What does defunding the Chamber look like?

Defunding the Chamber is a request to change the public policy for tourism management.

Watching Sedona City Council meetings and workshops is exhausting. Our city council and staff spend thousands of hours in meetings with the regional Sedona Chamber of Commerce. These meetings run 3-4 hours each time. The resources used are easily 2-4 million a year.

Defunding the chamber translates to less confusion, less mayhem, a lot less work and creates a target aligning the City of Sedona with their jurisdictional boundaries.

The City of Sedona has paid the Sedona Chamber 15.3 million dollars since 2014. We all see and feel the results of “regional marketing and management”. Our businesses, residents, visitors are burdened and are paying for the chamber to play with public funding. The current policy is NOT working for our communities.

Defunding the chamber would bring the policy in house, 100% controlled by the city management. The ideal policy would be modeled after the Arizona Office of Tourism (AOT) policies and would mirror cities that have a City Office of Tourism with a Tourism Advisory Council (TAC).The industry standard for Municipalities. It is fair, balanced, enables positive cost saving improvements for our community and it would it would bring the City of Sedona tourism policy in line with other destination cities.

The ideal city “Office for Tourism” would bring our community together by having representation exclusive in-city businesses “Tourism Advisory Council” (TAC) creating policy, process and procedures for city council to OVERSEE and approve.

The City Council would no longer be trying to control a organization that does not align with Sedona city limits. At the July 28,2021 City Council meeting Candace Carr Strauss, CEO Sedona Chamber stated “Chamber Board of Directors is the body that determines the scope of work” Why should our city council have to barter for services paid to a vendor? 

The ideal policy, process and procedure can be tweaked and grown in transparent way. The Sedona City Council and staff won’t have to rebuild the program every year dealing with the revolving door of council, staff, and a chamber board of directors.  Performance metrics, research, reports and performance dashboards can continuously guide management in the right way. Growing and improving year after year. Collateral and assets would be owned by City of Sedona.

It would be fun, exciting, making an engaging positive solution for the City of Sedona, our area communities while creating a fair and balanced playing field.

Please reach out to friends, family, customers and businesses. Share the petition, explain the details, share this letter and be part of the SOLUTION. Let the City Council know you care and want change.

As my wise Father told me” It doesn’t matter who you like when it comes to public funding”

https://www.change.org/p/sedona-city-council-defund-the-chamber

Warmly your friend and neighbor,

Donna Joy Varney

(928) 282-4635