The Sedona City Council held its annual retreat from Jan. 17 to 19 to discuss policy priorities for the upcoming year.
The first day’s activities dealt largely with council procedures, while the second and third days were taken up by a review of current and proposed programs.
The majority of the agenda for the retreat, grouped under 25 headings and including almost 200 current and planned actions, was set by city staff and approved with few modifications by council members, who suggested a total of four new priorities of their own for the coming year.
The council as a whole showed interest in pursuing only one of these priority items, Councilman Brian Fultz’s proposal to explore acquiring a creekside piece of property along Oak Creek for public access and preservation.
Overworked
City Manager Karen Osburn opened the second day’s session by thanking the council for their responses to her descriptions of how city staff is currently overwhelmed with work. Understaffing was a constantly-recurring theme for Osburn and her staffers throughout the retreat, even though the city employed 166 people at the end of fiscal year 2022 — the most in city history — and is seeking to employ more.
“We are so overloaded with being understaffed,” Osburn told the council. “It makes it more challenging.”
While discussing the possibility of a new public outreach process on home rule, Osburn said, “We do not have the staff resources to do what you’re suggesting.”
She used nearly identical language concerning reevaluating parking occupancy data to determine if parking fees should be adjusted. Of economic development, Osburn observed, “We now have no staff in this area,” while the sustainability team “haven’t even experienced being fully staffed.”
“I don’t have the capacity to really dig in on some of these things,” Osburn commented on undertaking a detailed review of the city’s contract with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce.
“She was telling us like she wasn’t feeling staffed enough,” Councilwoman Melissa Dunn summarized.
“There’s really not enough people to fill all of the positions that are there,” City Finance Director Cherie White said. “The people that are working are working extremely hard.”
The city is maintaining these high personnel numbers in spite of, according to White, staff turnover of 11% for fiscal year 2021, 22% for 2022 and 13% for 2023 so far.
Next year’s budget process will indicate whether or not council interpreted these statements as a reason to add additional staffers.
Springbrook is Burning
An unexpected development was the council’s decision to prioritize replacement of the city’s resource management software system, Springbrook, based on testimony from city staff.
“It has lacked functionality since its implementation in 2012,” Osburn said. “I don’t want it to fall off the radar, because it’s needed.”
White told the council that while the manufacturer wants the city to upgrade to a newer version of the system, the process “would basically be like going through a full implementation anyway. I don’t think we should do that. I think we should go through the process and select what’s the best solution for us.”
“It could go belly-up at any point,” said the city’s IT manager, Chuck Hardy, pointing out that the system is past end-of-life. “If we’re going to spend $80,000, we should look at what the city really needs. But it could die tomorrow.”
“We will get no priorities done if this system goes down,” Dunn noted.
Fultz called it a “burning platform.”
Sedona Cultural Park
The council approved city staff’s tentative plans to look into using “just a small portion” of the western part of the Sedona Cultural Park as a car camping site for homeless local workers.
“I know that sounds really scary,” city housing manager Shannon Boone said, explaining that workers would have to show a check stub in order to get into the park. “And it probably would be in and out each day, so it wouldn’t be set up for camping.”
Boone was careful to stress that a campground would be a “temporary use while we explore permanent uses for the site.” Looking ahead, city staff will also be considering using the eastern portion of the site for a phase 1 workforce housing development “prior to the finalization of a master plan.”
Osburn projected that the master planning effort for the Cultural Park would begin at the end of this calendar year.
“We will likely include something in next fiscal year’s budget to bring in some outside consultant support because that is going to be such a large community outreach effort,” Osburn added.
In the meantime, access to the Cultural Park has been blocked with signs and boulders, and the city is considering fencing off the site as well.
“Some of the old infrastructure for the amphitheater is pretty dilapidated,” Osburn said. “We have some concerns about having unfettered access to the property.”
“We wouldn’t want that open to the public,” city director of public works Andy Dickey added. However, city staff has not yet conducted a survey or inspection of the Frontiere Pavilion.
The pavilion’s architects, Dan Jensvold and Stephen Thompson, inspected it on Jan. 12 and found it to be structurally sound and in good condition apart from deferred maintenance.
