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What Happened To My Sedona?

Sedona AZ (February 19, 2012) –  Fay Richards, new Sedona Eye subscriber submitted a letter to the editor with the following comment:

“Your publication was suggested by a friend when she learned the RRNews had ignored it since sent in January (the letter) and I feel it reflects opinions of many Sedonans. It may be of interest to your public. I’d not known about your online Sedona news and would like to be on your mailing list…”

Ms. Richards letter to the Sedona Eye is as follows:

Sedona has always been a pioneer town of transplants. We brought our dreams, bigger-city baggage and ego needs. Once a fertile frontier for working folk and creative visionaries, it now reflects the current climate of disparity and divisiveness in our nation.

When I arrived two decades ago, Sedona recalled my artsy Woodstock summers and the fecund Greenwich Village of my student years. Its small-town community spirit, despite our diversity, made us all neighbors.

Sedona was a vibrant Arts Mecca with live theater troupes and unique events. We enjoyed Jazz on the Rocks with 5,000 attending, Sculpture Walks, Creekside festivals, “Oscar” celebrations, Slide Rock picnics and Sedona Arts Center classes everyone could afford.  I now call it “Westchester West,” as elitist as the wealthy county north of New York City I left behind.

Once we believed we could beat ADOT-cracy and won. The Voice of Choice, which I named and publicized for public support, defeated their SR 179 Superhighway edict. This year we caved, forgetting the power of a unified community vs. an authority now inflicting superfluous streetlights on a non-pedestrian public.

A similar script fuels our Fire Department. Once an effective volunteer corps serving neighborhoods, it has now become a contentious $12 million oligarchy, as if the population has exploded. The districts totaled just 16,178 including the 40% of second-homeowners, per the latest available 2010 stats.

We need a hero from one of the Westerns filmed here to save a fractious town from itself. We earlier immigrants found sustenance in the beauty and  belongingness Sedona provided. I know change is inevitable but the loss of a community’s soul is not. How do we recover it?

Fay Richards, 65 Verde Valley School Rd. #F-16, Sedona Arizona

 

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13 Comments

  1. Cindy Wilmer says:

    Cindy Wilmer shared this with friends via Facebook today.

  2. Gregory Stone says:

    Gregory Stone likes this via shared link on Facebook.

  3. Dear Fay,

    Thank you for posting your insights here. One of the driving forces destroying our town is the airport and the resulting noise and air pollution. Most locals do not come to the Back o Beyond neighborhood during the day or Crescent Moon Park, these areas seriously suffer from extreme noise. People come from all over the world to experience Sedona and head to Crescent Moon where they are assaulted and cannot hear the person next to them speak.

    I am seriously ill from living here and ready to leave Sedona. A friend of mine was trying to sunbath in his yard the other day at Back o Beyond and had seven planes and three helicopters fly over him. There is no peace left here and when we go hiking out in the canyons we are harassed by helicopters.

    The way I see it is…. the greed of a few has ruined it for the many and so our town is angry and stressed out. People are no longer receiving from Sedona what they came here for, so tourists will NOT stay longer than 24-48 hours. As Paul Chevalier once wrote: “They are killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.” Frankly I know they DO NOT CARE because these people only care about THEMSELVES. The airport is well aware of what it does to our community, so they work hard at spreading a message of propaganda that, “our town will dry up and die if they airport is gone.” No other small town has an airport in the middle of it and flying planes, jets and helicopters by Cathedral Rock and our beautiful homes and park land is ludicrous.

    The Sedona Airport is redundant and the air traffic can land at the Flagstaff Regional Airport or Cottonwood. The result will be increased property values, increased tourism, a revival of the town, happiness, art, music, and the helicopter business, airplane business and gas sation on the mesa will be gone. That means a few people lose their businesses, some can relocate to Flagstaff and others can just cease to exist. The mesa can be used for something else.

    Please read and sign my petition before the $2 million dollar the Sedona Airport just received gets spent and we have new commercial jet service here! Think property values are bad now? We won’t be able to give our houses away. The website is http://www.closetheairport.com and the Change.org petition is located at http://www.change.org/petitions/save-the-sedona-sanctuary

  4. N. Baer says:

    I found this is a comment on another online publication about the ADOT lights:

    “Here again, Sedona has been lied to, sold a bill of goods, and the taxman will soon have his hands deeper into our pockets. We were told that this was for safety, when we were already safe as long as we were vigilant drivers. This is the nanny state at work. We look to uptown, a pitiful mess after millions of dollars of “improvements.” There was little improvement: the traffic still backs up into the canyon and behind the twin round-abouts, visitors still find the need to jaywalk, and people still stop in the middle of the street looking for parking spots. The round-abouts are a joke, especially the two were 179 dead ends into 89a – right at the “Confusion vortex” as if someone wanted to make a point of it. There was no compromise here. Sedona was blackmailed into accepting lights that were originally purchased for a defunct housing tract in Flagstaff. ADOT looked to Sedona to bail out the State, and we did, which makes me wonder who counted those votes. Things have not changed in the many years I have been here. This is a repeat of Rachel’s Knoll, the Cultural Park and 179. We have no voice at all.”

  5. Kristin says:

    I have asked the city to have the Sedona PD in uptown directing traffic and stopping pedestrians and cars from blocking the flow of traffic but to no avail.

