In the News

City moves to swat private sport courts – Sedona Red Rock News

The Sedona City Council held a work session on Oct. 9 at which council members supported creating new regulations for pickleball courts located on private property.

The session followed complaints made by several Chapel area residents during the public comment period at the Sept. 24 City Council meeting. They objected to the ongoing construction of a private pickleball court in the neighborhood, stating that noise from pickleball play would be hazardous to their and their dogs’ health.

“Our current Land Development Code does not have any regulations and we have never had any regulations in regard to sport courts,” Planning Manager Cari Meyer said. “We generally consider them in same way we’ve considered concrete patios, or concrete slabs in a backyard, which are allowed without a permit,” although she noted that additional construction features, such as fences, grading or lighting, might require permits.

“Since we don’t have a permit specifically for a sport court, we don’t have a record of necessarily how many there are in the city,” Meyer continued. Using aerial photography, city staff counted two existing sports courts at Los Abrigados Resort and Poco Diablo Resort, four in homeowners’ associations and seven at private homes. Five of the courts at private homes are for tennis, one is for basketball and one is for pickleball.

“We also looked at the code enforcement history of each of these properties, and we did not find anything related to noise or the use of the courts,” Meyer said.

“Anything that’s constructed that’s legally permitted at the time it’s constructed would be grandfathered,” City Attorney Kurt Christianson stated. “If, for example, the city decides to adopt a new setback of 200 feet from property lines, all existing courts are not going to have to be torn out.”

With regard to noise, Meyer pointed out that “the city obviously has just overarching noise regulations for the entire community, regardless of what you’re doing on the property.”

Christianson added that an additional code provision allows subjective citation of individuals if they produce “any noise that disturbs the peace and quiet of a neighborhood.”

“As Cari mentioned, apparently none of the neighbors have complained about the existing courts,” Christianson said.

“That is an enforcement opportunity that we do have even for any of these grandfathered properties,” Councilman Brian Fultz said. He asked if the city could impose an emergency moratorium on court construction, possibly using the mayor’s emergency powers, “so we don’t have anybody hurrying up and coming in and trying to get another court started … Is this an emergency of the health and welllbeing of the public?”

“We don’t have any true emergency here,” Christianson said. “The regulations that are being proposed by Public Works and the City Attorney’s Office could support would be reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, and not outright bans anyway, because that’s all the data supports.”

“Is there any way that we would be able to require people to put in mitigation for existing courts?” Councilwoman Melissa Dunn asked.

“Generally, no,” Christianson said. “Generally, they’re going to be grandfathered.”

“If no one has complained about the existing courts, wouldn’t it be a stretch to require mitigation for something that isn’t an issue?” outgoing Councilwoman Jessica Williamson asked.

“We need to think comprehensively about this,” Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella said, suggesting that council needed to head off any possible future changes in residents’ sporting preferences or recreation patterns that could require future regulation.

“I’m worried about small tournaments in places with multiple courts,” Kinsella added before proposing limits on the number of courts an individual could have.

Resident Becky Hofer had claimed at the Sept. 24 meeting that noise of 110 decibels was recorded “at the paddle,” and reiterated the claim on Oct. 9. Per the inverse square law, a 110 dB sound diminishes at a distance of 26.35 feet to 60 dB, the city’s noise limit for residential areas as measured “at the exterior line of a property.”

Resident Craig Swanson said pickleball was “qualitatively and quantitatively” different from other sports and described the noise as “unbearable,” and said the city could be sued by somebody “who’s driven crazy” by the noise.

“I don’t want to prohibit people from having fun,” Williamson said. “We have to accept a certain amount of noise in our neighborhood. I don’t believe anybody has to accept pickleball.” She then called pickleball play “unique assaults” and “insufferable” and said council should avoid complications by regulating pickleball courts and play only, rather than sport courts in general.

Furman called for a focus on “percussive noise sports” and termed pickleball “particularly disturbing,” while Kinsella suggested additional restrictions that she said would be “reasonable regulations,” including setback requirements for courts and requirements for size, screening and lighting.

“I want us to help the neighbors as aggressively as possible to require mitigation and if necessary to assist in the property owner being cited,” Fultz said, and supported more pickleball-focused regulation “as quickly as possible.” Dunn said she wanted a “broader” ordinance to cover all percussive sports.

“I’d like to get ahead of the curve on pickleball,” Vice Mayor Holli Ploog said, saying that she was “completely in support” of more regulation.

