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Sign This ADOT Petition Now

Sedona AZ (May 28, 2011) – The following is a letter to the SedonaEye.com editor:

Because we want every registered voter in Sedona proper to sign this (to protect the sanctity of their vote in November), please adapt the following and send it to your email lists, Facebook groups, clubs, etc.

Ask ADOT to Let Your Vote Count! Please sign this petition now asking ADOT to wait:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-89a-on-the-table-till-after-the-people-vote.html

At a packed Sedona City Council meeting February 22, 2011, two-thirds of attendees raised their hands in a straw poll supporting the City Council’s studied opinion that the deal negotiated with ADOT was the most generous possible, and would pay for adequate day and night time safety measures.

Shortly after the vote, an opposing segment started a petition for a referendum to allow the Sedona citizenry to vote, thus possibly overturning the Sedona City Council’s decision on the ADOT State Route 89A highway transfer. (Their names are public information at the Sedona City Clerk’s office, 102 Roadrunner Drive, but in seeking a cooperative relationship in asking ADOT for a delay, we are not publicizing them in this letter.)

The state regulates which months can be voted in (March, May, August, November). The County prepares voting materials and needs about 90 days. Thus, the earliest a vote on the SR 89A route transfer can occur is November 8th, 2011. But ADOT has said they are taking their offer off the table May 31, 2011 (June 30, 2011 but the offer requires a 30-day notice of their intent to deliver a check for $10.6 million).

An online petition has been established to add sway to a request that will be made next Friday, May 20, 2011 for the ADOT Board to please hold the deal in abeyance until after the vote. So whether you are for city ownership of the road or against it, please sign the petition to ADOT so your vote in November will settle the matter for once and for all.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-89a-on-the-table-till-after-the-people-vote.html

Councilor Marc DiNunzio said at Tuesday’s Sedona City Council meeting that the purpose of the “Let the People Vote” referendum was not so the people could vote, but to block the transfer. Sedona City Councilor Barbara Litrell asked leaders of the Let the People Vote movement who attended Tuesday night’s meeting to please join with the entire city to make the November vote count, one way or the other, by presenting a united city desire to vote at ADOT’s Board Meeting at 9:00 a.m. in Flagstaff Council Chambers.

If ADOT refuses, so be it. But we’ll still have to hold a vote in November because it’s the law when it’s called for. It will cost the city about $23,000 even if the deal is off the table and no one shows up to vote.

Please sign the petition asking ADOT to let the November vote mean something:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-89a-on-the-table-till-after-the-people-vote.html

We, the undersigned, call on ADOT to keep the agreement on the table until the state-mandated vote occurs November 8th, 2011, and the tallied vote dictates for once and for all whether the City of Sedona can accept ADOT’s offer and assume ownership of the 89A corridor in West Sedona, and install a full complement of safety measures, or whether ADOT will retain ownership of the road and install 108 200-watt high-pressure sodium lights on 35-foot poles. To let the agreement expire, while the City of Sedona is not allowed to proceed with accepting it, disenfranchises the citizens who elected the current council in a landslide victory, as well as the referendum faction who will get their vote after it’s too late for it to count. We ask ADOT to honor the sacred right of citizens to vote on issues brought before them by this referendum. Let the vote count.

Lin Ennis, Sedona AZ

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19 Comments

  1. Joe Vernier says:

    City Council voted to defer setting an election date until June 28, 2011. Does Council want a vote on this? If so, why didn’t they vote to uphold the November 8th election date as submitted for the Consent agenda?

    For those who argue in favor of a vote, I wonder how many of them signed the Referendum and Initiative to vote on this?

  2. Eddie Maddock says:

    Hear, hear Joe Vernier. As a willing (not brainwashed or coerced) person who signed the Referendum petition to vote on this important issue, there is no way I would sign a petition asking ADOT to extend the terms of their agreement with the city relating to this questionable route transfer. In fact, I herewith urge ADOT, as professional highway engineers who receive funding from the State of Arizona as well as our federal government, to please move foward with your plans to retain ownership and upgrade West SR89A within the Sedona City Limits to the standards which you determine to be in the best interest for the health, safety, and welfare of the public in general.

