Sedona Community Plan box kit
Letter to the SedonaEye.com Editor:
The community plan has been, is, and will be a pro-business, pro-growth agenda.
In spite of appearances and efforts at public input, the plan is being written behind the scenes by the Chamber, developers, consultants, and construction companies, who all benefit from the city’s growth and home-rule largess.
The plan caters to the tourists instead of us residents.
The April 18 SRRN article “Sedona foresees its future” told us what we want: “You want Sedona to be more pedestrian friendly.”
Really? How many of us walk to the stores?
“You want parking lots and garages at gateways and transit stops.”
How many of us want to build these?
“You want to eliminate the ‘suicide lane’,” and put up medians (which will further congest traffic).
Too much tourist traffic is the problem, not the suicide lanes that have kept traffic moving during streetlight construction.
The article told us that we want a convention center, “visitor centers at all three gateways,” and transit buses in our neighborhoods.
Really? I find this hard to believe.
My guess is that most citizens would rather have the city’s home-rule largess pay down the wastewater plant debt and eliminate sewer and hook-up fees.
They’d rather build a Cottonwood-like recreation center for residents. Or at least keep the pool open for 6 months instead of two.
They’d rather have the Council rewrite/enforce the noise ordinance, so that garbage trucks and airplanes don’t wake us up before 7 AM.
My fear is that if the pro-growth lobby goes unchecked, it will overdevelop and devolve Sedona into a tacky tourist town. Who is representing those of us in the no-to-little growth lobby, who want to preserve the beauty and small-town character of Sedona?
Henry Twombly Sedona AZ
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Flagstaff is growing, old buildings are being torn down and replaced with new buildings. Sedona is crowded with traffic but stores are vacant and going broke.
What makes Sedona undesirable and Flagstaff more desirable to tourists and home owners? Flagstaff is a real town that caters to the people who live there. Sedona is a tourist trap that caters to the time shares and tourist businesses.
Flagstaff is quiet, there are no airplanes and helicopters constantly flying over people’s homes or the US Forest. In Sedona multimillion dollar homes are harassed all day long by airplanes, jets and helicopters, when you go out in the woods to find peace and quiet you get more noise, even in Wilderness.
Think anyone will ever build at the Bella Terra property or Amara with stunning views of the Cathedral Rock airport flight path? How about the beautiful vacant lots on Verde Valley School Rd.? Helicopters fly over their homes and the lots all day long.
Who wants to build a 1.5 million dollar estate and have no privacy or solitude? Sedona has been turned into a circus show for a few businesses at the expense of the rest of us. It’s really not a place to live anymore.
The few greedy business owners will never stop, they will destroy our town until no one even wants to visit anymore. Then people will drive through, take a few photos and leave disgusted; we are at that point now. Frankly these business owners don’t care what happens to Sedona, they are living off the red rocks. A lot of people refuse to stay here or come back due to traffic and noise, they cut their trips short and head to Flagstaff or the Grand Canyon; that’s really good for business!
I can’t even say “not in my back yard” because this is a commercial zone, all of it, not a “back yard.” Most back yards have been taken away and if its not the noise it is the pollution from the cars, jets (benzene. iso-octane, 3- methylpentane, toluene, etc.) and airplanes (lead.)
Are you wondering what pollution? Just go look at the blood test posted on the front page of the closetheairport.com website. People are being poisoned to death in beautiful, pristine Sedona. Here is the source of the cancer in our young people and old alike. Sedona is not a safe, healthy or peaceful place to live any longer. I expect the cancer rates to keep getting worse due to progressive exposures and the land geology that traps the pollution.