“Tennis is damn annoying, but so is basketball,” said Mayor Scott Jablow, who also said he wanted noise limits and setback requirements. “That noise of the pickleball is so much more invasive.”

Part of the city’s agenda packet read, “While much of the discussion has been about pickleball, the city cannot single out ‘pickleball’ and adopted regulations would apply to all sport courts.”

Ploog supported a future inquiry into whether the city should lower its daytime and nighttime noise limits to 55 and 45 dB, respectively. Council “should evaluate whether or not our noise ordinance code … actually fits what we want for our community,” Dunn added.

Meyer said that it would take staff three to four months to draft more restrictive sport court regulations and go through the process required to amend the Land Development Code to enact those regulations.

The mayor and city staff officially opened eight pickleball courts at Posse Grounds Park on Oct. 22.

Sedona’s outrageously high pay-to-play development fees dooms workers, modest housing and workforce housing – Sedona Red Rock News

Last month Sedona City Council heard a pitch from a Baltimore-based consulting firm about reasons to jack up Sedona’s already-high development fees. Council members seemed aghast to learn the fees we’re charged to build a home in Sedona are far and away more expensive than those charged by any other local community that the out-of-state consultant investigated.

Did council suddenly find its sanity about the sheer cost of building a home in Sedona?

“We were highest to begin with and we are three times higher after the proposed fees,” Councilwoman Jessica Williamson said, while Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella said, “There will be reaction out there to those numbers,” and Councilman Pete Furman adroitly remarked, “When you look at this stuff, it sure looks like we’re trying to prevent housing.”

Surely their shock meant that council would look at reducing some of these intimidating costs to build a single-family home within city limits. After all, when running for office, our elected council members repeated that housing costs were a top concern — and their intention of doing something about it was one reason they asked for your vote.

So that’s why it’s unfathomable that Sedona City Council members openly betrayed themselves on Tuesday, Oct. 8, when they voted unanimously to move forward on raising Sedona’s already atrocious development fees — and nearly double them. Council seems happy to hike these fees to bring the city a few more drops of income while Sedona’s families are struggling under record inflation, reminiscent of when council voted in 2021 to make Sedona’s supposedly temporary half-cent sales tax hike permanent — disproportionately affecting the working class and seniors on fixed incomes.

Council wants to squeeze every dime it can from residents, tourists, property owners and, most offensively, every working-class Sedonan, renter, senior and working family surviving on limited incomes.

Council’s plan to jack up building costs is obscene, but it fits with their apparent goal of killing a Sedona community where the wealthy, middle class and workers can all find a comfortable balance and instead turning Sedona into the next Aspen, Telluride or Scottsdale.

Council apparently wants to legally steal money via a “pay for play” taxation scheme to score points with campaign donors by building pickleball courts, shifting police away from crime to enforce an OHV speed limit in a single neighborhood lined with already-expensive homes, paying a traffic guard to halt “riff-raff” from driving down Back o’ Beyond Road with its multi-million-dollar estates, or building sidewalks in some of Sedona’s wealthiest neighborhoods — which second-home owners rarely use on the occasions when they are here.

Even the simplest floor plan and the most basic amenities for a new, modest house will be unobtainable for workers, thanks to the massive taxes imposed on them to fill the city’s swelling coffers. Nearly every council member owns a home worth over a million dollars, so why would they have to worry about adding to the cost of building workforce housing or a single-family home?

Meanwhile, Sedona’s poor and middle-class neighborhoods — whose residents don’t have excess income to donate to mayoral and council member reelection campaigns — still have asphalt abutting private property and are still stepping aside for cars driven by fellow workers heading home after a hot day of serving the very folks who are intentionally ignoring their neighborhoods.

The city isn’t building a recreation center or parks.

The city owns no fire department.

Police staffing is stagnant, but somehow the city is still hiring more and more administrators to run programs with marginal community benefit.

The higher fees will make short-term rentals more likely, not less. High development fees will transform Sedona from a financially-diverse community into one where only the uber-wealthy can afford to pay to play, leading to old homes being torn down to build McMansions, many of which will be built as short-term rentals — the only profitable industry Sedona has besides tourism.

