The City is pouring millions into non-essential projects this fiscal year alone as a result of failing to prioritize its 10-Year Capital Improvement Program wish list (CIP). In order for the City to self finance, this must be corrected immediately, giving drainage projects top priority. Pursuing GO-Bonds in the amount of $20.29 million over 10 years is a phony need manufactured by City Hall which will harm the poor, small businesses struggling to survive, and financially hard-pressed residents.

Hopefully, a few people from drainage-ravaged areas will have an interest in running for City Council in 2014.

1) giving the CofC any money at all. Only 1/3 of our businesses belong to this organization! More important is the question that keeps nagging at me, what kind of marketing has the CofC been doing for all its years of existence if not “destination” marketing?

2) Has anyone ever examined our occupancy rates in the motels, resorts b&b’s to see if they justify raising the bed tax?

3) Does every lodging facility (timeshare excluded) belong to the Tourism Bureau of the Chamber?

We have not yet met, but I hope we soon will. Your article is an outstanding and a timely wake up call for all flood battered citizens, as well as anyone living or visiting Sedona.

I have fairly extensive photo/video/ E-records documentation which support and illustrates empirically without bias, instances of willful and fully informed neglect of drainage issues by our City Councils and City Staff, as your article indicated. City Council and Staff meeting transcripts also provide a revealing look at the fiscal/political shell games of wasteful spending that the City has engaged in to create the false appearances of meaningful City action, while at the same time pouring money into campaigns and ordinances designed to shift public attention of the City’s long neglected action on drainage responsibilities and their costs, away from them and onto the backs of the Flood Victims themselves.

I have thus far resisted releasing my six year compilation of facts and footage for use in a film documentary of these and other financial/property rights/civil rights issues. I have concerns that once such facts are empirically presented, a large number of highly valid lawsuits against the City could occur. I have been advised that a large number of valid lawsuits of the types likely to occur, could drive up the cost of the City’s Errors, Omissions and Liability Insurance, possibly to insolvency levels depending upon Court room results. I personally don’t know the statistical likelihood of this occurring, but feel that such an outcome serves no ones best interest, and needs to be avoided if at all possible.

I hope our City Government can find it’s way back very soon, to serving the needs of the our Citizens, rather than choosing to feed upon them like vultures, and thus avoid the long simmering Citizens Backlash against abuse on these and other fronts, which now appears to be growing quite massive and eminent to reaching the boiling point.

Thank you for your fine and deeply researched article.

Jim

If the City has no other source of funds available, by law it must levy an unlimited property tax to pay the debt service on the GO-BONDS (General Obligation Bonds).

Folks, the Mayor and City Council will not propel itself into the red until FY 2016. In the meantime, the non-prioritized City staff project wish-list below will move forward. REF: 10-Year Capital Improvement Program, Finance Dept. website.

PROJECTS AND SOURCE OF FUNDS: Art in the Roundabouts + Schnebly Home Rehabilitation (Percent for Arts); Sugarloaf Trailhead Parking Lot Expansion, Pool Slide, Jordan Park Historical Museum and Office Space, Feasibility Study for a Multi-Purpose Facility at the WWTP, Sandborn Road Sidewalk, Sandborn Rodeo Sidewalk Park, Chapel Road Sidewalk + Coffee Pot Sidewalk (General Fund); Park Land Acquisition (General Fund & Devt. Impact Fees); Bike Skills Park (General Fund and outside sources), ETC. The City receives only $800,000 annually for Flood Control from the counties.

Are we talking about the public’s list of non-WW capital projects here? Of course not. It’s the City staff’s. The Mayor and Council must re-visit the first 5 years of the 10-Year Capital Improvement Program projects and get real.