The Mayor last week published a guest perspective about the City’s
lawsuit to stop Sedona residents from voting on Prop 403. That ballot
measure would preserve Sedona’s Cultural Park as a public park for
recreational and cultural activities.
The City’s lawsuit is profoundly anti-democratic. More than 1,400
residents signed the petition to put the future of the Cultural Park to a vote. On
the one hand the City Council says it wants residents’ input about future uses
of the park, but at the same time the City uses public funds to pay high-priced
lawyers to stop residents from voting on it by suing to keep Prop 403 off the
ballot. The City says it was obligated to file suit now, but I disagree. The City
could have waited until after the vote to sue to stop its enforcement if it didn’t
like the outcome. One reason it’s suing now is to stop residents from
expressing their opinions at the ballot box, and the City may fear the outcome.
The City filed suit knowing it could bury the Save Sedona Committee
(which sponsored Prop 403) with legal fees that might reach $100,000 or
more. The City almost succeeded in financially crushing the Committee and
ending the initiative. However, a public interest law firm called Arizona Center
for Law in the Public Interest took the case to defend residents’ rights to use
the initiative process against the City’s attempt to derail direct democracy.
The Center is representing the Save Sedona Committee at no charge to
protect voter rights.
Ballot initiatives have been used elsewhere in Arizona to preserve
public land for public purposes. Just last year in Prescott, AZ Prop 484 was
on the ballot, and 84% of voters there set aside 2740 acres of City-owned
land as open space “in perpetuity”—preserved for public use basically forever.
The difference there was residents started an initiative petition and the City of
Prescott assisted them in putting the measure on the ballot. In contrast,
Sedona has sued to stop residents of Sedona from voting on protecting a
mere 41 acres of publicly owned land at the Cultural Park.
