This Sedona City Council needs to fix the traffic problems caused by decades of municipal mismanagement. Council members and city leaders should be on the phone daily with officials in Coconino and Yavapai counties, the U.S. Forest Service, the governor’s office, our three state legislators and the Arizona Department of Transportation to figure out how to build roads, a handful of bridges and get traffic flowing like a proper town.
This week, a group of high-end tour company owners are pushing a misguided effort to have the city cancel its destination marketing contract with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce, using misstatements, misleading information and plain bad budget numbers.
Should the city end marketing, it won’t fix traffic. The chamber doesn’t build roads, hire and train crossing guards at Tlaquepaque, fix bad stoplight timing or build alternate routes or bridges; the city does — or at least is supposed to when cohorts of city councils don’t screw up for 20 years. The chamber aims to bring tourists during the slow times of the year and direct the tourists already here.
The chamber actually did end marketing during the pandemic and even produced a video telling visitors to stay away. Phoenicians and Californians ignored the plea and arrived in hordes. Why? We’re two hours from Phoenix, state officials said outdoor hiking is a “safe” pandemic activity, and our neighbors fled California’s lockdown.
Even if the chamber ends all marketing, not a single restaurant, hotel, resort nor private business is going to stop theirs. In all likelihood, they will step up their efforts. They certainly will not be as focused and subtle as the chamber; a resort in the Village of Oak Creek doesn’t care one iota that Devil’s Bridge trail is clogged in March and will send all its guests there if they ask for a hiking recommendation.
In contrast, the chamber tries to direct tourists to less-used trails or to visit at slower times of the year. The chamber responds to residents because its board, staff and members are local business owners and because the council has some pull with bed tax dollars.
We can’t control much else: Arizona companies in Phoenix use our red rocks in their ads, commercials and marketing. Kia named a minivan after us. Instagram photos of beautiful Sedona locations inspire more wannabe Instragram photographers to visit. Sedona was in “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” None of that will change.
If destination marketing goes away, tourists won’t magically forget where Sedona is. We will be here with the same slammed roads next spring. Seven council members will be on the hook for the same crappy traffic problems. Who will be Sedona City Council’s scapegoat in 2022?
Kia?
Godzilla?
This push is really just an exercise in naked, brutal capitalism. These tour company owners want to squash the collective marketing necessary for smaller competitors — who use the chamber — and are using the wedge issue of “big bad traffic problems” to crush their competitors.
In an email to rally support, the anti-marketing group claims their tour company’s clients loved their incredibly high-dollar retreat but “hate Sedona” because of traffic.
Ah-ha, so the goal isn’t to fix traffic for us wee little residents, but to better cater to their high-end, out-of-state customers who pay thousands for their healing retreats and don’t want their Teslas and SUVs to be bothered by traffic delays casued by poor workers in Honda Civics and visitors in Nissan Muranos.
The real goal is to make more money by neutering the chamber so smaller competitors fail. Then the big companies can sell more five-figure retreats to tourists — sorry, “spiritual seekers.” My chakras are tingling.
These tour owners have collected millions and millions of dollars from visitors for 20 years and contributed to our housing shortage and traffic mess more than any other residents. Now they call on council to “stop the madness” and defund the chamber — but only after their clients’ checks cleared, of course.
That’s hypocrisy — vicious, definitive, cold-hearted hypocrisy.
They made the madness and a fortune and now want to “stop” others from following their business model in the most blatant economic NIMBYism ever.
Give back the millions made on the backs of working-class Sedonans who suffer in the city you cultivated for your “brand” so we can build roads to fix the mess you “manifested.”
The latest misguided desire to “defund the chamber” has a long pitiful history kept alive by a handful of West Sedona residents whose businesses failed and for which they blame the chamber rather than their poor business plans. Their scorched-earth goals include dis-incorporating the city, ending all arts events and evicting nonprofits. Anyone who hates Sedona that much can just …
…move away.
It’s sad that tour operators who supposedly love Sedona have fallen in with this gang of malcontents who spout disgust at a city 90% of residents love, traffic problems and all.
Traffic gets fixed with release valves so trapped drivers have other routes. Widen State Route 179. Pave Schnebly Hill Road. Build neighborhood connectors. Build a bridge connecting Brewer Road to State Route 179. Run functional public transit. Build detours around Uptown and detours to avoid the “Y.” Connect Uptown to Soldier Pass with a road. Rebuild a bridge at or near Red Rock Crossing. Stop messing with what’s not broken and fix our traffic flow.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
