The Sedona City Council considered an annexation that could add more than six square miles to the city’s territory.

The potential annexation was not a land grab, council members were clear to state.

“This has nothing to do with development,” Councilwoman Pud Colquitt said. “What I requested was an educational discussion.”

The intent would be to place Sedona’s Wastewater Reclamation Plant under city zoning. Right now, the city

of Sedona owns the 434-acre property but zoning is controlled by Yavapai County.

Expanding the city’s frontier to the plant would mean annexing an expanse of U.S. Forest Service land from the city’s western border to the plant, which is about five miles outside city limits.

The forest lands would still be under USFS jurisdiction and not subject to development —

in much the same way the forest land within Sedona’s current borders are free from development.

A “strip annexation” is no longer allowed under Arizona law. That would have permitted the city to annex a tiny section of property to the Wastewater Reclamation Plant and avoid a major land acquisition.

In the 1980s, cities between the Phoenix and Tucson valleys engaged in the so-called “annexation wars” by seizing strips of valuable land and leaving vast expanses as empty county or state islands.

Subsequent legislation forbade cities from annexing small strips without taking large parcels too to reduce the abuse of annexation laws.

Thus, if Sedona wanted to annex the Wastewater Reclamation Plant property, the city would have to take several square miles whether City Council wanted to or not.

“There are some good and valid reasons to extend our boundaries,” Vice Mayor John Bradshaw said. “I think there’s a fear that another municipality might annex up to our borders and they may not have the same values we do.”

Private property owners in the area, which could include Elmersville, Sedona Shadows and Sedona Pines, would have to approve the annexation.

“Annexation could take seven or eight months if everything works out,” City Manager Tim Ernster said.

Christopher Fox Graham can be reached at 282-7795, ext. 129, or cgraham@larsonnewspaper.com