This cynical, cyclical feedback loop will strip away Sedona’s less valuable homes on increasingly expensive parcels one by one until Sedona is nothing but gated communities locking out Sedona’s workforce, who will have moved to surrounding communities. In a few years, council won’t have to worry about pesky biennial campaign demands for “workforce housing,” because Sedona won’t be home to any workers who can afford the astronomical rents for 4,000- square-foot palatial villas. Sedona’s businesses will have to pay higher wages to make working in our city worth the long drive from Camp Verde, Rimrock, Cottonwood, Cornville and Clarkdale, passing on those expenses to customers.

Every election cycle, council candidates pretend to care about Sedona’s working class, but this vote means they can kiss any “workforce housing” goodbye — not that any sane Sedona resident ever thought it would be possible anyway.

“When you look at this stuff, it sure looks like we’re trying to prevent housing,” Furman said.

No, councilman, you and your six colleagues aren’t “trying to prevent housing” — you are preventing housing.

Council can still do the right thing and claw back these development fees, especially for single-family homes and housing complexes, to encourage builders to make smaller homes for renters that are worth the expense to build them.

Sedona City Council wise to not pursue Sedona Airport takeover – Sedona Red Rock News

We commend the Sedona City Council for its unanimous decision to refrain from taking over the Sedona Airport.

The concept was floated as a potential workaround to the city’s conflict with the Sedona-Oak Creek Airport Authority and, to a lesser extent, Yavapai County, over which government body controlled zoning issues for non-aviation facilities at the airport.

The law is clear: The airport is within the boundaries of Sedona city limits; ergo, zoning questions are within the purview of the city of Sedona, its Planning and Zoning Commission and various city departments. Attempts to usurp or skirt that municipal power by going through the county are made moot by this fact of law.

The airport predates the city of Sedona by some 30 years and is built on land owned by Yavapai County, but when the city incorporated in 1988, jurisdiction over the airport — as well as all the other private and public parcels within the new city limits — was transferred to the new city, with Yavapai County as a property owner.

It’s the reverse of the situation that exists with regard to the Dells and the Sedona Wastewater Treatment facility — the city is a property owner but the land is in Yavapai County’s jurisdiction.

Still, the city considered taking over the airport for a host of reasons, not the least of which was to mitigate complaints made about noise or airplane traffic by Sedona residents.

But as an untowered public airport, local governments have very little leeway to control either factor, as such airports are regulated by rules set by the Federal Aviation Administration. Once an aircraft is a millimeter off the tarmac, the FAA has sole jurisdiction.

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to limit certain types of aircraft from landing at a public airport, and many rules about noise and flight paths that do exist are actually voluntary recommendations. U.S. military aircraft, by far the loudest users of the airport, would also still be able to come and go per FAA and military flight regulations, so Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawks, Bell Boeing V-22 Ospreys and Bell AH-1 SuperCobras and AH-1Z Vipers would still fly over our skies and land at the Sedona Airport.

Simply put, the city of Sedona has no experience or understanding of how to operate an airport and would either have to bring the operations in-house with a whole new department at a great public cost, or subcontract out operations to a third party with that knowledge and experience — one that would be identical to SOCAA, a nonprofit that already performs the identical task in coordination with Yavapai County.

It’s also not really clear what the benefit would have been to municipal taxpayers other than to declare, “Well, we now own an airport. What now?”

Operations would not have changed, and all the complaints about noise, low-flying helicopters, private jets or other issues SOCAA and airport administrators already deal with would instead fall on the heads of Sedona City Council members, none of whom are aviation experts or versed in FAA laws and regulations and who are already beset with representations from members of the public regarding the other issues over which council has more control.

Politically, we would witness council members making empty promises every two years to limit air traffic or reduce noise that could not be practically achieved. Or, council members would try to write statutes as invalid and illegal as the recently-proposed OHV ban, which is preempted by state law.

Council already has enough to manage — and has difficulty controlling — and a takeover would have saddled future councils with the headache and budgetary burden on municipal taxpayers.

Council wisely took staff’s recommendation and gave it a thumbs-down. Unfortunately for Sedona taxpayers and residents, the city spent thousands on a “professional” study only to figure out what most residents, especially old-timers, could have told them for free.

In the future, if council wants advice on bad ideas, give us a ring here at the newspaper, we’ll be happy to do it for, say, one-tenth the cost of an overpriced consultant. Sorry, General Manager Kyle Larson just said one-quarter the cost. Heck, catch me on a good day, off deadline, and I’ll do “consulting” in 10 minutes for free.

In the end, the status quo remains: The Sedona Airport is a county property run by SOCAA in Sedona’s jurisdiction. Airplanes can arrive and depart in accordance with FAA regulations and the city controls what non-aviation-related buildings are zoned, built or remodeled on the rest of the mesa.