    Eddie Maddock

  3. P. Revere says:

    Hello? Professional highway engineers are trained for highway design, not to design a main street running through a city. Such professionals are only concerned with moving traffic and not people attempting to cross a busy “highway” to get to a store. However, although no one has mentioned this, I understand that ADOT had recommended medians be installed in the 1990’s due to our increased traffic rate.

    In addition, the funds the City will receive from ADOT once this whole mess is settled, is coming from the Federal government and not our own State government. I, for one, do not have the confidence some of the “Let the People Vote” signers have in our present legislature to act in its citizens’ best interests.

  4. Jim Stitley says:

    I understood this was NOT a state mandate vote, but driven by a few folks from previous Council via a petition. As a local amateur astronomer I see the effects of “light creep” everyday and everywhere. After a while you realize the dark skies are less so but then it is too late. Happened in Utah the same way – slow light creep over 10 years. Now the skies are not good for astrophotography any more – time exposures of minutes to hours are washed out.

  5. Chetan Kane says:

    Dear Friends,
    If you like 89A and Sedona’s dark skies, we can still prevent the massive lights from being installed if we team up to help. I visited GoPetition and signed: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-89a-on-the-table-till-after-the-people-vote.html
    Cheers,
    Chetan

  6. liz says:

    Chetan is right the “gopetition” from Lin is ONLY about her desire for the residents of Sedona to own Hwy 89-A. Right now we share the cost of ownership with ALL OF ARIZONA.

    If Lin and the city council get their way we can expect:
    City of Sedona Property Tax
    Added Bond Debt
    What is left of city of Sedona Arts funding to be decimated beyond repair
    Pollution to our dark skies
    Continued deferred repair of our side-roads
    Continued deferred repair of our storm drains and flooding of our neighborhoods

    Thank goodness in less than two weeks 1200 residents stood up against wasteful government spending and said no to city of Sedona ownership of Hwy 89-A and the remainder said yes, we have a right to vote on Hwy 89-A.

  7. Shannon says:

    I don’t get it. If ADOT turns 89A over to Sedona and it becomes just another main street running through a city, then how will all the tourist traffic and people from outlying areas like Prescott and the Verde Valley connect with 89A through Oak Creek Canyon at the north end of uptown Sedona? Will ADOT build a giant overpass to divert all but local traffic? Otherwise, how will that stretch of the highway only be considered another city street, as suggested by P. Revere, if the traffic count isn’t altered?

  8. Vincent says:

    The Go-Petition is to actually hold the referendum contrary to what you’d like to believe and the disinformation you are continuously spreading.

    Personally, I’d like to know what the real agenda is behind the “Let the People Vote Now” if they are not supporting a real vote. And, if they don’t want a real vote to occur, doesn’t that fly int he face of the state’s constitution?

    So, now let me see if I can intuit the real reason these people don’t want a vote. . . if the City allows the ADOT lights those individuals who own most of the commercial property in West Sedona will have the opportunity to buy out the smaller businesses who can’t make it through the repaving and then they can erect their “Vegas-style” strip with nightlife and gambling. Certain elected officials and some commissioners in the past three years have asked attendees incredulously during miscellaneous work sessions/meetings, “Don’t you want to have nightlife?”

    Those of us living on the West side of Sedona constitute its real majority (70%). Our votes should be weighted accordingly in the final tally on this issue.

  9. Lin Ennis says:

    Liz, if that is her real name, has accused me of starting a petition only so we citizens can own the Highway. I didn’t want it to go to a public vote, because I thought the public made themselves clear in the last landslide election. In other words, we already voted.

