The city of Sedona will offer five upcoming housing workshops to continue to present city staff’s housing plans to residents in the runup to the 10-year revision of the city’s community plan before the updated plan goes before the Planning and Zoning Commission and city council.

Community Development Principal Planner Cynthia Lovely is encouraging residents to participate because “even if you already have housing, all of the businesses [are having a hard time] hiring employees because there’s no housing. That affects everybody in the city. You go to a restaurant or a grocery store. Then the second reason to attend is for people to give input on what they would like to see in the next 10 years.”

The dates and times for the workshops are:

Tuesday, Aug. 22, 4:30 p.m., Sedona United Methodist Church, 110 Indian Cliffs Road

Wednesday, Aug. 23, 6 p.m., Sedona Public Library, 3250 White Bear Road

Saturday, Aug. 26, 11 a.m., Sedona Public Library

Monday, Aug. 28, 4:30 p.m., Sedona Elks Lodge, 110 Airport Road

Wednesday, Aug. 30, 1 p.m., Sedona Public Library

The workshops will consist of roundtable discussions among residents, city staff and volunteers from the citizen work group.

“These meetings are a followup to our April 19 housing workshop,” Lovely said. “The purpose of these workshops is that if somebody was not able to make it in April, or if they would like to know more and talk in a group setting, we’re giving them five different times. Because we knew that a lot of people were unable to make it. These will be the same workshops [and] it’s an abbreviated version of the April. Whereas the April presentation ran a little too long. These will be more of a brief presentation and then discussion.”

The city is aiming to have the 10-year Sedona Community Plan completed in March 2024, with a draft available for review in November.

After the draft is completed, the document will be submitted to the Planning and Zoning Commission and the city council. Lovely stressed that residents will still have ample opportunities to weigh in on the plan at the public meetings of those bodies as the process continues.

The Citizen Work Group in April presented six possible strategies to improve Sedona’s housing situation, which included reconsidering the maximum allowable building heights, splitting lots or allowing smaller lot sizes, more flexible design standards, greater diversity in housing types, the creation of redevelopment zones and up-zoning existing districts.

Previous Comments

Some of the public comments from the April 19 meeting included:

“Without affordable housing, the community will decline due to social stratification, lack of youth entering and general economic alienation. For the future of Sedona to be prosperous, these issues must be addressed with great fervor.”

“The workforce has a better quality of life when living a short commute away.”

“Most of my children’s friends [and teachers] go to school in Sedona but can’t afford to live there so it affects their ability to socialize and build lasting relationships.”

“Please change building code to allow for tiny homes [non-plastic] and adobe on dome-style homes.”

“Teachers, police officers, firefighters, grocery clerks should live nearby.”

“I know people from lots of income brackets and most of them in the lower brackets live elsewhere. I co-own a gallery and none of our sales staff can afford to live in town or couldn’t work for us because they couldn’t find housing anywhere in commuting distance.”

“Put workers on the city fringes and give them bus transportation to jobs in the middle — add people not cars.”

“It appears that unless there is state legislation to allow a cap on [short-term rentals] and creative, more dense building options/zoning changes would be at risk of having more [short term rentals] housing being built.”

“Raise minimum wage.”