Media Matters
Several council members took some time during the retreat to express their dissatisfaction with the Sedona Red Rock News’ City Talk column that members of city staff have written for a decade.
Council memberss ceased writing City Talk columns at the end of 2021 but are permitted to submit letters to the editor or guest perspectives about their personal and political views for publication on the Opinion page.
Few council members have done so in recent years. On March 20, 2020, then-Councilman John Currivan was the last council member to send the NEWS a letter for publication. Jablow and Councilwoman Jessica Williamson last sent letters in 2019. Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella regularly sent letters before her election in 2020, but none since.
Sedona Shuttle
City transit manager Robert Weber predicted 280,000 boardings for the trailhead Sedona Shuttles in the coming year. He added that five vehicle chassis have been reserved for the city’s microtransit fleet, although these were behind other orders, and that microtransit service would not begin until late summer or fall.
Weber also mentioned the expected $18 million cost of the city’s new vehicle maintenance facility, which he proposed could be reduced by getting the federal government “to pick up 80 cents on the dollar.”
Weber then redefined the long-term goal of the city’s microtransit system.
“It’s almost like firing a probe that covers your entire city,” Weber said. “The problem with our community is that we don’t have any data because we don’t have a transit system. So I think this is a great way to start …. Collect that data so we can start making course corrections as we build our system. It’s not like, OK, microtransit, we’re done … it may make sense to shut down the microtransit zone and replace it with a circular fixed route.”
City-Chamber Contract
Council chose to ask residents Ann Kelley and Bob Pifke to mediate the ongoing “dispute” between the city and the Chamber of Commerce.
Williamson described it as bringing in a “marriage counselor.” Kinsella suggested it could “break the logjam” between the city and the chamber.
Osburn commented that while she would normally be reluctant to bring in outsiders, “we are spinning our wheels and I’m not sure how else to proceed.”
“Let’s talk about your fundamental principles,” Kelley said. “We have to get aligned there … You just keep talking past each other because you haven’t aligned at the higher level.”
She proposed the chamber and the council both engage in “a four-hour exercise” to identify their guiding principles and then compare those results. Kelley said they could begin the process in mid-February and have results by the end of the month.
“I realize I’m insane,” Kelley quipped after the council agreed to try mediation. “I haven’t told my husband yet, either.”
Fultz described the Visitor Center as a declining channel for information and suggested turning its advising functions over to the U.S. Forest Service to “cut $600,000 out of our budget … People are finding out where they want to go to a restaurant on Yelp or TripAdvisor.”
Vice Mayor Holli Ploog and Councilman Pete Furman agreed that the ongoing need for the visitor center should be looked at, while Jablow, Williamson and Kinsella argued in favor of its continued usefulness.
Affordable Housing
City housing manager Shannon Boone announced that two people have taken advantage of the city’s down payment assistance program so far, one of whom was a city employee. She admitted the criteria for the program had been too narrow.
In addition to the city’s tentative plans for the Cultural Park, Boone mentioned several other housing projects the city is exploring, including an offer from an unnamed hotel under construction to sell the city a building containing 10 workforce studios; a proposal by a nonprofit developer to construct 36 units just east of The Wilde; and the acquisition of the Views Inn in the Village of Oak Creek by Housing Solutions of Northern Arizona for use as transitional and later workforce housing.
Safewords
The council appeared to have settled on two informal safewords during its first day of meetings, which will be used to move future sessions along more quickly.
Council members have begun using the safeword “landmines” to warn their fellow members about topics likely to lead to passionate, agenda-stopping debate, and the safeword “weeds” to indicate that the discussion is degenerating into minutiae.
“By keeping out of the ‘weeds,’ this meeting moved a lot faster,” Jablow said at the end of the second day.
Idle Hands
Council members entertained themselves during their discussions with piles of colorful pipe cleaners that city staff had provided for each of the work tables. Ploog was handling a whole fistful of colors when her watch went off to warn her about the next day’s weather.
Kinsella braided a bracelet out of two shades of blue. Fultz made a small green cactus.
