An interview with Mike Ward

SEDONA, AZ (January 21, 2010) - They say “three” is the charmer and this time around Mike Ward will attempt to join the Sedona City Council the old-fashioned way – through an election.

Twice he applied to fill open council seats vacated by resignations and twice another was picked. He hopes to change all that by winning the next election for the city’s open four-year council seat.

He came to Sedona to retire, a short-lived one if he wins the election.

“My wife, Linda and I retired to Sedona in July 2002,” he said. “We were waiting for our furniture to arrive in Sedona the day my retirement officially took effect and I have never looked back. We have children in three different states, a son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters in New Jersey, a daughter, son-in-law and grandson in Illinois and a son in Juneau Alaska.”

Before retiring, he was in education management.

“I spent my entire professional life in education including 10 years as a dean of vocational education at two community colleges and 15 years as the coordinator supervising full and part time faculty and teaching computer aided design and parametric modeling programs,” he said.

He loves the beauty of Sedona and immediately upon his moving here volunteered to maintain it.

“One of the first things that I did upon arriving in Sedona was to join the Friends of the Forest,” he said. “Volunteering with the forest service made me aware of how gratifying it is to give back to a community in meaningful ways. I adopted the Cathedral Rock trail and have been picking up trash, talking to visitors and lowering my cholesterol hiking that trail almost once a week for seven years. I served as vice president and president of the Friends over four years. I volunteer four hours on most Saturdays at the Red Rock Ranger Visitor Center advising visitors on what to do and see in Sedona. I currently volunteer on a wide variety of FOF committees and I am the organization's grant coordinator.”

“I am serving my second term as captain of the volunteer Verde Search and Rescue Posse of the Yavapai County Sherriff’s Office. I participated in many of the 22 missions where our Posse safely returned 56 people to their friends and loved ones, usually locating the subject well after midnight.

He said he decided to run for the council because of frustration with some of the sitting council members and their decisions.

“With the exception of Mayor Rob Adams and Councilman Cliff Hamilton, I have been disappointed with our current city council,” he said. “I feel that the unwillingness of the council majority to even try and determine how the community feels on important issues has imperiled our quality of life and threatened the economic viability of our great town. Our residents, businesses and workers deserve better leadership.”

I also want to let people know that I have a personal commitment to serving the visitors that support our city through sales tax revenues.

He said his prior work experience honed his skills to serve on the council.

“While I worked as an administrator and teacher in my former life, I was actively involved and served in leadership positions in many local and state organizations,” he said. “I served on many college committees as well as the faculty Senate where I was elected as parliamentarian, vice president and president. My participation in these professional and organizational groups provided me with extensive experience in working in a collaborative manner with people having diverse backgrounds to solve problems and get things done.”

As an educator he believes in homework and he says he’s done plenty of that preparing for service on the council.

“In preparation for my candidacy for city council, I have researched and shared my findings on many issues that confront Sedona including NSA, the RoadRunner, affordable housing, the city budget and the wastewater fund.,” he said. “I think this demonstrates my willingness to do the homework required of an effective councilor but most importantly, I enjoy the kind of work involved in being a councilor and I think I will be good at it.”

He said he has no intentions of resigning as three council members did over the last two years.

“Short of a debilitating illness, I plan on serving the full 4 year term,” he said.

He sees the budget and lack of revenues as a major challenge for the city.

“We need to reduce spending and increase revenues,” he said. “Our city’s reserve fund is a saving account for a rainy day and there is little doubt that it is raining. But we need to be good stewards of our reserve by finding ways to address the challenge of doing more better with less to balance the budget. I support the recommendations of our city manager, Tim Ernster, to enhance revenues by licensing businesses to make it possible to outsource the collection of our city sales tax and to raise sewer fees which has not been done in over 12 years; I believe that we need to explore ways to level the playing field between those businesses who were exempted from paying room taxes ([timeshares)] and those who were not.

“Over the midterm we need to address the costs of our wastewater collection and treatment.  It consumes 45 percent of our sales tax revenue and accounts for nearly half of our city’s total expenditures.

“Over the long term we need to make the wastewater fund self supporting so that our sales tax revenues can be put to other uses and we need to earmark some portion of our sales tax revenue to replenish our reserve fund so that Sedona is prepared for the next economic downturn.

He believes involving the community in council affairs and decisions is vitally important. 

“I want to give our community members better access to their government,” he said. “I am suggesting that we return to more frequent city council workshops that allow our community members to dialog with council members while they are still fact finding before they come to a city council meeting with their minds set.”

He said he would like to see each council member represent specific areas of the city.

“I would like to have the city divided into six geographic areas and assign a council member to act as the council liaison with that neighborhood, to hold mini town hall meetings in those neighborhoods twice a year to allow community members the opportunity to tell the council what is on their mind.” he said. “I would also assign council members to be the liaison with the business and art communities so those community members can make their wants and needs known to the council as a whole.”

He is also a strong proponent for a National Scenic Area designation for Sedona.

“I believe that protecting the national forest lands in and around Sedona is both good for business and good for the environment,” he said. “I support Ann Kilpatrick’s efforts to secure a National Scenic Area designation for the Amendment 12 area.”

He does not recognize a distinction between being pro-business or pro environment.

“I feel Sedona is a three-legged stool that we all sit on, he said. “The legs that support Sedona are the business community, the arts community, and the residential community. Weaken any one of those three legs and we will all be sprawled all over the floor.”

He said a good councilor needs to be an advocate of what he feels is right for Sedona, listen to others, seek compromise both in and away from council chambers, always act on behalf of the community and seek solutions to difficult problems with other council members and the community.

He also questions why Sedona’s expenditures continue to jump the way they do.

“As recently as the 2005-06 fiscal year, Sedona’s revenues were $30 million and its expenditures were $28 million,” he said. “In 2007-08, both revenues and expenditures were $28 million. Last year, revenues were 27 million but our expenditures jumped to $38 million. I think we need to be looking at why our expenditures have jumped from $21 million to $38 million over 10 short years.”

He said continuous lighting on S.R. 89A will not improve safety.

“The continuous street lighting accepted by the council majority was ranked dead last behind the other strategies for nighttime pedestrian safety recommended by the Highway 89A Safety Panel,” he said. “The two recommendations actually implemented by the city, speed limit enforcement and reduced speed, ranked only 5^th and 6^th respectively, produced an injury reduction of 40 percent.

“If the community worked with ADOT with SR 179, and the sycamore trees at Tlaquepaque, why aren’t we working with ADOT to find a better solution for safety on SR 89A?”

He said affordable or workforce housing is not just a Sedona problem but an entire Verde Valley problem.

“While it is true the problem is exacerbated in Sedona by very high priced land, Sedona can never hope to successfully address affordable housing by itself offering converted residential garages or stacking condos on top of each other,” he said. “We need a regional approach and I am a little mystified why the Verde Valley Housing Task Force begun in 2007 has been so slow to get up and running.”

For him the bottom line is service.

“I care deeply about this community,” he said, “And I want to do anything I can to help ensure that it becomes an even better place to live and work.”