Incoming City Manager Anette Spickard, formerly of McCall, Idaho, will take over the reins of Sedona’s day-to-day operations on Monday, April 8.

Retiring City Manager Karen Osburn will remain with the city as a consultant for a two-week transition period following Spickard’s arrival.

A trained accountant who has spent the majority of her career in Oregon, Spickard has been the McCall city manager since February 2018 and also has experience as a county assessor and public works director.

“Their recruiter firm reached out to me and asked me to consider the position, and they had been looking at various city managers who were working in resort communities already that had similar issues, and so that’s how it came to my attention,” Spickard said about receiving the call from Sedona. “After talking with my husband about it, it seemed like a really great opportunity professionally, and I loved the community … the information they put out in their recruitment announcement about what they were looking for and the challenges that they have seemed like a really good fit with things that I already do and enjoy doing.”

As it turns out, accepting the city manager job will finally bring Spickard to the red rocks after several years of delays.

“It’s a funny story,” Spickard laughed. “My husband had set up a trip to Sedona for our 25th wedding anniversary some years ago, and we ended up canceling it because I was interviewing for the job for McCall. So I didn’t actually get there. So it was very ironic but funny that this came around this way. Since then we have been down several times and we have found a place to rent and checked out different parts of the hiking system. I’ve met with some of the city staff and the council just to get to know more people. It’s lovely.”

Spickard has already had the chance to sample the experience most typical of moving to Sedona: Struggling to find housing, which she eventually succeeded in nailing down in West Sedona.

“We kind of had limited choices, because they do want me to be in the city limits, which I 100% support,” Spickard said. “I think it’s important for the leadership to be in the city that they’re making decisions for. And we have two dogs, so we had our choice of like three houses that would accept dogs that were in the city limits, so we felt very fortunate that we found a landlord who was willing to hold a house for us until we could get there in April.”

With two daughters and two granddaughters in California, Spickard is looking forward to the move bringing her closer to family, as well as involving herself in the local fiber arts and music scenes. Her husband, Devon, while a lawyer by profession, also plays guitar and sings.

“I plan to patronize whatever performing arts and musical options there are,” Spickard said. “My husband and I are big whitewater rafters, so we’ve done tons of river trips on our own here in Idaho and Oregon, and I’m really looking forward to doing a lot of river trips and exploring the Southwest and the rivers there.

“I like to be in volunteer organizations. I want to be present. I’m not going to hide behind my desk or sit in my house all the time … We’re really exited to get to know people and get integrated into the community as quickly as we can, and learn all about the various nonprofits, and figure out where we want to plug in our volunteer time.”

Spickard added that she has been pleasantly surprised by the degree of community interaction she has already experienced.

“I’ve had a number of Sedona residents already email me, or send me cards in the mail, which has been really wonderful, welcoming me to town and offering to take me places,” Spickard said. “One lady sent me the pickleball schedule. So it’s been really lovely — something unique about Sedona that has not happened anywhere else I’ve worked. It seems like a very welcoming community that’s very interested in their local government, which is a plus.”

“I understand the politics of working in the public sector. I don’t have any illusions — I understand that two years from now, if the council changes, they could change their mind. Or I could be there 10 years because they like me … I just plan to do my 150% best job that I can to serve the community for as long as the council and the community feel like I’m the right person for the job.”

Setting Priorities

“Clearly successful implementation of the ‘Safe Place to Park’ is top of mind, I’m sure, for the community and the staff, and so getting that going is going to be high on my list,” Spickard said of the main issues facing Sedona. “I want to make sure that it’s done well and we’re in good communication with all our stakeholders in the community … The other big topic is the transition of the tourism bureau or the destination marketing organization into the city’s purview. That’s a really big deal. I’m on the chamber of commerce board here in McCall, and the chamber here is still the DMO, so I am familiar with the tourism and marketing issues and how much work that takes, so I think that’s a big transition and I want to make sure that goes really well and that we’re addressing the needs of the people in that tourism industry.”

Spickard considers Sedona’s and McCall’s tourism-related issues to be “fairly similar,” differing mainly in scale.

“We’re more of a regional destination, where you’re an international destination,” Spickard said. “Then, of course, you have more volume, but then we have more issues with overuse or high-intensity use of our Forest Service areas, campgrounds … educating visitors on how to recreate responsibly. That’s part of what we do here now … trying to ensure people have a really good experience while they’re here, because we are a tourism-based economy, so we definitely need tourism to support our local businesses and community, but trying also to mitigate the negative impacts that come with that.”

She is also very familiar with housing shortages.

“We’ve been dealing with that here in McCall and working really hard to keep our community a community and not end up with it just being a resort because nobody lives here full-time,” Spickard said. “It doesn’t seem like Sedona’s in jeopardy of that. You do have a lot more full-time residents now. But in terms of demographics and making sure we can have vibrant community with families living there … working on housing will definitely be a priority.”

“I know that the city is doing a lot of traffic improvement projects … definitely I’ll be diving in to understand what’s next on the horizon for those projects and how we’re going to understand if they’re working or not,” Spickard added.

Given the growing perception among residents that city staff rather than city council are making decisions for the community, Spickard emphasized that “city staff should get direction from the council on what policy areas they want to address on behalf of the community, and it should be based on what the community’s issues are, the desires of the public, what they’re hearing from their constituents,” while staff’s proper role is as “subject matter professionals.”

“Ultimately, [the council] make the decision, and then we go forth and implement it,” Spickard said. “So that’s my view on how that works.”

While the latest resident surveys have showed that most residents enjoy living in Sedona, confidence in city government has fallen to an all-time low, with only 28% of respondents in Sedona’s most recent community survey saying they approve of the overall direction the city is taking.

Spickard explained that the key to closing that gap is not just transparency and trust-building but, more importantly, avoiding hypocrisy.

“The way that that trust-building comes back is when your words and your actions match,” Spickard said. “I could say all those things, but until they actually see me in action, following through and doing what I say I’m going to do — I think that’s when the relationship-building and trust-building comes back. That would be my goal.”