On Dec. 14, 2022, Mayor Bill Diak opened the public hearing at the Page City Council meeting. He asked to hear from citizens before adopting the Page 2040 General Plan, Future Land Use Map and Economic Development Recovery & Resiliency Plan (EDRP). The Council Chamber was silent.

Next, Mayor Diak opened the floor for public comments on non-agendized items. Again, silence.

Until recently, citizens rarely attended council meetings to learn what’s going on in their community. Occasionally neighbors organized to protest new developments close to their homes, like apartments or townhomes. Otherwise, meetings were generally attended by city staff, department heads asking for funds or business representatives pitching services or projects.

Had residents attended, paid attention and asked questions at the Dec. 14, 2022 public hearing, the City of Page would have saved a lot of time and money defending itself against the Page Action Committee (PAC) in court. Had current PAC members attended the meeting, paid attention, asked questions and expressed concerns, the PAC would probably wouldn’t have formed.

EDRP was a key component of the city’s Master Plan public hearing. EDRP was created by the Matrix Design Group, the City of Page, and Arizona Planning and Economic Development Departments. It was funded in part by a United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development grant.

In the plan, labeled Goal 4.2 and titled “Streetscape improvements and other beautification investments,” it is stated, “Given the largest industry throughout the region is tourism, improving streetscapes and investing in other beautification projects can help develop a sense of place, which provides visitors with a unique experience that provides more retail, tourist-related amenities, as well as entertainment options, that have been proven to incentivize visitors to extend their stay in the area for longer periods of time, and increase daily visitor expenditures throughout the city.

“Recommended Action: Continue moving forward with construction of Phase I of the Streetscape Improvement Plan created by J2 Design that was funded in this year’s City Budget.”

Though many elements of the plans were carried over from the previous version of the Master Plan, Council officially adopted the 2040 General Plan on Dec. 14, 2022.

On May 18, 2021, the City of Page and J2 Engineering Design held an ‘Open House Public Meeting’ in the Council Chambers at City Hall. The public had the opportunity to view J2’s vision of ‘Streetscape.’ A virtual online presentation by the project team was also held May 20, 2021.

At the Aug. 24, 2022 city council meeting, City Manager Darren Coldwell said, “Our downtown streetscape has made one more step forward. They've received now the plans from PUE (Page Utility Enterprise) as well as our engineering from Brett and Kyle as far as where utilities are and aren't so the engineering on that will actually begin. The easy part, of course, is the design. The hard part is the engineering underneath so they don't rip up everything that's already been installed to save us some money.

“So we're looking forward to that. I'm hoping that within the next quarter maybe I can get Jeff [Jeff Velasquez, landscape architect with J2 Engineering] up here or Zoom in and give us an update of where they are on a hard, hard base. It's just so amazing how slow it moves.”

Councilor Brian Carey asked, “Just to clarify, we are still focusing on the one block from Vista to North Navajo?” Coldwell confirmed.

City staff knows residents aren’t getting reliable, consistent information and have taken large steps to close the communication gap. They have an active social media presence, a monthly newsletter, an improved comprehensive website; they post legal notices in City Hall, the U.S. Post Office and newspapers; they’ve added a phone alert system to send meeting and event reminders; and they’ve inserted information in utility bills. The councilors and Chamber of Commerce directors talk to citizens regularly about new developments. Still, a significant number of Page residents learn about city plans filtered through gossip chains. Once information is skewed by misinformed opinions, facts are often ignored. The city has the tough job of getting information to the public ahead of the gossip.

The Chronicle asked Carey where the line is between a city government’s responsibility to inform and a citizen’s responsibility to keep informed. “I don't know if there's a line, but certainly it's a two-way street,” said Carey. “You know, citizens have a role to play as well.

“There's a point at which you have reached the limit, in terms of number of media outlets and whatnot. And that's the point at which the citizen responsibilities step up. And if you want to be informed about something, you need to make an effort to do so.”

Councilor Richard Leightner was asked if PAC and their lawsuits were necessary to change the direction of the uptown revitalization project.

“You know, nothing was even approved at the point that they took that action,” said Leightner. “And I told one of them, I said, ‘You know, we don't have anything to debate because nothing's been voted on yet.’ We just give the city direction to go out and see what plans would look like and what costs would look like. And I don't know how many other counselors this applies to, but I did not receive a single call or email from anybody that I know of associated with PAC. No one. They didn't even bother. I've had calls and emails from citizens that say, ‘What's going on?’ Or, ‘Why are you wanting to do this?’ My question is, ‘OK, what would you do? Are you not happy with the thought of reducing the lanes, cutting out the two outside lanes?” About 50%, and it was pretty close to 50% that said, ‘Yeah, do it. You guys got a good plan. We’ve seen it. Go for it.’ And the other 50% says, ‘No, I don't care for that. And 50% of that 50% says it's due to the parking. The way that they've designed the parking. They don't want people backing out into traffic, which makes perfectly good sense.”

Councilors and city staff repeatedly reminded citizens that plans are not set in stone and they’ve made themselves available for discussions. They also made it clear they could easily change diagonal parking to parallel parking.