About me: I was born and raised in a small suburb of Boston, where my appreciation of “community” was formed.

Since moving to Sedona in April of 2021, I’ve met five other Massachusetts transplants who have been Sedona residents for years, one of whom grew up less than five miles from me and who knows my family.

I earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Boston College and an Master of Business Administration in business strategy from Grenoble Ecole de Management in France.

I’ve had a 20-year career in a variety of sales and marketing roles for small businesses, Silicon Valley start-ups and Fortune 500 companies, giving me an understanding of and experience with, identifying and managing competing interests, to reach outcomes that are agreeable to all “interested parties.”

I enjoy traveling with my wife of 16 years, Diana, and spending time with our family and friends, but I decided to get involved in Sedona politics after having numerous impromptu discussions with our new friends and neighbors, who feel like the current City Council is not adequately representing their interests.

After getting to know me over a period of several months, I was approached by several of them, who all felt like I could make an impact for the better. About a week later, I filed my statement of interest to run for a seat on the City Council.

My platform: “A Better Sedona,” through better tourism management that serves the community first.

For years, the Sedona Chamber of Commerce & Tourism Bureau has done such a good job of marketing Sedona as a destination city, that the community of Sedona is being crushed under the weight of over 3.5 million tourists every year — and some more recent data suggests a much higher figure. As a result, the environment that attracts these tourists is being destroyed by over-use and sometimes abuse by some of their predecessors’ disrespectful behavior.

Traffic has become a ubiquitous problem for everyone and housing costs have become unaffordable for many long-time residents, including those who local business owners rely on to keep their businesses open.

There are many factors that have contributed to the dramatic increase in tourism that Sedona has experienced over the past several years, but all of the issues threatening Sedona as a community — traffic, increasing housing costs and the destruction of the Sedona-area environment — stem from one root cause: Poorly-managed tourism demand.

That’s why taking steps to manage Sedona’s tourism-related economy in a more sustainable way will be my first objective — including demand-shifting during peak seasons, controlling the growth of short-term-rental properties, e.g.: Airbnb and VRBO, and reducing trailhead access and ATV rentals to sustainable levels, that are more easily absorbed by a community that grows because of it, rather than one that is destroyed by it.

Yes, “sustainability” is the operative word, but “sustainability for Sedona” is the operative goal and the current increase in tourism volume, is not sustainable for the community of Sedona.

However, without the ability to influence these three contributing factors, we won’t be able to solve for the issues that are negatively impacting the community of Sedona the most:

• Environmental degradation;
• Traffic congestion and air & noise pollution; and
• Increasing residential housing costs.

Petitioning the national [U.S.] Forest Service to limit trail access, enforcing city codes where we can, challenging Arizona state law and reaching-out to state and federal legislators to work together to a return of control over the issues that are absolutely critical to the survival of Sedona as a “community” is a must and I will be engaging them regularly, in an effort to return that control to the community of Sedona.

Scott Moffatt is one of six candidates for three seats on the Sedona City Council. Election day is Tuesday, Aug. 2.