The political action committee called “Sedona Residents Unite” held a candidate forum on Wednesday, April 17, for the two candidates for Sedona mayor, incumbent Mayor Scott Jablow and former Vice Mayor John Martinez, and the five candidates for three seats on city council, two incumbents — Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella and Vice Mayor Holli Ploog — and challengers Derek Pfaff, Katherine Todd and Mike Ward.

About 75 attendees spent the evening hearing the candidates express their positions on tourism marketing and management of visitors to Sedona, citizen engagement in municipal planning and affordable housing. The event included opening and closing statements from each candidate, followed by responses to three long-form questions that the candidates received in advance and two rapid-fire question rounds during which candidates were limited to yes-or-no responses.

Jablow’s opening focused on his experience over the last decade with his roles on the City Council and the Governing Board of the Sedona Fire District as well as relationship-building with Sedona’s representation in the state legislature, Sen. Ken Bennett [R-District 1] and Rep. Selina Bliss [R-District 1].

“Working with our current senator and [representatives] in the state has been very fruitful for us, especially for short-term rentals and off-highway vehicles,” Jablow said. “We’ve never had a working relationship. I can call up any of our representatives and actually talk with them even at 10 o’clock at night. I have also built a relationship with the new director of ADOT … we’re going to hopefully [move] forward with [a] joint project at the Y [roundabout].”

Martinez also highlighted his previous experience on the council from 2012 to 2020 and his 40 years of business experience in the accounting field, as well as his perspective on having seen the area evolve since he purchased a lot in Sedona in 1991.

“I’m more of a numbers guy, I like to see what the results are. I want positive return on investments, and one of our councilors is really big on that one,” Martinez said. “Because of that, I always look at the numbers, because I hate it when a city wastes taxpayer dollars.”

Martinez said after the meeting in response to a question about where the city’s budget should be cut to reduce taxpayer waste that “I would sit down with the city manager, and basically do a zerobase budgeting on several departments to find out where we can become lean, mean [and] more efficient.”

The opening question asked the candidates to explain their vision for Sedona in 10 years with regard to tourism, venues, lodging, visitor management and road construction.

Jablow focused his response on the council’s decision not to renew its contract with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce for tourism management and marketing and the creation of the city’s Tourism Advisory Board and efforts to expand online tracking of potential visitors.

He also mentioned early discussions with ADOT to install traffic lights at the Y roundabout that would prevent vehicles from entering the circle while it is already occupied and the city’s interest in tracking parking stall use in Uptown.

Martinez said that the city of Sedona should not attract more visitors until it addresses traffic and parking issues. He also voiced his support for the local nonprofit group Sedona Cultural Park 2.0 that is advocating for the restoration of the Cultural Park site as a concert venue and said that he supports the city taking over the tourism management function as its own Destination Marketing Organization.

He added the city and the Sedona Chamber of Commerce “need to work together. The experience that one has over the other is important … That’s why I believe that together [will] be able to handle a lot of the tourism and the traffic.”

Martinez expressed his disappointment in the separation between the city and chamber after they failed to renew the previous destination marketing contract in 2023.

“I had faith in what the chamber was doing and council didn’t; that was our disagreement,” he said.

Moderators subsequently asked the candidates if they supported redesigning the city’s community engagement process. The forum questionnaire asked if candidates thought residents should have “a seat at the table during conceptual design of projects … and what steps they would support to ensure a balance of resident and business voices.”

Martinez and Jablow both rejected the proposal that citizens should have “a seat at the table,” explaining that they viewed it as burdening project management. Instead, the candidates called for greater citizen engagement in existing work groups such as the Transit Advisory Committee or the Housing Work Group.

The final question to the candidates asked, “We need visible progress in the next two years providing housing for people working in Sedona. Do you believe it is the job of the government to help provide affordable housing or should it be left to the free market? What changes are needed to make building affordable housing possible? What government action do you support? What lands would you propose using?”

Martinez stated that the government should be involved with workforce housing but that it should not become a landlord.

“The biggest thing developers have always told me, especially when they [built my house] is the cost of land,” Martinez said. “The cost of land [is] outrageous and it is part of the impact fees that the city charges developers for anything they build is also very expensive.”

The Dells, a city-owned parcel of land situated in Yavapai County across from the city wastewater treatment plant off State Route 89A, is Martinez’s preferred location for affordable housing. Using the site for housing would require that the city replace the wastewater irrigation system currently occupying the property with injection wells, which is budgeted to be done starting in 2027.

Martinez said the new wells would cost $10 million based on a statement made by Wastewater Director Roxanne Holland at a recent Keep Sedona Beautiful meeting, while Jablow argued they would cost $25 million. The estimates given to the city council during a budget work session on April 18 by former City Manager Karen Osburn and former Finance Director Cherie White were $5.5 million for the first of three additional wells and $15.6 million for the remaining two wells.

However, Martinez said that a $25 million price tag for that project would not change his position on the Dells as his preferred location for housing.

“Building at the Cultural Park is quicker,” Jablow argued. “But we need some workforce housing, we need market-rate housing, all rentals. All of us cannot continue to live in the housing that we’re used to right now. We’re going to get older … we’re going to need someplace we can downsize to, that would be a great place to go, to the Cultural Park … we’re going to spend a couple of years doing outreach and we’ll find out what the community wants.”

In his closing statement, Jablow reiterated working with Bliss and Bennett, relaying an anecdote at which he stated an attendee referred to him as a “pitbull.”

Jablow also portrayed himself as “a fighter” with regard to short-term rentals and OHVs.

“We have to fight to keep [local control] because the state wants to take everything away from us,” Jablow said.

“You can’t threaten people, you can’t say, ‘If you don’t follow me and do this, there’s going to be repercussions,’” Martinez said in closing and subsequently confirmed that he was referring to OHVs. “Well, Scott, from what people tell me with people tell me, yeah, you are a bulldog, yet you piss off a lot of people.”

He also subsequently took issue with Councilwoman Melissa Dunn’s comments to acting Red Rock District Ranger Alex Schlueter during the council’s April 9 meeting regarding the Greater Sedona Recreation Collaborative’s recommendations for OHV restrictions.

“You want to talk about heavy-handed?” Dunn had said to Schlueter during that meeting about the council’s desire for a permit system. “The city could do some pretty heavy-handed things that will make the Forest Service feel very uncomfortable about the decisions that they’ve made, and we’re about to discuss that after this.”

“You can’t threaten federal agencies,” Martinez said. “I don’t have a problem with a permit system … but when you work with somebody and you treat them fairly as an adult, you’re going to get things done a lot easier … I supported the permit system in Soldiers Pass and I would support a permit system at Broken Arrow slash Morgan [Road].”

Martinez added that based on the city’s own study on OHV damage, he saw no reason to think that the extent of damage to public lands was as great as the current City Council believes it is.

“I will promise you this, that as the mayor, I will never ask for favors from other departments within the city,” Martinez said in his closing statement, without additional specifics.

“I prefer not to answer that right now,” he subsequently said.