With the 2022 election nearing, a collection of perennial gadflies are making the same tired arguments and spreading the same misinformation they do every election cycle.
Before voters get hornswoggled by these untruths, misstatements, intentional errors and flat-out lies, let’s do a preemptive fact-check of the nonsense we might stumble across online, gossiping at public events or chatting with friends in the grocery store check-out line.
The newest block of falsehoods sent our way is a rehash of the same garbage from the last two elections regarding the city’s relationship with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce.
The gadflies allege that the city of Sedona is secretly run by a cabal of chamber leadership seemingly separate from the public.
First — if the city was run by a cabal rather than the seven current city council members, it would be better run and our traffic wouldn’t suck like it does.
No, our city’s problems are a product of years of local ineptitude.
Secondly, while the chamber is a nongovernmental nonprofit, anyone can join it and any one can be voted to its board. If one don’t like how the chamber operates, step up, get elected and change its course, but of course opponents won’t.
Opponents falsely allege the chamber is run by out-of-town or out-of-state interests. However, more than 75% are chamber members inside city limits and most of the rest are in the immediate surrounding area, with some more regional interests based in the state.
Then we go to the reason why most chambers are locally run: It makes no sense to join a chamber of commerce and pay dues in the community and that doesn’t directly benefit one’s business.
The nudnicks also suggest the chamber is illegally or improperly supporting businesses outside city limits and they use fake names and fake accounts on social media to attack the “regional chamber.” The argument is absurd. The chamber was founded in 1950, some 39 years before the city of Sedona was incorporated in 1989 [Technically that means the chamber served the region more years without a city (39) than with one (32)].
The chamber promotes the Sedona area, not “the city.” No tourist comes to Sedona for our photogenic roundabouts or to tour our collection of gas stations, public restrooms and pharmacies. They come for our trails, rock formations and vistas, nearly all of which are beyond our city’s borders.
Because the chamber does not run the city, nor is it run by the city, has no obligation legal or otherwise to promote only inside city limits.
Considering that most residents of the Village of Oak Creek consider themselves an integral part of Sedona’s economic and cultural community despite where the city’s borders are, it would be absurd to cut off all those businesses and residents based on an arbitrary drawn line by an unaffiliated political entity.
Another glaring error revolves around the city’s bed tax.
The city collects a 3.5% bed tax from visitors staying at hotels. Residents pay zero. We tax tourists who visit, then use the first 3% of the bed tax — 85% of the total — on whatever city council chooses to, because that part of the tax was implemented before a 1990 state law. The remaining 0.5% — 15% of the total — must be spent “for the promotion of tourism” per Arizona Revised Statute §9-500.06.
The money is “our” tax money in that it is paid to our government, but it is not our “money” in that no resident pays it — unless you take a “staycation” at a local hotel.
What makes these gadflies’ arguments even more ridiculous and pitiful is that they claim there is no public oversight or means for the public to voice their views.
Theirs aren’t, clearly, because they are conspicuously absent from Sedona City Council meetings, Sedona Chamber of Commerce meetings and Sedona Planning & Zoning Commission meetings, they don’t run for office, they don’t contact lawmakers or leaders and instead share falsehoods on social media or a handful of poorly designed, little-read websites. They post false statements that anyone with an inkling of interest, access to Google and two minutes of free time can fact check and disprove.
If you want to know how the city or chamber operates, call or speak to city or chamber officials. Read public documents. Attend or watch public meetings. Read meeting minutes. Voice your views to officials. Join the chamber and run for the board. Run for Sedona City Council.
It’s not clear what these folks’ endgame is. If the chamber dissolves, individual businesses will still advertise in the Sedona area, tourists will still come, bed tax will still be collected and dolled out per state law, and businesses will join forces to promote Sedona — the region, not the city. Residents won’t move away en masse and the city won’t unincorporate.
Seems like a lot of spinning wheels going nowhere. On the upside, they’re not trying to get elected where they could have any real, actual impact on our community.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
