Call it a misinterpreted coincidence. The Sedona Planning and Zoning Commission was scheduled to meet on Tuesday, May 7. The topic was discussion and possible action regarding a city-initiated request for a minor text amendment to Chapter 9 of the Sedona Community Plan.

This would change the major amendment criteria, including allowing the following to be considered as a minor amendment: An increase in residential density, including select projects on five acres or less.

However, due to a thought by some that this was a direct response to the proposed apartment complex on Andante Drive, the city decided to postpone the topic for now.

A message sent out in various forms from the city stated, “The May 7, 2019 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting has been canceled.

The agenda item for this meeting included a city-initiated request for a minor amendment to the Sedona Community Plan that would affect the criteria for major amendments to the Sedona Community Plan.

“Since this is a city-initiated request, staff is concerned that this item is being perceived as related to an application for a major amendment to the Community Plan [Serenade Apartments] that is currently under review. This city-initiated request will therefore not be proposed to the Planning and Zoning Commission and City Council while the Serenade project is under consideration.”

Assistant City Manager and Community Development Director Karen Osburn said the request to reevaluate what constitutes a major amendment can be brought by staff at any time and that the agenda item had nothing to do with the proposed apartment project.

“Should there have been any intent to make these changes for the benefit of the Serenade project, they would have been brought forward earlier, in time for the Serenade proposal to be reclassified,” she said. “This project was already designated as a major amendment and had been moving through the process as a major amendment — that would not have changed. But to avoid even the perception that these two items are tied together, staff decided to postpone any further discussions of the plan amendment criteria until the Serenade project has completed its review process.”

A major amendment to a general plan is defined by state statutes as, “A substantial alteration of the municipality’s land use mixture or balance as established in the municipality’s existing general plan land use element.”

A city report states the statute is provided for each municipality to define the criteria to determine if a proposed amendment to the general plan is a substantial alteration and therefore a major amendment. Per state statutes, major amendments must be considered once per year and require a two-thirds vote of the city council to approve.

A minor amendment can be considered at any time and does not require city-wide notification or a two-thirds vote.

Osburn said staff looked at land use-related major amendment criteria for 21 comparable Arizona cities and towns and found that Sedona’s criteria was the most restrictive. Most cities and towns use acreage thresholds to trigger a major amendment. For example, if the property is over a certain size, changes to its use would be considered major. The lowest size threshold found was 20 acres and most were set at 40 acres or above.

“This is because there are few land use changes that could occur in most cities at a size threshold of only a few acres that would constitute a substantial alteration to that community’s land use mixture,” she said. “Due to the intensive and lengthy processes required to amend a community plan, it is important to ensure that the right amount of rigor is applied to the various potential types of land-use changes, particularly land uses we want to encourage.”

Even if changes are made to reclassify some major amendments to minor, those would still be put through a rigorous public process. The most significance difference is that a minor amendment can be done at any time, she said.

Ron Eland can be reached at 282-7795, ext. 122 or by email at reland@larsonnewspapers.com