Sedona Chapel Area Sewer Pipe Project

The decision by the last  (and confirmed by the current) City Council to encumber the City's future sales tax revenues to finance an extension of the City sewer into the Chapel area without a mandate from ADEQ was monumentally stupid.  Particularly so, since the majority of Chapel area residences have perfectly good septic systems and so do not need connection to the already overburdened and, as some have argued, financially failing City sewer system.   

Nor did many in the Chapel, who understood the total costs of sewer connection to themselves as well as to the Sedona community at large, want a sewer connection.  Remember that "survey" that the City Manager's office sent in October, 2007 to all Chapel residences at the 11^th hour prior to the Council voting, to give the appearance that the Councilors really cared about what the residents wanted.  Forgetting for the moment the biased construction of the survey (of the 5 possible choices, 4 were in some way supportive of the sewer extension, and no information regarding the costs of any of the choices was provided), the results as communicated to me in an email by the City Manager the day after the Council voted only confirmed what we in the Chapel already generally knew  -  that 16 percent of Chapel residents were in favor of some version of the sewer extension while 84 percent were either opposed or unaccounted for.  Yet, the Council chose to allocate the City's scare financial resources away from the needs and priorities of the majority and instead satisfy a vocal minority, some of whom had close personal ties with some of the Councilors.

And what were (and are) the needs of you and me and all in the Chapel ?  Well, while not that many of our neighbors have problems with their septic systems, you could not find a single man, woman, child, deer, javelina or quail that does not need proper storm water drainage here in the Chapel.  But of course, given the quality of what passes for government in this town, the City Council chose to spend the lion's share of their dwindling financial resources on an unneeded sewer extension project, allocating a small piece to some "band aid" improvements in the Chapel's storm water drainage. 

You have raised again the issue of what the Rape of the Chapel with a Sewer Pipe will cost each residence to connect.  Taking all individual residence direct costs and fees into account, the answer is in the range of $10,000 to $20,000.  And, as you have also noted, at a time when we all are experiencing a very serious financial downturn.  The Council last year, realizing for a brief moment the magnitude of the financial burden it was forcing upon Chapel residents, proposed to allow a deferment in connecting to the sewer until such time as a residential property was sold or experienced a failure in its septic system.  But it seems this redress has since been abandoned.

For those, certainly not everyone, who have the financial resources to defray this unneeded and unwanted burden on their family budgets, they will be doing rather less spending on other things around Sedona going forward.  But this is only a part of the indirect costs of this monumentally stupid decision by the Council.  For the now encumbered future sales revenues needed to pay back the Chapel sewer financing are revenues that cannot be used for projects which are actually needed and wanted, not just in the Chapel, but all over Sedona.  For those groups who have had their funding from the City recently cut back, they might be wondering why the City allocates so much of its funding to unneeded and undesired uses.  And when the sewer fees for all households and businesses in Sedona begin to escalate and when the Council introduces a proposal to initiate a City property tax, everyone in Sedona (perhaps save for a few Councilors past and present) may finally begin to consider more seriously what Sedona's City government has done to them.

Bruce Wymore, Chapel Area Resident