I don’t go to many Sedona City Council meetings for several reasons: I have staff journalists who go in my stead and report what occurs; I have a 2-year-old who has unrelenting storytime demands; and because I believe in data, math and logic so passionately that I would fill council chamber with my tears.

The Sedona City Council meeting Wednesday, April 28, was an embarrassment to our city and to the theory that logic exists.

After Sedona Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Candace Carr Strauss debunked as falsehoods numerous false ads spreading around the commu­nity created by perennial gadflies, Strauss presented PowerPoint charts and data reflecting Sedona’s economic numbers over the last year related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then Sedona City Council members had their say. While nearly all said that they trusted the numbers, respected the data, and would not be swayed by false­hoods and lies being spread in the community, they began to one by one acknowledge they were swayed by falsehoods and lies being spread in the community.

Councilwoman Holly Ploog complained that she didn’t understand the Sedona Sustainable Tourism Plan. Honestly, most residents don’t, considering it started as a plan for managing sustainable tourism patterns, but through predictable government mission creep, became a plan for environmental sustainability.

Former Sedona City Manager Justin Clifton asked for the plan. It’s the city’s plan. It’s Ploog’s plan, now that she’s a member of council.

So of all Sedona residents, who should be first in line to know what it’s about? Councilwoman Holly Ploog. It’s offensive that a sitting Sedona City Council member has no clue what’s in a plan her government worked on and adopted and would demand answers from a third party who just addressed them.

Taxpayers should be refunded.

If Ploog doesn’t understand what her government’s Sustainable Tourism Plan is, then what on Earth does the city of Sedona’s Sustainability Coordinator McKenzie Jones do all day? Apparently not brief council members. Ploog, if you want to know what your own plan does, call Jones at 203-5060. Or walk to her office. You can measure the distance in feet.

One councilwoman spent a good portion of the meeting asking how the Sedona Chamber of Commerce would deal with trash at trailheads, repeating the word “trash” and “trashy” so often both words lost all meaning. Trash pickup on public land is a government service. An editorial about trash at trailheads reads thus: “City council, use your $51 million to put some trash cans at trailheads. Collect said trash. Done.”

Maybe the city of Sedona’s sustainability manager can do that. It will justify her salary.

Ignoring data, facts, numbers and human reasoning, one councilwoman appears to trust her guts and the complaints from a handful of her neighbors so blindly that her guts will be running as a second candidate the next election.

One councilman suggested somehow that solar panels could address traffic exhaust in a bizarre illog­ical meandering that should be recorded, put to music and turned into a Dadaist play. The mayor’s laughter finally silenced his monologue.

One councilwoman claimed she could not drive, go out to eat nor get her mail because of traffic. We did not realize her house was built inside the “Y” round­about. The argument is absurd — how on earth did she make it to the council meeting? Why has she not starved to death?

Councilman Tom Lamkin and Mayor Sandy Moriarty were voices of reason, reminding the other members of council that the chamber isn’t a de facto shadow government that has magical powers to solve the problems the city can’t or won’t address. The city has $51 million to fix its own problems, if council members weren’t so inept and want someone else to do it.

Council members are retired adults not children. Right?

So dear residents, if you want to sway Sedona City Council members, ignore numbers, data, facts and truth, just contact them, spew lies, tell falsehoods, whine and complain because they will cave, surrender to your special interest and bend with spines of Jell-O to whatever nonsense you want to spout.

This all takes a great deal of pressure off me, because I no longer have to use rhetoric or facts or logic and editorials to sway council members.

I just have to learn to cry on command.

Christopher Fox Graham

Larson Newspapers

Editor’s Note

A small group of Councilwoman Ploog’s campaign donors and allies have erroneously claimed Ploog wasn’t discussing the city of Sedona’s Sustainable Tourism Plan but something else. “It is my understanding the plan under discussion was the Chamber of Commerce’s Sustainable Tourism Plan, not the City’s Municipal Sustainability Plan,” one wrote. “[Graham] has confused the Sustainable Tourism Plan, administrated by the Chamber of Commerce, with the City’s Sustainable Action Plan which affects the actions of City government,” another wrote with those italics, adding, “I confess that I’m laughing at the irony of his attacking Ploog for seeking clarification of the Tourism Plan when he, himself, is in obvious need of such clarification.”

There is no such thing as the “City’s Sustainable Action Plan”. There is a Sedona Municipal Sustainability Plan, but it has nothing to do with the chamber, ergo, there would be no purpose in asking the chamber president to explain a city plan that had zero chamber input.

That said, Ploog herself confirmed she was discussing the city of Sedona’s Sustainable Tourism Plan, writing on April 29 [again mistaking the plan as the chamber’s instead of the city’s], “if you are referring to my comment at the work session yesterday it was in reference to the Chamber’s Sustainable Tourism Plan.”

These supporters made many identical errors in grammar, language usage and claims in the emails.