The city of Sedona is only scratching the surface on its Community Plan update and so far has focused on public participation.
“It’s a long game. This is one 10-year update,” Community Development Direct-or Jess McNeely said. “We’ll look back decades from now and see how we worked towards these updates.”
| Community Plan Meeting |
| The city of Sedona hosts a Community Plan update event Wednesday, Sept. 7, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Sedona Performing Arts Center. |
After Sedona’s population fell below 10,000 residents to 9,684 people, voters are no longer allowed to vote on a Community Plan, per Arizona state law, the development department began planning to incorporate public opinion into the process.
Residents List Top Issues
According to the development department, the top three items that residents requested that the Community Plan address include short-term rental regulation, traffic congestion solutions and a need to focus on the local community by building local infrastructure.
Yet, for the most important issues that Sedona faces in the next 10 years, 74% of participants included traffic, 38% participants included affordable housing and 35% of participants included environmental management, like ATV and forest regulations.
Some of these differences lie in what the community development staff believe are changes in values and vision. A key example is the environment scored much higher in the vision-based questions of the survey than the key issues for the next 10 years.
“I think we can give some credit to the community… that the vision of what we want to be, what we aspire to be is remaining very consistent. And I think we have a good idea of what that vision is,” McNeely said. “The values, we just reconfirmed with this survey. So vision is what we want to be, while values are what’s important.”
According to these results, community development staff believe residents “want the updated version of the Community Plan to specifically address the regulation of short-term rental properties, relieving traffic congestion and building infrastructure that benefits the local community, tourism and affordable housing.”
Those who participated in the Community Plan survey from March 15 to April 4 included 590 Sedona residents. However, a total of 6,628 households throughout the city were sent the survey.
According to the city’s findings, there are also large disparities in residents who are familiar with the Community Plan at all. The biggest differences lie between property owners and renters, full-time and part-time residents and residents who have been in the city longer than 10 years as well as residents who have been in the city less than 10 years.
What’s next?
As the Community Plan update continues, city staff checked through the various suggestions and public opinion to form plans that compliment the Land Development Code and past Community Plans.
The development office split the process into four phases. Currently, the city is in the first phase. The city of Sedona will host a
Community Plan update event Wednesday, Sept. 7, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Sedona Performing Arts Center.
“After we have heard from the community what the issues are and studied those issues then we will enter phase two to draft preliminary recommendations, which would then go through its own public review process,” Community Development Principal Planner Cynthia Lovely said.
The city is planning for the final phase, competed with plan revisions and public hearings, to begin in June 2023 and end by December 2023, when the final update will be approved.
