastructure, traffic, public costs, financing, legal obligations, and community needs. But one organized group, with a good slogan and enough signatures, can turn the whole matter into a ballot fight. The measure may sound simple. The consequences are not.
This is where small-town democracy becomes vulnerable.
In a city the size of Sedona, a small number of highly motivated people can create the impression of a mass movement. A petition table, a website, a few dozen repeated social media posts, a packed council meeting, a handful of emotional public comments, and a slogan like “Sedona First” can begin to look like the voice of the whole community.
But is it? Or is it the voice of those with the time, energy, anger, and organization to dominate the conversation?
That question matters.
The phrase “listen to the residents” is powerful because it sounds so obviously right. Of course elected officials should listen. But which residents? The people who attend every meeting? The people who post every day on Nextdoor? The people who sign a petition after hearing one side of the story?
What about the residents who are working, raising families, volunteering, running businesses, caring for aging parents, or simply avoiding the ugliness of local political combat? Are they not residents too?
Silence is not consent. But noise is not a mandate.
Sedona’s election also includes a group of four candidates presenting themselves, in effect, as a rescue mission. Their message is that Sedona needs to be fixed, redirected, reclaimed, or returned to the residents. This is familiar small-town political language. It often begins with a real frustration.
Traffic is real. Housing pressure is real. Tourism pressure is real. Distrust of government can be real. But the leap from “there are problems” to “hand us the majority and we will fix it” is a dangerous one.
Cities are not fixed by slogans. They are governed by budgets, staff, laws, engineering, intergovernmental agreements, bond obligations, public safety needs, tourism realities, housing markets, roads, water, wastewater, land constraints, and competing resident expectations. The romantic idea that a new political faction can sweep in and restore common sense often collides quickly with the actual machinery of municipal government.
That does not mean citizens should be passive. Quite the opposite. Citizen activism is essential. Initiatives, referendums, public comment, and elections exist for a reason. They are safeguards against arrogance, corruption, and complacency.
But when these tools are used to bypass complexity, inflame public suspicion, or make a small faction appear larger than it is, they stop being safeguards and start becoming weapons.
Sedona is not the first small town to face this. Across America, small communities have watched local politics become more nationalized, more suspicious, more factional, and more driven by social media. Where local newspapers once filtered facts, explained context, and separated rumor from record, online platforms now reward outrage and repetition.
A claim does not have to be true to become influential. It only has to be repeated by the right people in the right places.
That is how representative government gets weakened. Not all at once, but gradually. First, elected officials are told they are not listening. Then every difficult decision becomes proof of betrayal. Then petitions and initiatives are used to reverse or preempt council action. Then candidates run not just to serve, but to punish the existing system.
Eventually, the council still exists legally, but its authority has been politically hollowed out.
This is the cautionary lesson Sedona may now offer other small-town cities.
Direct democracy is a valuable tool. But it was never meant to replace representative government on every hard question. A city cannot function if every complex decision is reduced to a slogan, every council action is treated as illegitimate, and every organized outcry is mistaken for the will of the people.
On July 22, Sedona will know what kind of city it has chosen to be. It will know whether voters reaffirmed representative government, Home Rule, and steady civic management — or whether the direct-democracy outcry has taken control of the city’s future.
If the latter happens, Sedona may become more than a local political story. It may become a warning: in small towns, democracy does not always fail because people stop caring. Sometimes it falters because a few people care so intensely, organize so effectively, and shout so loudly that they convince everyone else they are the people.
9 Comments
Very good points. I’ve been tracking several rounds of “vote the bums out”. The ground swell is real, an very potent this time. There are things we should be discussing as a city that we are just not cracking into, and that lack of directly addressing complaints (like sprinklers at the parking garage) has created what we’re seeing now.
The last battle for mayor with a decrying of the status quo took nearly half of the votes. Back then, the majority chose calm by the slimmest of margins. Is there enough extra disaffected voters this time to get the majority? The new candidates and their admirers are betting yes. I’m not so sure. The centrist block, not ready to embrace emotional uproar or invective is going to be looking for details we’re not seeing yet. I know I am.
Right now we only have general statements from the candidates about the need for greater transparency and accountability. These statements need a finer point put on them before we vote in folks whose heart is big but who have taken non-traditional paths to office (Jean being the notable exception, having served on the Budget Committee). To take the gamble that generalizations will carry the day is to risk a lot of life force, and a loss under such banners will make future attempts to get voted in all the harder. I fear the week-three-on-the-dias realizations of how things actually work and what the art of the possible is regarding change will come as a shock to those who have not served in a civic capacity.
Not fulfilling campaign promises can lead to voter disaffection, causing repeated cries of “vote the bums out” that go on every election cycle, ad infinitum. We should really strive to break that cycle by having campaign promises map to the art of the possible, and then hold electeds to those promises in an objective manner, and only vote out those who fail to live up to them.
RE: Metrics. Which metrics are missing? Is it just that we’re not being spoon fed the information, but all the data is actually there? Certainly we need better use of technology to get information out. But the city is already heading in the direction the candidates want. Councilor Dunn is leading the charge. Who’s going to the public meeting public tonight (June 8th, 5pm) meeting on metrics? It’s really unfortunate that it coincides with the new candidate’s meet and greet. What a better way for a candidate to learn what the deficiencies are than to see what the departments are planning to deliver?
https://www.sedonaaz.gov/Home/Components/Calendar/Event/19828/972?curm=6&cury=2026
Did you notice the email the city sent about this meeting? You can’t really say the city isn’t trying.
