In the comic strip “Calvin & Hobbes,” young Calvin owns a Transmogrifier Gun. This magical weapon in the pages of the comic strip can transform anything Calvin shoots at into anything else. In much the same fashion, the city of Sedona and Sedona City Council has decided to turn the temporary 0.5-cent tax increase imposed in 2018 for the Sedona in Motion traffic improvements into a “transit tax.”In the last few months with the new council seated, staff and council has transmogrified “traffic” into “transit.”
The 10-year “temporary” tax set to expire after 10 years, i.e., sometime in 2028 “if not sooner.” It was never meant to be permanent and the point of that 0.5-cent tax increase was traffic, not transit.
One councilwoman was on that recommendation committee, so it’s shocking she is now directing staff into making the temporary tax permanent. Governments never met a tax they didn’t love, holding it tighter than Gollum clutching Sauron’s “precious” ring. A mere three years into this “temporary” tax, the Sedona City Council is already eager to make our temporary tax permanent.
Let me be clear, the tax council passed was to fix Sedona’s immensely mismanaged traffic problems 40 years in the making: The lack of alternate routes, lack of connectors between isolated neighborhoods to travel from one part of the city to another without having to touch a state highway and bottlenecks at choke points that make cross-town travel a 30-minute traffic jam.
The tax was passed to lay asphalt and build structures like jaywalking barriers and bike routes. It was temporary because roads get built once. But council wants this temporary tax set in stone to indefinitely fund … a bus system?
For taxpayers, the 2018 tax was to fix traffic, not build a new $47.5 million bus network. The 2018 Transportation Plan doesn’t discuss transit until Page 92, i.e., buses were clearly not the primary focus of the traffic plan.
It posited extending Cottonwood’s Verde Lynx bus network to the Village of Oak Creek. Great. Pay Cottonwood to extend the route a few more miles.
The plan also suggested building a tourist-focused bus system from the Village of Oak Creek to Slide Rock State Park. But two-thirds of the bus route is outside Sedona city limits, so the city should get Yavapai and Coconino Counties to pay for two-thirds of it and not force West Sedona residents to fully fund a bus system they will never use and one that merely serves to drop tourists at trailheads outside the city.
Now council wants Sedona taxpayers buying shoes, clothes, paper products, pet food, computer equipment, tools, air conditioning units and school supplies to build a transit system for tourists. Tourists will rightly pay too, but they actually benefit in ways a Sedona resident won’t.
That does not fix traffic. It might take some cars off the road but it does not build a connection between from Brewer Road to Poco Diablo nor Uptown to Soldier Pass. It doesn’t fix the bottlenecks at the “Y” roundabout nor near Tlaquepaque, except now they will have an iconic city of Sedona bus stuck in them.
The new council members forget we had this exact same program 10 years ago: The Sedona Roadrunner — that debacle of spending to shuttle tourists around Uptown and Gallery Row.
The empty trolley became a joke: “If you want some peace and quiet, take the Roadrunner. You won’t see anyone else but the driver.”
It failed because most visitors to Sedona drive their own cars or rental cars into the city and are not going to suddenly decide to take a bus on routes they don’t know to go to a trailhead. They carry water bottles, boots, hats, hiking poles and other gear, making a bus trip there and back cumbersome. They’ll load that gear into a car trunk and brave looking for a parking spot.
Buses on the still-congested State Routes 89A or 179 do not solve the traffic problem, but it looks like our do-nothing council is doing something.
If council wants a new transit tax, then ask voters for one. Don’t take our good will and transmogrify “traffic” into “transit” because you don’t want to ask us for permission. Some thin-skinned council members have proven they can’t handle any pressure whatsoever from the public.
Suck it up, buttercups, and ask voters for permission to spend our money like this.
We’ll let you know if we agree.
We actually might.
But we won’t if this transmogrification goes forward. It tells Sedona residents that this Sedona City Council will spin any falsehood to misspend our tax dollars. If they proceed, voters must say “no” loudly now and in elections to come.
What does this have to do with Calvin & Hobbes? This, dear readers: Like Calvin and Hobbes with the magical transmogrifier gun, Sedona City Council members are children playing with a toy, pretending it’s real but they’re forcing us to also believe their fiction.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