    Every person who steps in front of a car stops the entire traffic flow. The pedestrians should be forced to wait and only cross once every ten minutes on busy days.

    Cars parking on main street also block traffic. Of course we could charge a toll to drive the scenic canyon and I’ll bet that would cut the flow of endless cars.

    It’s free to get off the highway and drive Oak Creek Canyon and 179 and then get back on the highway; a free drive through a scenic park. The city and the homeowners pay the price. If someone had an emergency in the canyon or needs to get out they are trapped heading south.

  6. Irene Cole says:

    Irene Cole Likes! this article on Facebook.

  7. OJ in California says:

    What a bunch of specious diatribe. What road does this woman believe she traveled to get to Sedona. Before she came the indians (tribal, not eastern) had a footpath. Do you suppose she considered her additional straw added to that camel’s back? And after the indians, the settler’s had a rutted wagon train trail. Should we have limited Sedona bound travel only to covered wagons? Sure, I agree a $12,000,000 fire department budget for 16,000 residents seems a bit much at $750/person/year, but that is a seperate issue. Her bemoaning of others coming to Sedona carries no water in my bucket. Get over yourself Fay. It is not YOUR Sedona. It is our Sedona, collectively. Go back to Greenwich Village and fecund yourself……

    AND….I find it interesting the photo she uses to portray Sedona is of a time or place where/when no humans occupied the land……she can start recreating this view she finds so attractive….by removing herself!

  8. Brent Maupin says:

    Dear Kristin,

    As a citizen you certainly have a right to express yourself, as we all do. To make it clear, I do not agree with your insistence that the Sedona airport be closed. I have lived in Sedona for 19 years and have hiked most every trail at one time or another. I can honestly say that neither me nor any of my fellow hikers share your views. I will also say, unless I can be convinced otherwise, I would support a petition to keep the airport.

    Now, I also find it interesting to see why it is, as citizens, that we have such diverse points of view. Depending on the subject, opinions by some may be based simply on an emotional basis, typically self-serving. Others may be based on the environment that they grew up in and are comfortable with.

    For example, thinking back there was a small airport about 3 miles from the house where I grew up. I was fascinated with the planes as a kid, and I guess I still am. Perhaps this is why now, as a citizen of Sedona, the planes do not bother me. Either way, with all due respect, your Sedona is not my Sedona and I like the planes. However, like one of our founding fathers, James Madison, I reserve the right to change my mind if ever enough evidence of the airport being a nuisance can be produced to convince me otherwise, however unlikely it may seem at this time.

    Regards,
    Brent Maupin

  9. Kristin says:

    Dear Brent,

    You do not live with all the air traffic going directly over your roof. My friends in other parts of town find it hard to believe we even have that much air traffic in Sedona. This is because the air traffic is not above 89A or Uptown. According to the airport website we have 40,000 flights per year and it was 80,000; half of those flights occur directly above my home with large glass windows. I am home all day, so there is no escaping to work to get away from the noise. I and my neighbors have developed extremely high levels of lead poisoning since living here from breathing leaded AV gas. I thought I was living in a rural, safe, quiet, clean place- I WAS WRONG. I was also not told there was air traffic in my area, it was in Mystic Hills which is why I did not buy a house in Mystic Hills.

    Airports ruin property values and the quality of life for those who live with the noise and air pollution they produce, that is all well and good in a slum but not inside Sedona, Arizona. To have the amount of air traffic we suffer under is ludicrous and absurd.

    Your remembrances of airplanes as a kid are quaint but irrelevant to my situation. I used to fly around the country on a private jet when I lived in South Florida but that does not make me love 100 decibels in my bedroom, home and yard. Then when I go out on the land in my area there is still non stop noise, so there is no relief from the noise unless I go to another part of town.

    Rob Adams has hundreds of people calling to complain about aircraft, they all obviously live in high flight traffic areas. No one will want to buy a multi million dollar home with aircraft flying over the roof. We can either stop this now or wait until it is so obscene that the town is dead and there is no hiding the facts. Sedona is already is a noisy, tourist trap and over commercialized. A lot of people simply will not come here and if they do they leave as quick as they can.

    Regards,
    Kristin

  10. Tony says:

    VOTE NO ON 420!!!!!!

  11. Kristin says:

    Well Brent a jet just flew over my house at 9:59PM on 3/12/2012, spewing jet fumes into my open window. Do you have a jet flying over your roof? I’ll bet you have no jets or planes flying over your roof at any time, day or night. I am being run out of my house with noise, lead exhaust and jet toxins. Nice, this is what I get for buying an expensive house in the prettiest part of Sedona. I don’t call this emotionalism it is common sense. Now I have to turn on my expensive air purifiers.

  12. Folks, for what it’s worth….. Sedona is over unless you are from Chicago, New York, Los angeles, or any other metropolitan area, and are currently residing here. Sedona feels harmless and safe to these people. Let’s face it, a lot of us old residents had a great run. Greed has taken over and it’s too late to save it. Small town America is still out there, and I have the perfect town that I will not disclose it’s locale. The skies here are a mess, and the traffic is an abomination. It’s going to get worse so start packin!

  13. Adeelah says:

    It continues down the wrong path.

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