Friends of Flagstaff’s Future (F3) Supports a NO Vote on the NAH Rezoning Referendum

F3 Supports a NO Vote on the NAH
Rezoning Referendum 

Update on the Referendum Process

Friends of Flagstaff’s Future (F3) in coalition with Flagstaff Community First has collected the required amount of signatures to put a referendum on the ballot in November to allow the public to decide if 98.39 acres adjacent to Fort Tuthill can be rezoned for a new hospital and ambulatory medical offices.

After delivering over 4,800 signatures to the City Clerk on July 6, the City confirmed that more than the minimum number of signatures were delivered. The Coconino County Recorder’s Office then took a 5% sample of  the signatures to determine an estimated accuracy rate. It is not uncommon for 60-80% of delivered signatures to be invalid for a number of reasons such as the signatory not being a registered voter, not providing an address that matches their voter registration, or residing outside of city limits.

The Recorder’s office reported on July 20 that the Flagstaff Community First (FCF) petitions contained an 88% accuracy rate, meaning 4,575 were valid signatures. NAH has 11 days from July 20th to challenge the validity of  the signatures. If no challenge is made, or the challenge is unsuccessful, the referendum will officially be placed on the Flagstaff ballot for the November election. In anticipation of this, the City of Flagstaff recently provided a proposition number for this referendum: Proposition 480.

A NO vote will mean that you oppose the Flagstaff City Council’s decision to rezone the 98.39 acres adjacent to Fort Tuthill for a new hospital which will replace the existing one on Beaver St.

F3’s Reasons for Supporting a No Vote include:
1) There were inadequate explanations from NAH and council for why the existing hospital cannot be renovated or expanded. TheNAH Strategic plan from 2019  committed to extensive improvements to both the Flagstaff and Verde Valley Medical Center along with more community clinics throughout Northern Arizona. No explanation was provided as to why this plan was abandoned in favor of building a new hospital at a new location.

The vast majority of hospital managers and boards across the country choose to renovate existing hospitals to save money, rather than build in an entirely new location as NAH wants to do. Renovation of older buildings has become more feasible in the last decade due to the targeted redesign of modern, high quality medical equipment to be smaller and easier to fit into older, renovated buildings.

2) Moving the hospital from Flagstaff’s urban core to the southern edge of town will have tremendous impacts on our community. Such a move will impact adjacent neighborhoods and medical practices, many of which will move to be closer to the new hospital. It’s likely that the existing hospital and the surrounding buildings with medical practices and services will stay vacant for years. This will hurt our downtown businesses and neighborhoods. Neither NAH nor council took seriously the impacts of abandoning the existing hospital campus.

3) Flagstaff’s efforts to reduce the city’s overall carbon emissions will be impacted by building new medical buildings at the edge of town. Hospital employees and patients will travel further and increase our auto emissions (Traffic Impact Analysis). The amount of material required to build an entirely new medical complex is inherently carbon intensive. The greenest hospital is a renovated hospital.

4)  Building a new hospital near Ft. Tuthill will burden Flagstaff taxpayers with the costs of a new fire house, a new bus line, and long-term maintenance of infrastructure. It’s also likely that building a new, $800M medical complex will result in an increase in our health care and insurance costs, which are already higher than other cities in Arizona.

Michele James
Executive Director

F3 is collecting remembrances of Jack. If you’d to share your own, please send an email to: info@friendsofflagstaff.org with the subject line “Jack Welch.” We will compile the remembrances and share them in our August newsletter as well as any available information about a gathering in his memory.

We seek accountability and transparency from our local leaders through meeting with city staff, council members, and community organizations, following and participating in local and regional planning, and communicating what we learn to our members and the public.

We encourage you to join F3 ‘s 400+ members if you’re not yet a member. We gain strength with more members. Help F3 do important work in the Flagstaff community!

Information about our Executive Director, Board of Directors, and
Advisory Board can be found here.