Derek Pfaff for Sedona City Council

The "P" is silent, and it rhymes with "off."

My family and I have lived here since 2016.

My family loves to travel. Before having our first child just over 18 years ago, Amanda and I did a fair amount of international travel. A running joke was that I always grabbed real estate listings wherever we went, and we inevitably talked about the possibility of moving there full-time. Some locales would have been far more practical than others. 

With the arrival of our daughter and then our son a few years later, our travel destinations became less exotic but the running joke continued. Then we visited Sedona. We fell in love with this place and the rest, as they say, is history. The running joke came to an end in 2016. We'd found our home.

I've been a real estate attorney for 26 years and counting.

I was born and grew up in Phoenix, went to college and law school in Tucson, practiced law in Las Vegas for two years and then in Houston for many more, and returned to Arizona in 2016.

In terms of local politics, my initial participation involved campaigning to save the West Sedona School when the district was deciding whether to close it or the Big Park Community School. Since then, I've campaigned in favor of the school district budget override each time it has come up for a vote. I'm a fervent supporter of public education.  

I served on the Sedona Historic Preservation Commission from 2016 to 2022 and completed the Sedona Police Department's Community Academy in 2022. Although it's on my to-do list, I have not yet participated in the Sedona Citizens Academy but understand how municipalities operate.  I also understand the interrelations between federal and state laws, on the one hand, and municipal ordinances, on the other -- and recognize which has supremacy.  As a city councilor, I wouldn't vote for ordinances that I know would conflict with state or federal laws, or otherwise exceed the Council's authority.  Doing so just wastes time and taxpayer dollars that are better spent elsewhere. 

On a more personal level, I've been in Arizona for 34 out of my 53 years. I lived in Phoenix and Tucson for a total of around 26 years and have now lived in Sedona for going on eight with my wife of 25 years and our two teenage children. Both of my kids attend public school here so, although I recognize that the school system has its own governing body, I'm familiar with the successes and struggles of the district, its students, and their families.

I prosecuted misdemeanor criminal cases for the Pima County Attorney's Office during my third year of law school. I've been a real estate attorney for the past 26 years and have experience representing commercial, residential, and renewable energy project developers. More pertinently, I've represented municipalities, transit authorities, and utility providers on major sports, mass transit, and energy projects, often involving their exercise of the power of eminent domain. The light rail project in Houston and a park-n-ride in Austin are two such projects. I'm a partner in a law firm founded in Phoenix in 1885.

This is the only time that I've sought public office. 

Sedona is my home and I deeply care about its future. I'm seeking a seat on the City Council so that I can apply my voice, my ideas, my personal experience, and my professional expertise to helping Sedona live up to its potential and be a great place to live for all its residents.

It costs a lot of money to run a government, whether it's federal, state or local. Sedona is no exception. 

A common complaint I hear is that for a city with a population of around 10,000, Sedona's annual budget is absurdly high. What this comparison ignores is the fact that most U.S. cities with 10,000 residents don't experience annual visitation of 3,500,000 people. That's 350 visitors per resident.  

Personally speaking, if I had 350 people visit my home each year (or 1,400 accounting for the size of my family), I'd change my name, run and hide. As tempting as it sounds, that's not an option for Sedona. We thankfully have freedom of movement in this country and, like it or not, people love to visit our city. It takes a lot of infrastructure and services to accommodate that many residents and visitors. Infrastructure and services are costly.

As an aside, I'll address in another FAQ my thoughts on the City spending money to attract more tourists, thereby bolstering the local economy and increasing our tax base but also putting more strain on our roads, services, and states of mind. That's a subject warranting its own separate discussion.

You'll never hear me justify spending taxpayer dollars with "Well, that's just a drop in the bucket." Any homeowner who has spent months trying to chase down a supply-side water leak knows how quickly those drops add up. 

Consciously or subconsciously, most of us perform a cost-benefit analysis when making important decisions. If elected, that's the approach I'd apply to budgetary matters: Does the benefit to be reaped justify the cost? The higher the cost, both in terms of hard dollars and the tangible and intangible impacts on nearby properties and the community at-large, the greater the benefit needs to be.

Tourism in Sedona is a double-edged sword. The City's economy relies on tourism more than any other industry. Without it, a city the size of Sedona would never have a number of the things we take for granted: artistic, musical and other cultural events, places of worship for many denominations, four full-sized grocery stores, excellent restaurants, two movie theaters, two post offices, a diverse array of businesses, several car repair shops, and plenty of gas stations. Try living where the nearest repair shop is in another town or the closest gas station is five miles away, and you'll come to appreciate these last two in particular. 

Eliminate tourism and Sedona could soon resemble any number of other small towns in America where the dominant industry moved elsewhere or simply closed up shop: main thoroughfares full of boarded-up stores, neighborhoods full of neglected homes, empty churches, and empty schools.  

I'm as guilty of this as anyone else, but people relocating to Sedona tend to want to shut the door behind them. We often forget how many of us moved to Sedona full-time after first coming here on vacation and falling in love with the place.  