With that settled, Saturday, Oct. 12, will be the annual Wings and Wheels event at the Sedona Airport, run by SOCAA and the Sedona Car Club, offering up-close looks at vintage planes, military aircraft and classic cars. We hope to see you all there.

Applaud four Sedona City Council members who OK’d Saddlerock Crossing and 46 workforce housing units – Sedona Red Rock News

We commend the four members of the Sedona City Council — Councilwomen Melissa Dunn and Jessica Williamson and Councilmen Brian Fultz and Pete Furman — who voted in the majority on Tuesday, Sept. 24, to approve the Saddlerock Crossing development at Soldier Pass and State Route 89A.

A hotel, shopping plaza or business complex makes sense in the area, considering that it has been zoned commercial since long before Sedona was incorporated and is located along the main commercial strip of West Sedona at a busy intersection.

The site is the former location of the Biddle Outdoor Center and plant nursery and, prior to hosting that longtime business, was the location of a restaurant and bar under various names and owners, which predated the residency of most current Sedonans.

The purchase of the commercial property and the subsequent demolition of the Biddle Outdoor Center meant that commercial development was always in the cards. Property owners will build what they deem profitable on the properties they own, and so it is with Saddlerock Crossing, which will include a 100-room hotel. However, the benefit to residents is that the Baney family will also build 46 workforce apartments on the 6.4 acres.

We have stories and editorials going back nearly 30 years calling on the city to build more housing for our workers. Sedona is now short some 1,500 to 1,600 units to meet our housing need, most of which will never be built due to the high costs of land, high building costs and prohibitively expensive local regulations, low profit margins and the fact our city is encircled by U.S. Forest Service land onto which we cannot expand. Sedona still has the right under the Homestead Act of 1862 to acquire some forest land, and has the option of negotiating with the federal government to obtain land intended for public purposes, but it would take visionary leaders to spearhead such efforts.

Sedona needs all the workforce housing it can get, which readers and residents have said for years. The current council has yet to build any: A proposed project on Sunset Drive fell through, and another project on Shelby Drive has not yet broken ground, in spite of candidates’ assurances in the 2022 election that both these projects were just around the corner.

The Baneys also worked with neighbors to address concerns and altered the project based on their objections and recommendations, so they too should be applauded for adapting to the neighborhood’s reasonable concerns. Saddlerock Crossing’s workforce housing will be built by private dollars rather than taxpayer funds, which our community can now spend on other things.

It appears to be up to private developers and property owners to offer workforce housing units, as Sedona has seen a net loss of workforce housing units under the current City Council, which seems to do better building pavement, whether it’s the sidewalk on Dry Creek Road, a sidewalk under Oak Creek Bridge near Tlaquepaque, the minor realignment of State Route 89A at Forest Road in Uptown or the pickleball courts at Posse Grounds Park, which are effectively pavement with some nets — that required ripping out green grass on the 1,000-square-foot softball field.

Meanwhile, the Forest Road Extension and Uptown Parking Garage are two pavement projects that are ballooning in cost so much that by completion, they will be the two most expensive projects the city has paid for thus far this century, even more expensive than the purchase of the Sedona Cultural Park by the last council. The park may have workforce housing on it, someday, but it’s not likely to happen this decade.

Opponents of the development can argue that Sedona doesn’t need more hotels, but major land buyers and corporate entities would seem to disagree after spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on market studies and business plans, researching the feasibility and profitability of building and operating hotels in the Sedona area. Surely, if the hotel market were saturated, Sedona’s hotels would be closing and investors would not view Sedona as a location where a new hotel could turn a profit. If not a hotel, the other option would have been some sort of shopping plaza, but Sedona already has a plethora of those around the city, many of which have vacant units.

In the end, a commercial development on that property was inevitable. Residents can be thankful that the Baney family wanted to work with neighbors and add more workforce housing to soften the project’s effect on the neighborhood and offer something desperately needed that elected leaders have promised but failed to provide.

Council made the right decision for taxpayers, including the Sedona residents who won’t call the new buildings “46 housing units” but their “home.”

Sedona’s housing fees top regional charts – Sedona Red Rock News

The members of the Sedona City Council heard an update on how Sedona’s development impact fees compare to those of neighboring municipalities during the council’s Sept. 24 meeting, and they weren’t happy with the results.

