With the coming of the new year comes also the Sedona City Council’s annual priority retreat with its planning for new city staff positions, including a transportation planner, an emergency management coordinator, three new police officers including a dedicated homelessness officer, an on-call arborist and a new consultant.

Police

“One of the things that I’ve really been noodling is the need to have an emergency management coordinator,” Police Chief Stephanie Foley told the council on Dec. 11. “I think having a coordinator … is something that’s really needed. Because we’re in two counties, there’s a lot of extra meetings.”

“We could start out with it being part-time,” Foley said, later clarifying it would not be a sworn position. “If we’re using it right, it’s probably going to grow into a full-time … it would be better to initially start out in the police department.”

Foley said SPD’s number of sworn positions was reduced from 32 to 29 in 2009, “and last year you granted me one more position to make it 30. So we’re not even back to the allotted numbers that were pre-2009.”

She indicated that she would like to expand the force back to its 2009 levels but is currently three below the budgeted number due to an upcoming retirement, a relocation and a resignation.

“We really want to push trying to find, if we can get some laterals that are already in the area, then we have a better mixture,” Foley said, noting that the training period for a new hire takes a year. “Most calls for service are now minimally two, sometimes three or four.”

Foley also suggested that Sedona get its own homelessness officer similar to Cottonwood’s homelessness officer, which would be a sworn position, after Mayor Scott Jablow described having “persons experiencing homelessness” as “very dangerous.”

“It would be a new position,” Foley said. “If you like that as an idea, cause we like it as an idea, yes, I would also like to propose that.”

“I suspect, over time, one would not be sufficient,” Councilwoman Melissa Dunn said. “Basically, you’d end up filling three, requesting three new sworn officer positions, plus a part-time civilian position.”

Community Development

Community Development Director Steve Mertes had more modest proposals.

“Part of what I might be looking for is a small stipend in our budget for an arborist,” Mertes said, and added that the role would be an on-call one rather than a permanent staff position. Although Mertes told the council on Dec. 12 that he was currently trying to hire two planners, one of these would be to fill a vacant senior planner’s position, while the other will replace Principal Planner Cynthia Lovely, who plans to retire but has not yet specified a date.

Staff also plan to increase the length of the city’s building and land development codes in the coming year, for which project, Mertes said, they are “looking to hire a consultant because to do everything that we’re saying here with staff would take us another couple of years.”

Prior to the council’s retreat, during the Dec. 10 council meeting, a group of cyclists asked council to add a full-time trails coordinator.

“What I heard from that community was actually a need for a multi-modal transportation planner, not a trails coordinator,” City Manager Anette Spickard said.

City Clerk

City Clerk JoAnne Cook informed council that the clerk’s office and code enforcement are discussing a potential request for a new hybrid position within the clerk’s office that would be tasked with short-term rental enforcement.

Human Resources

Human Resources Manager Russ Martin described city staff’s turnover rate, at 18.5% for the last fiscal year, down from 31% in FY23, as “progressing in the right direction.” The city filled 36 positions in FY24 and 25 positions in the first five months of FY25.

Martin connected the city’s difficulty in keeping positions filled with the lack of housing options.

“Housing opportunity is more than just the opportunity,” Martin said. “When you talk about purchasing, those kind of things, it’s about a real place they can call home, right? … One of my first exit interviews wasn’t so much that they didn’t have a place to live, it was less than what they would like to have. Less space, not necessarily in an environment that they thought they would live … That’s part of the conversation as much as making sure there’s a box for someone who needs a check.”

“About 23% of our staff actually live here full-time,” Martin said, which as of Dec. 12 was 38 employees. “About 50 of them live in Cottonwood, and then you break it down, another 50 or so live in Camp Verde, Clarkdale, Cornville, Rimrock, that kind of area, and then you’ve got seven that live in Flagstaff. That’s the full-time employees.”