Sedona good to know

Small towns have many stories, some are fallacies, facts, and rumors. Rumors have a way of changing the truth. Just because someone said it to you, doesn’t make it true.

When it comes to money, money changes definitions, and opinions through propaganda machines. If you hear the same story over and over, especially from those that you like and respect we all have a tendency to believe it. Repetition is an advertisement technique. Social media marketing is one of the best marketing strategies for communities.

I don’t like confusion. I’m unable to think when confusion surrounds me. No one can work under confusion. Confusion is not logical, so it spurs my curiosity.
My curiosity drives me to learn more by taking a logical approach. 

One of those items we all heard about in Sedona pertains to the Sedona Chamber and the Sedona city bed taxes. In January I attended the Sedona City Council & Sedona Chamber meeting. It was long, grueling, and made my head spin. I started researching this exact thing in 2013, and to hear ten years later that we still have the same misinformation flowing through Sedona is discouraging. There were many false statements made from the Chamber side of the table. Listening to this was painful as the public could only listen, having 3 minutes to speak at the end of the meeting.

This misinformation has led some to criticize the City of Sedona for not funding the regional Sedona Chamber of Commerce. Over the last month, the Chamber went back to City Council requesting more marketing dollars. The request was denied by a 4 to 3 vote. The vote sparked more negative city campaign media. Finger-pointing, playing the blame game, and using the repetitive marketing used by special interests in Social Media, local blogs and media feeds the beast of misinformation. This is wrong.
Special interests with conflicts of interest can’t and don’t give you all the facts.

Extensive research is grueling, and data crunching, tracking, indexing, and gathering government policy documentation is overwhelming. Sorting it and putting it in a format that we can all understand is a work in progress.

I’m unpaid, a volunteer, and have done this for one reason Confusion stifles us…………it kills our ability to move forward.
Below is an infographic that walks us through the process and policy for Arizona in a short form. All this information is data-driven with sources documented.

See research sources & data analysis below

Tourism Taxes & Policy Infographic

If you can speak up get the word out there. Contact, meet, call, blog, post on social media, comment on websites, and write.

The Chamber, its members, vendors, and supporters are using the propaganda machine and repetitive marketing to obtain more funding, and control, requesting the city to continue to fund the Chamber membership which isn’t the standard policy for Convention Visitor Bureaus.

Please encourage and support our City, City Council & City Manager to move our city forward to a standard tourism program. The email address and sources are below.

Feel free to use anything on this site.
Have a question? Donna Joy 928-282-4635   Email donna@donnajoys.com

Write City Hall –

sjablow@sedonaaz.gov
hploog@sedonaaz.gov
mdunn@sedonaz.gov
bfultz@sedonaaz.gov
pfurman@sedonaaz.gov
kkinsella@sedonaaz.gov
jwilliamson@sedonaaz.gov
KOsburn@sedonaaz.gov