RE: Accountability. What’s the plan? Just a greater scrutiny? “Incumbents didn’t do more, but I [new candidate] promise to add more scrutiny.”? We need some more meat on this bone if you’re going to capture the large block not likely susceptible to generalizations. Large mistakes affect the next annual review? Three strikes and you’re fired? Or is the plan simply “We’ll not let you get away with (specified stuff)”? What is being promised?
Clearly the new candidates have a head of steam. I’ve seen some good ideation from the new candidates so far. Let’s fill in more details. Hopefully they build on that with some concrete notions about what could happen differently. Then we can compare what is already being done and determine if the city and incumbents are off in the wrong direction completely, such that we need fresh faces with new plans. Or do we just take this election cycle as providing the correct course correction towards even greater improvements, leveraging the experience of the incumbents and not throw the baby out with the bathwater? I look forward to the details so I can make my choice.
Most interested in the comment “Where local newspapers once filtered facts, explained context, and separated rumor from record, online platforms now reward outrage and repetition.” Not sure that is what we have in Sedona. Social media is often a challenge, but serves a purpose for discussing local concerns and issues that are not objectively provided by our local news sources.
@TB, well social media is far more like cancer spreading the worst and most uninformed details to fill the void in people who are not happy with their lives.
Why do I say this? I will just give you a taste.
Anyone remember the tunnel going right through Thunder Mountain on Facebook?
How about the speed bumps being added to the roundabouts?
How many people fell for the data center on the Dells property?
How about a “3 story” parking garage? Oh yea guess people ignored half of it was underground?
The bus transports air, headlines?
It shows people do not pay attention what happens around them. They do not read other than a headline.
People scream for transparency? Go to the city website, its all there. Meetings minutes, you name it. Yes its boring, its all there!
As for RRN, it has turned most everything into opinion. Its now trying its best to be a hometown rag. I subscribe to it, and Verde Independent. I find the VI has even better more truthful coverage of what happens in Sedona.
As for the article, yes there are times when the city has their minds made up. It can be for many reasons. But for the best overall for the people.
I have had many disagreements with council! I win some, I lose more. But what I do that most dont, is, follow a project. Speak at P&Z meetings. Write to council explaining my side, or speak in front of council. I get sick and tired with people with a opinion yet do absolutely nothing past that. I dont care if your busy. Are you to busy to write a email? Even worse are the ones who have no clue on how government works, yet they will tell you its corrupt? Now they cant explain why. Of course they cant. How can you have a opinion yet not understand anything about your complaint or even a solution?
As I learned yesterday in the City Council Audit meeting- the whole point of which is to raise transparency…is that the city tracks over 400 metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). So too you’re point, it’s all there.
I hear the arguments about transparency. I’m starting to think that mainly means not copping to mistakes in a public way, with the public flogging of a disciplinary action. That’s not likely to happen. I would like to see a Five Why’s process or similar after a project exceeds some percent of original budget, no matter the reasons for the increase. Then at least the public could understand all the many facets that go into big project, and see how the city plans to not make identified mistakes again.
Transparency means not making your mind up prior to Public Meetings where all the information is presented AND No Councilman Reads a Pre-Meeting Written Statement.
So I guess there should be no prep for meetings and everything should be off the cuff impromptu without data or information to back it? That makes zero sense whatsoever sorry.
I am with you Jill. That is silly. Sheri is that how you prepared when you were a councilwoman?
Sheri, talk about blowing smoke, I knew you when you worked on the city council, you were very opinionated then and I guess still are, you had your mind made up well before each meeting.
Social Media can be good, fact based and informative. Or it can be nothing but bullshit gaslighting, propaganda, hate and sheer nonsense that selectively ignores or re-writes historical events, current events etc. like Info Wars very much did for example and Fox News, NewsMax, RT and other alt Right Russian Propagandist outlets that many Americans have been severely brainwashed by for decades now. Just look what that got hose feeble minded individuals- A Federal Government in absolute ruins that will take decades to repair, a POTUS who thinks his sole job is to destroy our country, build monuments to himself and all the while making billions off of the office, outrageous food, medical and utility costs and a house that is divided and about to fall!
Social Media is like owning a firearm! One has to use extreme caution when utilizing it. If you’re susceptible to believing anything you’re told or see on it then that’s the same as negligently pointing a loaded weapon at someone or shooting them. If you believe the fact based legacy news (your parents and grandparents watched) and social media platforms are “Fake” because a Fake Bloated Orange Clown tells you they are and you choose to believe the criminal nonsense, outright lies and drivel coming from his preferred propaganda platforms then quite simply, you’re an idiot!
Tik Tok and channels like it are nothing but dangerous! They encourage children to take deadly “challenges” and exploit people because of how they look or think. While not technically propaganda their content is sheer nonsense, egotistical and dangerous.
My two cents on that! Oh wait, the Draft Dodger and Thief eliminated pennies (claiming they’re a literal waste of money) only to violate more laws to have his bloated Orange face (graphically altered to make him look less fat than he really is) only a stupid $250 bill.