    But it is absolutely pure CONJECTURE that her fear list will come to pass. We are no more certain of any of that than we are that ADOT would install the big lights and give us the road anyway. Their letter was specific that they have ‘other legal means’ to transfer the road.

    However, since the LTPV people started up this vote, I say let’s all vote. We can’t vote unless ADOT extends the deadline. But the people who voted in this council for dark skies can certainly turn out in November and reiterate we want low-level lighting (own the road) and DO believe this council has listened to us.

  10. VOTE says:

    So now the Let the People Vote DON”T want to Vote and the Yes to route transfer people DO WANT the vote that the Let the People Vote created. Sedona is schitzo!

  11. Lesley says:

    Well Vincent, it looks like You’re a very accurate person in Your speculations. That was proven when Councilman DiNunzio, at the last Council meeting, Publicly stated that His signing of ‘Let the People Vote’ was Never about a Vote, but to Stop the contract going through with ADOT. Hum, wonder how the people Who signed the referendum feel about being Used?

    Now I would like to address Liz. Who’s name is as fictional as the fears She throws out to the community. Her facts are also an illusion of grandeur. Example: LTPV took 3 weeks to gather signatures on Their referendum, not 2. They gathered a bit over 1,000 votes, not 1,200, and that number came down to a bit over 900 after many of the signatures were verified to not be residents of Sedona.

    The reason that ‘Let the People Vote’ Do Not want a Vote, besides what Councilman Dinunzio stated, is because they know they will loose once again, in a landslide, just as they did during the last Council Election. They frankly don’t care about You who signed Their referendum, Sedona, Daytime Safety, nor the Truth. -and You can take That to the Bank Folks.

  12. Liz says:

    You promised to follow the Will of the People and the community of Sedona came out in record numbers to sign the Referendum petition! You ignored the good residents of Sedona and they have demanded their constitutional right to a vote.

    You can yell, scream, and call us all the names you want… the people have spoken!

  13. N. Baer says:

    AZ REPUBLIC JUNE 5, 2011 . . . Grand Avenue could transfer to local governments – W. Valley cities fear idea of footing corridor’s cost:

    Excerpt:

    Grand Avenue has long served as a spine of the West Valley, funneling commuters into the Phoenix area and moving freight from the coast and neighboring states. But the Arizona Department of Transportation is considering a plan to turn over a 23-mile stretch of Grand Avenue, also known as U.S. 60, to the cities. It would no longer be considered a U.S. highway from Phoenix to Surprise.

    Some cities along the corridor aren’t taking kindly to the idea, saying such a proposal threatens the avenue’s role as a regional expressway and would leave them with a costly burden of maintaining the road and providing public-safety services.

    ADOT has begun a study to examine the possibility of transferring ownership of Grand to the local governments.

    http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2011/06/05/20110605grand-avenue-west-valley-local-road.html#ixzz1OPiUOBmQ

  14. Cliff says:

    cool new, nancy baby. now you are aware of a place where you can go to realize your obvious dream . to help pay for a major route down in phoenix. yippee, leave sedona. leave us alone. a major tourist attraction in arizona. can grand avenue in phoenx compete with that? get a life outside sedona.

  15. Liz Smith, Save Sedona Now says:

    Open Letter to Lin Ennis- Co-Chair Voice of Choice

    (…edited due to content) Truly Un-American to not allow private residents their right to vote their beliefs without threats!

    Lin, why not spend your time focusing on the truth instead? Why not “educate” the residents that the city of Sedona is in massive debt! It is a fact you cannot escape, Sedona is in massive debt to the point that they are bonded out! The city of Sedona is in debt for over $70 million for the Sewer and has failed to correct massive issues with the system. Combine that with the fact that hundreds of residents paid in full for a mandated sewer hook up that never happened!

    Why not share with the residents of Sedona that we have debt of over $4 million dollars for the build out of the city hall? Why not share that our debt service right now comes to over $7,000 for each of Sedona’s 11,000 residents? Why not give full disclosure over all of the cuts made to community service organizations that serve our residents? Why not talk about the increased of city fees (another form of taxes) that our residents must pay?

