Until Tuesday, June 23, most residents of Sedona assumed that their City Council weighed decisions collectively and voted on issues based partly on data, partly on public opinion, partly on intuition.
At the council meeting Tuesday, Sedona Mayor Sandy Moriarty shattered that illusion by telling council more than four hours into the meeting essentially that nothing they said mattered, she would be forcing through a dictate regardless of what they said, claiming she had that right.
The order was already written and we can face a $2,500 fine for disobeying. City Attorney Robert Pickels drafted it, City Manager Justin Clifton had read it, but not a single other member of council had. In fact, none knew that was what was going to happen. They were tricked into believing this was a good faith effort. The vote was 1-0. Any other claim is a lie.
The email from the city announcing the meeting stated, “Please see the attached press release on how City Council will be discussing if they want to pursue a mandate for face coverings in city limits.”
To anyone who understands the subject-verb structure of basic English, “City Council will be discussing …” and “if they …” clearly means City Council as a body would be discussing the matter, then acting, maybe.
The scheduling of the agendized meeting was for “Discussion/possible direction regarding issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and the city’s response.” Seems fairly unambiguous that by the end of the meeting council would have directed the city to do something.
The agenda item really should have read “Rubber-stamping the mayor’s order.”
Council members, too, seem to have been misled. They repeatedly referred to the “vote” and the “decision,” as if they might have one. But Moriarty simply does not care what anyone else thinks; her mind was made up before a single resident or council member spoke.
The mayor tipped her hand near the beginning of this portion of the meeting when she mentioned the “language” “in the proclamation,” foreshadowing the later revelation that the order had been drafted and this meeting meant nothing.
Apparently the rest of council misheard or misunderstood her slip up or willfully chose to ignore it in suspended disbelief that perhaps the mayor actually wanted to hear from them and the public.
Later in the meeting, she mentioned the pending “proclamation” again.
It was not until nearly 9 p.m., four-and-a-half hours into the meeting, that the mayor came clean that there was already a draft proclamation written and waiting to be issued, which she, Clifton and Pickels had read, but which no council member had. Some were visibly shocked that this was the case, and there was a brief back and forth among council members as they realized they had been tricked.
If Trumpian Moriarty was going to force residents to obey her executive order without choice or debate, she should have written the proclamation and signed it. It would have saved residents from having to waste six hours of time, prevented the fiasco that was a meeting and saved our city from the embarrassment that was just for Moriarty’s amusement.
She wasn’t even on screen for the Zoom call, claiming “computer problems.” Why would she even bother? She wasn’t going to listen anyway.
Moriarty claims to have read all the comments, emails and letters. Maybe she did, word for word, but she likely read them the same way one reads terms of service with credit card already in hand. The truth is there was no doubt from the minute Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey announced local municipalities could mandate their own regulations that Moriarty would impose them, whether council or the public supported her or not.
Everything since then has been theater.
This was bad, middle-school the-sets-are-made-from-refrigerator-boxes-and-not-even-painted theater that placated those watching from home, pretending the deck wasn’t already stacked, white-knuckled in fear praying Saint Sandy save them from those evil already-infected neighbors who intentionally went to California just to kill them with the ’VID.
The call for public comment via the city’s website? Theater. The public has no idea if a single word changed because only the final draft exists. Neither the public nor officials ever saw the original.
The poll the city posted on Facebook? Theater. The numbers didn’t fit Moriarty’s narrative, per Clifton.
The emails and messages? Theater. None of them mattered. Were they really 2 to 1 in favor? Council read zero of them into the record. Even if they did, Moriarty’s order was already written.
What is most disappointing in this whole sad exercise is that no matter how soaring and profound the rhetoric of residents’ arguments may be to inspire true debate; nor as base, enraged and insulting residents could stray to elicit anger; nor as sycophantic, fawning, obsequious and toadyish they could be to curry mercy from the mayor, all avenues fall on deaf ears. The mayor simply does not care what residents think. If it doesn’t support her view, it’s dismissible.
Council members were not there to discuss the issue, nor debate the nuances of a possible order, nor to weigh in on the merits of what to allow or what to ban, nor to co-write an ordinance or a proclamation as a collective body.
No, our six elected officials were intentionally excluded from the representative democracy we thought we had. They were brought out to dance in Moriarty’s commedia dell’arte for three purposes:
1) Rubberstamp the mayor’s pre-written order.
2) Give her political cover.
3) Create the illusion of democracy.
This meeting was a joke played on our city and we should be embarrassed that one official would waste the public’s time, manipulate this charade and conspire against her own Sham City Council.
We applaud Councilman John Currivan, who had the courage to argue at length on the public’s behalf, even if the Sisyphean struggle to get Moriarty to budge an inch was ultimately futile.
Regarding of this, don’t dare say that council was heard. They weren’t. Don’t dare say that they voted. They did not. Don’t even say they were in favor; once it became clear nothing they said mattered, anything thereafter was moot. No politician wants to die on a hill like a martyr resisting a petty dictator who has already declared victory.
The vote was 1-0. Council was just there to dance.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
