The Home Rule Option will be on the ballot in August.
The Sedona City Council voted on the Alternative Expenditure Limit at their last special council meeting on March 22.
“Without Home Rule, the city would be limited in the strides it could take to meet our needs for housing, traffic mitigation, combatting climate crisis, recreation, art and so much more,” Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella said. “The city works within a balanced budget. Home rule gives us access to our public funds while staying in that balance.”
This item will allow voters to select whether they want the city to be able to expand its budget past its current expenditure limit of around $29.4 million, based on last fiscal year. Currently, the city is already proposing an increase from last year’s $62.6 million budget.
“Part of the issue is that the amount of how much you can spend of your local revenues isn’t based off of your local revenues, it’s based off of this expenditure limit,” the city of Sedona Director of Finance Cherie Wright said at the last meeting while presenting the agenda item. “Home Rule essentially gives us the ability to decide what we want our expenditure limit to be which is based off of what we adopt as our tentative budget amount.”
The $29.4 million budget without the Home Rule Option would come from a combination of the state-imposed expenditure limitation of $13.7 million and $15.7 million estimated city exemptions, which still would fall around $33.2 million under last fiscal year’s lower budget.
During the March 8 meeting, no members of the public submitted comments on the topic. This allowed council members to immediately vote to put the option on the ballot.
The vote was unanimous. And according to council members, without residents voting in favor of the Home Rule Option, the city will face major cutbacks and challenges.
“Sedona residents should decide what is best for its community by adopting a budget based on local needs rather than an archaic 35-year-old state spending formula set before Sedona was even an incorporated city,” Councilwoman Holli Ploog said. “The consequences of a no vote would be disastrous… Sedona has operated under the Home Rule option for the past 26 years and it has served us well.”
The last time this was voted on in 2018, voters elected to keep the Home Rule option for the city. Sedona has been operating under an Alternative Expenditure Limit since 1996.
