Article submitted by the city of Sedona.
Sedona AZ – Out of an abundance of caution, and to protect citizens and city staff from the potential spread of COVID-19 (Coronavirus), beginning Wednesday, March 18, 2020, the city of Sedona, Arizona will close in-person access to city facilities and move to virtual and phone services.
Until March 28, 2020:
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- Essential functions and services like the Police Department, city maintenance and wastewater will continue.
- Other non-essential, but important services like building and development services will be reduced.
- All non-essential services and programs like general inquiries, on-site meetings, billing functions, etc. are postponed.
- City Council business will be reduced to essential items, but no public will be permitted to attend meetings. In accordance to Open Meeting Law, citizens may watch online here and the city is exploring alternative options for public participation.
- City parks will remain open, but all organized recreation activities, including the city’s Parks and Recreation Department’s programs and classes, and facility rentals are cancelled. [See below.]
- City Municipal Courts services will be reduced and/or rescheduled, but staff will be available for initial appearances, filing an order of protection and hearing time arrangement.
- Volunteer Park Rangers will suspend all operations and will not have a daily presence in Uptown.
Events
The city of Sedona will be canceling all city-sponsored and city-permitted large gatherings or events, and private gatherings or events on city properties, for the next eight weeks until May 9, 2020. Events canceled include, but are not limited to:
The Sedona Stumble
Sedona Food Truck Festival
Celebration of Spring
Tlaquepaque Cinco de Mayo Celebration
Rotary Chili Cookoff.
City events cancelled, but under consideration to be rescheduled are:
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- The Fix-it Clinic
Household Hazardous Waste and Electronics Event
Open houses for the Climate Action Plan
Food and Beverage Bootcamp
- The Fix-it Clinic
For more information on the city’s Parks and Recreation Department programming cancelations and refund policy go to www.sedonaaz.gov/parks.
Details will be communicated in the coming days as information is available. To get more information on this evolving situation, go to www.sedonaaz.gov/covid19.
Health Resources
The city, in coordination with Coconino and Yavapai counties, is monitoring the situation daily and following the guidelines set-forth by the federal, state and county government and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Look to the following CDC, state and county resources for more information on COVID-19:
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- Coconino County Health and Human Services COVID-19 hotline: 928-679-7300 and website.
- Yavapai County Health Services hotline: 844-542-8201 and website.
- Coconino County COVID-19 drive up swab testing information.
- CDC website on coronavirus.
- Tips on coronavirus prevention.
- Arizona Department of Health and Human Services information.
- CDC’s travel notices. [end city notice]
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Follow SedonaEye.com for further COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic information and articles. Use the search bar on the SE home page to find information quickly. Remember, if you feel ill, do not go to work or into public places – self quarantine!
close uptown shops and Tlaquepaque and keep residents safe, not just yourselves
Just stay home yourself, wallow in your fear, and leave the rest of us alone.
Well, there you go, The city should open to the public instead of wallowing in their fear.
Last weekend people traveled here from southern AZ in droves to stockpile items already gone in their neighborhoods and, make no mistake, they brought illness with them.
California too. Another cost to small town Sedona residents. You have no plan except to keep the money coming in to the coffers.
Snow plows after the storm.
Caution after the disease.
city hall doesn’t have experience or expertise, blame the ones that voted for city council because they hired them, fire them and get new management
Our city government is woefully unprepared for any kind of disaster or for shorter-term events, such as coronavirus. There is no regular emergency planning or drills conducted, the executive staff is inexperienced in handling crises, and the focus on serving the tourism industry at all costs means they are unwilling to make the decisions needed, even in the short term, that will affect tourism businesses.
I hate the way that Sedona keeps promoting tourism but I also do feel bad for the businesses in Sedona that serve the tourism industry and are hurting right now. They are small business owners, many of whom survive month to month, and I take no pleasure in seeing them suffer from a lack of business. That said, it is not business as usual, folks, and our state government and our city government are way behind the eightball in doing what is necessary to reduce the transmission of this disease. Close. The. Shops. Now.
Is the media sensationalizing the coronavirus situation? OMG, yes. Are people ridiculously overreacting by hoarding toilet paper? Yes, yes, yes. But make no mistake, this illness very definitely has the potential to completely overwhelm capacity in the short-term …which will cost lives … and the failure of the federal government to act quickly on testing means there’s a lot of disease that’s not evident, incubating right now, that is invisible to us. But will soon be visible, and will have real consequences in lives lost, and lives changed among those who survive but with damaged lungs or other organs. Terrible.
Do not rely on the city of Sedona for advice or proper action. You won’t get it. Instead, pay attention to what the health experts (scientists) are saying in our country and other countries who have done a better job managing this than the U.S. Keep a cool head, don’t panic buy, wash your hands and limit your contact with others as much as possible while helping others who need help.
Do prepare for a recession of at least 6 months to a year. But know that we can weather this fine as long as people don’t act like idiots.
The city “solution” to shut down offices is another example of the inexperienced, simple minded decisions that come from city hall. The goal is to create more distance between people who could potentially be carrying a virus and not know it. But taxpayers still need service! Instead of closing offices, split work units into two or three groups (whatever is needed to create appropriate inter-office distance of coworkers), then rotate their days working at office / at home. This allows you to (a) maintain normal business functions at city hall (b) reduces density of workers in the building at any one time and (c) maintains staff readiness to address problems that come up versus having to recall the entire staff in the event of an emergency. And, by the way, it fulfills the city’s obligation to deliver city services and requires that city employees actually work for their paychecks instead of “working” at home, which many of them can’t do because the city doesn’t have the technology infrastructure to allow them to fully work from home.
To create distance among people visiting city hall, require them to make appointments and then space the appointments so no more than “X” amount of people are in a lobby or building at any one time.
It ain’t rocket science. While the city leadership stays home, maybe we should require them to take a class in business operations, human resource management and logistics. I think they can take these classes from NAU online.
Nope not rocket science, not even science. It’s basic business 101. Almost every government building is working virtually and workers are at home. Cities like Baltimore, Kansas City, Chicago, Phoenix sent workers home. Hello vacation pay. No special privilege’s are needed – turn the phones in, leave the cars in the parking facility, leave the buses parked, etc.
Nobody needs to come to Sedona city hall building for any reason; taxes are delayed, business licenses and permits don’t need to be issued, there is no legal way to conduct meetings and for what purpose would anybody need to meet that they can’t do it virtually? The city is closed except for essential need like police and wastewater. They handle it however it is best. Go home city managers. Go home mayor. Go home councilors. Go home staff. Learn to FaceTime and Skype.
@BobF. What makes you think city employees are necessary? It’s a pandemic, not a lice infestation. No school, no services. Period.
We need fire coverage and that’s not a city function, it’s the Sedona Fire District which isn’t connected to the city!
The schools are the Sedona Oak Creek School District which isn’t a city function because it’s not run or funded by the city!
We have special taxing districts that do those jobs.
The city has limited impact on our lives here except tax us heavily to pay for their salaries and their sewer and water needs including flood mitigation – and they’re not going to be collecting much for a long time or any time soon. The city “business” is closed or needs to be closed.
Now is the perfect time to shut the City of Sedona down !!!
Permanently !!
I think the administration is doing a damn good job compared to what other countries have done or are doing. Every single day the President stands in front of the nation with a group of top medical and scientific and capable leaders to handle questions and field feedback from the media to keep our nation calm and collected. There is no dissatisfaction among almost everyone I’ve spoken with and as for testing us, why? We will be told to do what we are doing. So it’s a win for everyone that we all are doing it and not just positive test kit reactors. You people are damn lucky about how this is being handled.