Weighed against that are the endless hassles that tourism brings to our doorstep, including drivers who have never encountered a traffic circle, drivers who act like they've never seen a stop sign, and hordes of pedestrians who act like they've never encountered a moving vehicle. I can't keep track of the number of near collisions I've witnessed because some driver or pedestrian was trying to take a picture of the red rocks (or the teal arches at McDonald's) as if their life depended on it. If you live near a trailhead, you've no doubt encountered tourists who think that "no parking" means "free parking." Thanks in part to the state legislature, tourists now fill our neighborhoods, displacing our friends, neighbors, and co-workers who can no longer afford skyrocketing rents.  

Love it or hate it, tourism is here to stay. Nevertheless, while the City needs to continue working to attract tourists, it needs to focus on managing tourists and tourism for the benefit of Sedona's residents and businesses. I applaud the City's current and past leadership for the steps that have been taken. The median barriers in uptown have helped control the flow of pedestrians. The shuttle program has reduced the number of vehicles parked at trailheads.  Something as simple as placing boulders along Carruth Drive near the dog park has eliminated the lines of carelessly parked vehicles that were a daily occurrence. Still, much more needs to be done.  

As a city councilor, I would work to identify as many areas as possible where we can feasibly mitigate the negative impacts of tourism on Sedona's residents, all the while remaining mindful of tourism's vital role to our community. In the end, improving the quality of life for as many Sedona residents as possible will always be my first priority.

I regularly hear people ask, "Why do we spend any money attracting tourists?" I often find myself asking the same question.  

Contrary to what marketing materials want people to think, we don't advertise because "we want to share the beauty of Sedona with everyone." We advertise because tourists put money into the local economy and generate substantial tax revenue. However, the tagline "Come to Sedona, leave your money and get out" doesn't sound very inviting.  

Supporting the economy and bolstering tax revenue are legitimate goals for local governments. Still, the City needs to be smart about how it spends your money. That's why we hear talk of attracting the "right kind" of tourists. I don't like that terminology because it sounds like we're trying to exclude the "wrong kind" of people.    

The better way to look at it is that we need to encourage the right kind of tourism. I have nothing against daytrippers but if the City is going to spend money on tourism campaigns, it shouldn't in effect encourage people to drive in for the day, gas up in Camp Verde or Oak Creek, hike a few trails, and then leave. To get the best returns on our tourism campaign investment, we need to specifically encourage visits that include overnight stays, meals at local restaurants, hiking, and shopping.   

However, a major part of any such campaign also needs to include HOW to visit Sedona, familiarizing visitors not just with the sights to see and activities to do, but also with things like traffic circles, mass transit, the trailhead shuttle system, where to find parking and being a responsible guest in our home. It also wouldn't hurt to remind them that we have leash laws and wild animals that are happy to make a meal out of a stray pet. Most tourists don't want to be a hassle. They are because they don't know where they are or where they're trying to go. We can help with that.  

Done correctly, tourism advertising can bring needed revenue to our community, while at the same time lessening the negative impacts of tourism on our parks, trails, roads, neighborhoods, and states of mind. 

The state did a disservice to residents, particularly in places like Sedona, when it curtailed our ability to regulate short-term rentals. I wrote a piece about this back in 2018 and the situation has only gotten worse.  Here's a link: https://www.dailyjournal.com/articles/346275-a-potential-solution-to-short-term-rentals.  It also appeared as an op-ed in the Red Rock News.

While I don't fault part-time residents for leasing out homes while they'd otherwise sit vacate, and I fully understand when people let out an extra room or guest suite to help make ends meet, too many Sedona homes have been bought up by out-of-state investors who have no intention of using them for anything other than short-term rentals.  This has exacerbated an already dire workforce housing situation.  

The City and its residents need to continue to put pressure on the Arizona legislature and the governor's office to return control to the cities.  Only then will we have the necessary tools to address the STR issue in a meaningful way.

That section of roadway is subject to the jurisdiction of the Arizona Department of Transportation. More fundamentally, pedestrians need a safe place to cross. The good news is that the pedestrian underpass being constructed nearby will soon provide an alternative crossing point that will not impact traffic flow.  ADOT will not commit to closing the crosswalk until it determines how the underpass affects use of the crosswalk.  The City needs to find ways to encourage use of the underpass and work with ADOT to ensure closure of the crosswalk to eliminate this pinch point once and for all.  If feasible, pedestrian barriers similar to those used in uptown should be installed.

Sadly, there are no viable solutions that will solve all of Sedona's traffic woes. Many of the suggestions are cost-prohibitive or involve lands that are not subject to the City's control. The City needs to work with these outside jurisdictions and agencies to develop plans that have an actual chance of implementation. Unfortunately, this will be a slow and painful process.  

In the meantime, the City needs to identify and address the factors that are within its control.  Expansion of mass transit needs to be explored, prioritizing the needs of residents and workers over those of tourists. Still, we need to keep in mind that the more tourists use mass transit, the less their cars will clog our roads.  

We have traffic studies that identify where improvements can and need to be made. As of late, the City seems more intent on implementing the recommendations of its experts. We need to keep that momentum going. The benefits realized from a small change here and a small change there will soon add up.  The end result will be a marked improvement to our traffic situation. 

Notice I said, "improvement" and not "solution." Absent a complete collapse in tourism, Sedona's traffic problems are here to stay.  As a city councilor I would work hard to find and implement solutions, but I won't make promises that can't be kept.