Brian's Key Issues

In discussion with residents and following our local news and social media, I've found Sedona citizens to have quite a consistent view on what they believe are the biggest challenges facing our city. While the ranking differs from one resident to the next, there are four key areas of concern I hear about the most and for which I'm dedicated to addressing.

Housing

Reversing Sedona's population loss is an important matter, but one that requires a holistic strategy. In my current role on Council, I have successfully advocated to slow down the decision making process concerning the Western Gateway site for the following reasons:

• We needed more community input, and so about 20 additional focus groups were held in the summer of 2025.
• We need input from the Sedona Oak Creek School District, so we have a better understanding of how to best help encourage housing that leads to families with school-age children to move to Sedona.
• We need discussion with the Sedona Chamber of Commerce to better understand employment dynamics.
• We need to take into account the housing plans of other Verde Valley communities.
• We need an assessment of the infrastructure and wildfire resilience needed to support any housing plans.
• With better understanding from all these stakeholders, the Council can establish an effective housing strategy that defines how many housing units, with how many bedrooms, at what pace of being brought to market, and with what mix of workforce and market rate products to target.

I believe we need to be creative in considering how Verde Valley transit solutions can be part of the housing solution. I believe we need to let the market provide solutions as much as possible as opposed to relying on complex and expensive tax credit solutions. And while I'm hopeful that housing solutions can be provided at the Western Gateway, I would say my view is not an "at any cost" perspective in the event that projects aren't viable for development unless they are priced at luxury levels.

While Sedona works on solutions for housing in the city and with our Verde Valley neighbors, I absolutely believe that Council should continue to engage the state legislature to seek reasonable reform of the state's Short Term Rental (STR) law starting with the ability to cap the number of units in a municipality.

Sedona Tourism & Economy

Most members of our community are aware that tourism drives the majority of the city's revenue and that diversification of our economy is a worthy pursuit. That said, it's challenging to diversify in traditional forms of business development given the limited availability of commercial land and its high price along with a scarcity of an available work force. Consequently, I believe Sedona's opportunity for economic diversification lies with workers that have geographic flexibility for remote work or entrepreneurs that require little to no physical space to build their businesses and in turn can leverage workers that don't necessarily need to live in Sedona. I think we also need to look at economic development regionally and discover where Sedona can play a role such as the growing presence of a bioscience hub in Flagstaff.

Ideally, Sedona's economic diversification will lead to workers arriving with children that can attend our schools. And those families will be concerned about available housing and healthcare along with quality schools and reliable broadband access.

Concerning our tourism economy, the city has done an excellent job in creating a destination marketing and management organization (DMMO) in a short period of time. I have pushed for metrics that demonstrate the performance of marketing dollars spent as well as measures of the impact of tourism on daily life such as the number of days with excess travel times on our primary roads into the Y roundabout. I believe that having data such as this allows for better decision making to support our economy when times are lean and knowing when to ease up when we're in times of excess.

Transportation

The Sedona In Motion (SIM) program has been underway multiple years to alleviate the worst impacts of traffic in our city. I support the city's ongoing efforts with this program, but we are at a pivotal time where a 30-Year Verde Valley Transportation Master Plan is currently being developed by NACOG (Northern Arizona Council of Governments) and Sedona needs to ensure its community voice is heard and that we put forward any significant new ideas we have that have emerged since the time that SIM was originated.

Sedona's transit operations are still relatively young, and while there have been many successes thus far, I believe it's important that we evaluate where we are and ask the tough questions around whether the strategy should be maintained or whether any changes are warranted.

Public Safety

I supported a significant increase in the Sedona Police Department for our current fiscal year (2026) in order to ensure that we have sufficient headcount for planned deployment of officers in our city. The budget increase also funded a new Emergency Management Coordinator position, which I think is important in driving continuous improvement of our city's knowledge, planning, and coordination in the event of wildfire or other significant public safety events.

The other new position in the budget that I think is really important is the community outreach officer who is tasked with focusing on homeless residents and visitors and working to connect these people with available regional resources in order to reduce homelessness in our city.

The City Council recently appointed a new Magistrate Judge for the city, and I'm eager to see this individual develop what is often known as Specialty Courts. These are unique initiatives designed to address specific challenges that traditional court proceedings are less effective at adjudicating. Specifically, specialty courts have been developed elsewhere to address issues commonly affecting military veterans as well as those with drug addiction or mental illness. These groups often fall into homelessness, so these specialty courts are known for their effectiveness in addressing this issue as well.