Let’s talk about the legal problems affecting the city of Sedona.
“Which one now?” you may be asking — and that’s the problem.
The current Sedona City Council has a bad habit of ignoring the law, overreaching its bailiwick, going beyond its jurisdiction, getting sued or threatened with a suit it will lose, then caving. It’s not just embarrassing for residents, it’s a horrible waste of our tax dollars to pay our lawyers and other people’s lawyers who sue us.
The city, all seven Sedona City Council members and seven residents are being sued by the owners of the proposed Oak Creek Heritage Lodge over council’s decision last month to overturn a unanimous Planning and Zoning Commission recommendation. Council heard two appeals from two groups: A set of neighbors next to the resort and a new political action committee. Under the rules, council can only consider the basis for the appeal, not revisit the whole project from scratch.
The analogous parallel is a judicial appeal: An appeals court does not re-litigate a whole trial; instead, appellate judges look at narrow points of law to see if very specific issues of the trial were correctly handled, legal, lawful or constitutional. Council instead treated the resort appeal as a fresh zoning meeting, then voted for political reasons, not based on matters of law and fact.
Councils are supposed to write the laws and uphold them, not engage in legal brinksmanship to win petty political points. T …
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