With a slew of new officials to take office this month, many of whom ran uncontested elections in the Verde Valley, local leaders will soon be in the hot seat in various local governments.
Generally, the heat of an election season also serves as a crucible to prepare newly elected officials for the confrontations their decisions will encounter for the next two or four years, depending on office.
The 2018 elections across the Verde Valley were brutal slogs between factions from all sorts of political spectrums, some of which devolved into personal attacks and nasty social media posts. But those who endured and were elected have much thicker skin. Getting yelled at during a council or board meeting is nowhere near the sustained attacks on one’s character for weeks during an election and officials from that cycle are generally unphased by complaints since their swearing in.
Many of the newly elected officials are going to have a lot of flak coming their way often for things they have no control over.
In Sedona for instance, Sedona City Council members, and sometimes even city staff, are blamed for the invasion of short-term rentals, even though this was a 2016 decision by Arizona state legislators, who deprived local governments from county down the ability to regulate or control them, and forced the then-city council of 2017 to remove our city’s ban.
There will certainly be more votes and decisions coming down the pike that will rankle residents, voters and constituents. Whatever the issue, we ask all these officials to listen to their constituents and fellow elected officials on the dais, and consider compromise for the greatest public good whenever possible. Idealism is noble, but slavish devotion to ideology in defiance of logic and practicality helps no one in the end.
Additionally, we hope all elected officials take the time to reach out to all their constituents, not merely the handful of folks who can afford to take off a weekday during business hours to speak at a city council or board meeting. Parents with children and working class residents simply can’t hang out at city hall at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon or 1:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. Ergo, their voices are rarely if ever heard even though they are just as affected by a new government policy as the pensioner or retiree who attends every meeting.
We also strongly suggest that newly elected officials make an effort to speak with us in the press.
When we call officials for a comment or a clarification for something said at a meeting, we are not trying to trap them, we just need a quote for our readers. Dodging our calls does not harm us; we still print the story, but with the sentence “so-and-so did not return calls for comment,” which depending on the story, makes elected officials appear either guilty or disdainful of their constituents — neither of which are good in the short nor long run. Repeatedly ignoring calls from the press and being called out for it has doomed many an elected official in the Verde Valley.
When Federal Judge Murray Gurfein denied the Nixon administration’s injunction to stop The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers in 1971, he wrote “A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.”
While our news stories are always fair, our editorials on Page 4A do take sides and will not hesitate to call out elected officials when they betray the public trust, violate norms, rules or agreements or make stupid decisions plain for all to see. But no editorial ends the relationship from our end and we are more than willing to praise the same elected official when they do something noble.
Our duty is to inform the public, keep government honest and hold officials accountable for their actions, whether bad or good.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