Council members had requested the comparison after consultant Ben Griffin, of Maryland-based TischlerBise, had presented them with a proposal for revised development impact fees on Aug. 13 that would more than double the city’s current rates.

“It is hard to have this sort of comparison,” Griffin noted during his presentation. Coconino and Yavapai counties, as well as Clarkdale, Cottonwood and Camp Verde, do not charge development impact fees, so in order to provide data for council to consider, Griffin had prepared a comparison of all development-related, rather than development impact, fees for Sedona in comparison to Flagstaff, Prescott, Cottonwood, Camp Verde and Payson.

A development impact fee is a fee charged by the city for the generalized purpose of compensating itself for having acquired additional taxpayers, unlike fees charged to support specific municipal programs such as utilities or libraries. City Manager Anette Spickard clarified for council that Sedona uses its development impact fees to finance portions of its police, parks and streets programs. Griffin’s comparison included all separate fees charged by municipalities for fire, library, park, police, street, water and wastewater services.

For single-family homes, Griffin found that Payson and Camp Verde had the lowest total fees, a flat $3,391 and $4,000, respectively; both municipalities only charge for water service. Cottonwood, which also charges for sewer service, came in at $5,626. For Prescott Valley, which charges a wide range of fees, the total was $10,719, while for Prescott, total fees would be $13,712 for a 2,000-square-foot house. A three-bedroom house in Flagstaff would run $13,834.

Sedona’s current total fees for a 2,000-square-foot house are $18,595. The proposed development impact fee increase would raise that to $26,617. The development impact fee itself would increase from 36% of the total to 55% of the total.

Griffin also presented his estimates for multi-family fees on the basis of a 46-unit apartment development with 600- and 900- square foot units, which would be similar to the one that the Baney Corporation will build as a part of Saddlerock Crossing and to the Sunset Lofts project, which the city of Sedona has not built since first proposed three years ago.

Griffin concluded that the total per-unit fee in Camp Verde for such a project would be $521. In Cottonwood, it would be $652; in Payson, it would rise to $2,140. Prescott Valley would be $4,653, Flagstaff would be $5,217 and Prescott would be $5,816.

Sedona’s current per-unit fee is $11,680. Total per-unit fees after the proposed impact fee increase would be $16,163 — or $743,482 for the entire 46-unit project.

“You’re currently at the top in the comparison, and you would stay at the top,” Griffin summarized.

Council members were not reassured by this presentation.

“I don’t think it provides us this comparison to get a sense of benchmarking,” Councilman Brian Fultz said, and asked for still more information, a request seconded by his colleagues.

“There’s no magic way that somebody else’s money, who no one ever has to worry about, pays for all of this stuff,” outgoing Councilwoman Jessica Williamson said. “We were highest to begin with and we are three times higher after the proposed fees.”

“When you look at this stuff, it sure looks like we’re trying to prevent housing,” Councilman Pete Furman said.

“There will be reaction out there to those numbers,” Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella said.

“Our whole DIF program is a small amount of money into the city,” Vice Mayor Holli Ploog said. “It’s not saying you’re welcome to develop multi-family housing in this city … I’m not sure that I can support this methodology.”

“We are so out of line with everybody else on wastewater,” Ploog added, and also pointed out that Sedona charges a higher streets fee than Prescott does.

City Attorney Kurt Christianson said that a reason for Sedona’s higher streets rate was that “we don’t have the same number of workers here in Sedona. It’s harder to get people here and materials.”

“I have a hard time buying that Prescott … costs that much less than Sedona,” Ploog said.

Williamson proposed that the council could cut the city’s proposed capital projects at the next priority retreat to eliminate the need to raise impact fees, while Furman suggested that the increase in fees was merely the inevitable consequence of growth and development.

“They must have projects,” Furman said of other local municipalities.

“Sedona has a lot more projects going on than Camp Verde,” Deputy City Manager Andy Dickey said.

“If we’re talking about building more affordable housing, then I think we have to talk about, in that case, mechanisms to reduce, or us pay for out of some other fund, those fees,” Williamson said. “I’m not interested in reducing these fees so we can have more short-term rentals.”

“We don’t have a property tax, but we could always have one,” Williamson said.

“I do understand the council’s sensitivity that we publish something that looks really, really large,” Spickard said, but explained that doing so was a consequence of the statutory review process.

The discussion ended without council reaching a conclusion on whether they were prepared to support some, all or none of the proposed increases. A public hearing on the increases is tentatively scheduled for November.