    Lin – As Co-Chair of VOC you have allowed residents to dream of what might be while failing to deliver full disclosure what the Mayor and other council members have tried to bring up, we are in debt, we have no plan, no design and no revenue stream to pay for hwy 89A in perpetuity!

    To the Residents of Sedona – Do you believe this nonsense that we have all the money we need to pay for a road in perpetuity? Three or more council member have voted and publicly stated that we must first address the failing infrastructure that exists today with massive flooding, deteriorating roads and the fact that the residents 2/1 have said NO to ownership before we look at ownership of Hwy 89A!

    If this makes sense to you the residents of Sedona then I urge you to protect our city finances, be a voice for fiscal responsibility and VOTE NO 410!

    Liz Smith Save Sedona Now
    Time to Speak Up!

  16. Peggy says:

    Hello Liz- this would make for a great debate- Is there a reason why you have not met Lin face to face and confront her on these topics? There is still time. Please make your voice heard person to person, it will be most powerful.

  17. Eddie S. Maddock says:

    Hey Liz, or whomever you are as in “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus?”

    Can’t help but notice you are all of a sudden not under siege by your friendly admirers who call themselves “Voice of Choice 89A” . . . very unoriginal. The yellow Tees they wear are more impressive as is the association with hornets, wasps, and/or yellow jackets.

    I’m wondering here if, since it’s been made public, the group has banded together to boycott the Sedona Eye as they’ve done to certain businesses in Sedona who dared to have “Vote No on Prop. 410” signs on their property?

    How wonderful for Sedona’s economy and Chamber of Commerce efforts to promote “Shop Sedona.” Whew! It takes all kinds.

    At least Sedona Eye publisher/editor has the courage to print comments representing all views of an issue. We know that isn’t the case with other online publications. Reminds me of the phrase: “There is no honor among thieves.” As you so accurately point out in your above comments addressing specifics from Lin Ennis, isn’t that also true with their erroneous propaganda relating to the affordability for Sedona to own a State Highway?

  18. Concerned says:

    Hey Liz, Peggy is right. Why don’t you have a debate with Lin in person? Plenty of people in town have made the offer to meet with you, including the Mayor, but instead you choose to hide under your rock, only appearing to spit out your vial lies.

    Liz, if you’re so concerned about Sedona why haven’t you attended any council meetings, if you’re concerned about the issues why haven’t you registered to vote, and since you back the referendum why didn’t you sign the petition for it? C

    ould it be because you’re a FAKE! Yes folks Liz is as phony as the proverbial three dollar bill, and is the alter ego of one of our very sick big business owners in town.

    She doesn’t hide for fear of retaliation, she hides so that she can spew lies and venom about issues and people without being caught and/or sued. And that’s a FACT! I read what was (…edited due to content) and it was so nasty that even Sedona Eye, who is very open to all, couldn’t print it.

    Eddie has often been mistaken for Liz which she says isn’t true, but it’s an easy mistake to make. (deleted) lie, give false information about the city and council, and will do and say anything to win their point. Can anyone imagine having two such sickos in the same small town. It’s true.

    Eddie says that other online publications won’t print comments. Maybe they’re just sick of getting the same old, same old junk from her. However I did see an article she wrote in Sedona.Biz (another very open online news outlet) on October 16th, so I don’t know what She’s talking about. Lies again.

    You may wonder why I am using an alias to write this. Because, I know what these two are capable of.

    VOTE “YES” on 410
    We need SAFETY, We CAN AFFORD IT without a City Property Tax, it’s the RIGHT THING TO DO for Our City!

  19. Eddie S. Maddock says:

    As we are all entitled to opinions, I offer my respect to you for coming forward and expressing yours. That you choose not to use your “real” name also is your choice.

    The countdown to election day is in progress so maybe it’s time for everyone to cast votes and not stones. I’m willing. How about you?

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