The Tusayan Town Council is moving ahead with a Home Rule election in November which will allow Tusayan to exceed state spending limits for a four year period starting in July 2021.

As a stop-gap the Town is also pursuing a budget over-ride election which would allow Tusayan to exceed state spending limits as of July 1, of this year.

The deadline to vote in the budget override is May 19^th. Residents should have already received mail in ballots.

Currently the Town is operating under a spending limit of $1.4 million but is expected to exceed that because of emergency provisions due to COVID 19.

On May 13 the Town held a public hearing as part of the Home Rule Option. There were no public comments.

The Town’s troubles began after clerical errors invalidated the Home Rule Election in 2018. Voters rejected a budget override in 2019.

During the May 13^th meeting, the Town Council also decided to spend up to an additional $8,000 on a flood control study. Vice Mayor Brady Harris said, “The work is important and it needs to carry on.”

The Town is concerned that Coconino County’s flood control data may exaggerate the flooding conditions. According to the staff report:

“The County has been extremely conservative in their parameters which has resulted in modeling that shows flooding that is more severe and more frequent than what has been experienced by long-time residents of Tusayan.  The Town hired a flood model expert from Westwood Engineering to assist as a peer reviewer to ensure that the process used by the County to evaluate the Woodson model would be fair and reasonable, and meet current criteria uses by engineer experts in flood studies.”

The Town had previously approved spending $18,000 on the study. The $8,000 is in addition to that.