Sedona residents may have noticed an uptick in the number of residents and visitors inside Sedona area shops, restaurants, stores and on the road. After a relatively slow summer economically, perhaps due to the unusual heat that kept Arizonans inside with the air conditioning cranked up and out-of-staters … well, out of state, the onset of a cooler September means that our seasonal residents and workforce are returning as well as tourists who may have skipped Sedona for the summer instead opting for cooler Flagstaff or places atop the Coconino Plateau.
We have experienced an uptick in the number of residents looking for work and local businesses are employing more new workers to handle the slowly increasing number of visitors and residents patronizing their establishments. As the newspaper editor with a hand in the art scene, I often get inquiries from new artists and residents about the best places to find a job. As I’m never sure of people’s skill sets or education levels, I generally refer them to our employment heading in our newspaper’s classified section.
If you are a business owner looking for qualified employees, a sign in your window isn’t enough and may not catch potential workers who don’t see the sign. There really isn’t a one-stop-shop in-person or online for all job-seekers to find work, however, our newspaper’s classified section is a catchall for all types of employment. The classifieds appear in print in all three of our newspapers and on our two websites: Redrocknews.com and journalaz.com.
If you need positions filled, call our newsroom at (928) 282-7795 and place a classified ad. If you are looking for work, check our publications or visit our website. Sedona tends to experience an exodus of residents in May and June, with some leaving temporarily while others leave permanently, never to return. In September and October, the city refills as new residents move to Sedona to try living here. The increasingly dwindling number of inexpensive and reasonable home and apartment rentals will soon be fully occupied, leaving those who move to Sedona later with far fewer options to find a place to live.
There will be some new places to rent or purchase relatively soon, including a new apartment complex in Juniper Knolls and a housing development recently approved off of Bristlecone Pine Road in far West Sedona, though this plat is still months away from breaking ground on the first of 30 high-end homes. A major parcel in West Sedona could be available for an apartment complex, but it will take political will from Sedona City Council members and pressure from residents to push council to allow such a complex to be built without too much hassle.
Long-time workers are already being pushed out of rentals around Sedona as property owners consider the short-term benefits of short-term rentals or raise rents simply because their neighbors are, even though there have been no actual improvements made to these properties. While land owners can do what they wish with the properties they own and charge rents that markets will bear, we hope that many will consider the long-term benefits of keeping their properties as long-term rentals for Sedona workers and families. They contribute more to our schools, our economy in the slow periods and to our small-town way of life.
If Sedona workers move to Cottonwood or Camp Verde or Cornville, eventually they find work in these communities that don’t involve the long commute meaning Sedona businesses struggle to fill vacancies and have to raise prices to pay commuting workers more to stay in Sedona.
It is an odd irony that the major complaint among residents is “there are too many tourists,” yet many of these same folks turn their properties into vacation rentals attracting more tourists and pushing residents to move elsewhere. If some of these property owners reverted their vacation rentals back to long-term rentals, there would be fewer tourists and less traffic during the times of day when tourists on are on the road and workers are working. That would solve our traffic and housing problem far faster and simpler than waiting for a magical cure from the Arizona State Legislature or action from our Sedona City Council.
Christopher Fox Graham – Managing Editor
