Sedona City Council election 2026: Jean-Christophe Buillet profile and essay8 min read

June 23, 2026

A political newcomer but longtime resident, Jean-Christophe Buillet is one of five candidates running for three open seats on the Sedona City Council.

Candidate Profile

Sedona City Council candidate Jean-Christophe Buillet
Time in Sedona: 30 years
Professional and personal background: Jean-Christophe Buillet grew up in Sedona and graduated from Sedona Red Rock High School in 1999. He studied electrical and computer engineering at Northern Arizona University. He owns A Sunset Chateau, a bed and breakfast in West Sedona, as well as a real estate brokerage and accounting practice and is a registered investment advisor. He has been married for 10 years and has four children aged 2 to 9.

Questions

What is your vision for the Western Gateway / Sedona Cultural Park?

My vision goes beyond a single building. We have an opportunity to create a living cultural landscape worthy of this setting, including a botanical garden showcasing native plants of the Colorado Plateau, a sculpture walk, an art museum, festival grounds for our film festival and plein air events, and trails. Done right, this serves residents year-round, not just on performance nights.

Do you support or oppose the restoration of the Georgia Frontiere Performing Arts Pavilion?

The Georgia Frontiere Pavilion can be part of that vision, restored, reimagined or integrated into a broader design. That conversation belongs to the community, not to closed-door council decisions. The city sued its own residents to prevent them from voting on this land’s future. The Cultural Park deserves a genuine community design process: Artists, naturalists, residents, educators, building something we’re proud of for the next 50 years. The Western Gateway should feel like Sedona, a place that takes your breath away and belongs to all of us.

Do you support crossings over Oak Creek outside city limits? What other alternative routes do you support and how would you pursue them?

A crossing connecting the Village with West Sedona would be a major boon for employees, families commuting to school and activities, and would meaningfully relieve State Route 179. Whether that’s Chavez Crossing, Red Rock Crossing or through private lands needs proper evaluation, but something needs to happen.
The 2024 council vote was unanimous, and then nothing happened. Unanimous resolutions followed by two years of silence isn’t leadership, it’s theater.
If elected, I’ll push for a specific, accountable action plan with Yavapai County, not another round of urging.
That means identifying the obstacles: Funding, easements, environmental review, intergovernmental coordination and working through them one by one with a formal agreement and a realistic timeline.
Several ideas deserve a second look: The Schnebly Hill Alternate Route would deposit Phoenix-to-canyon through-traffic onto State Route 89A near the canyon mouth, bypassing Uptown. Apache Trail and Manzanita Spur extensions would give Uptown neighborhoods a back-road connection to West Sedona, and a Brewer-to-Airport Road connector to address the Cooks Hill bottleneck. Forest Road, while a genuine relief valve, will likely absorb overflow once the new parking garage opens — we need a plan for that now. I’m not ready to champion these without proper engineering analysis, but they deserve to be on the table.

How will updates to the city of Sedona’s Land Development Code address affordability, residential and commercial development while still balancing what makes Sedona unique?

Sedona’s current LDC was built for a metropolis, not a small community of 10,000 people. It’s expensive, complicated and hostile to anyone trying to build housing here. Pre-construction fees exceed $27,000 before a shovel hits the ground. Plan review is a nightmare. It discourages smaller-scale, community-scale building we need and hands the advantage to large developers who can afford it.
The LDC update is an opportunity to start over with simplicity as the goal. Streamlined plan review, accessible staff, reduced fees and code that reflects Sedona’s actual scale and character rather than a bureaucratic framework borrowed from New York City. We can protect what makes Sedona unique without making it impossible for regular people to build here.

What plans do you have to alleviate traffic congestion?

Traffic is fundamentally a regional problem, and any candidate who tells you the city alone can solve it isn’t being straight with you. What the city can do is stop being passive and become a partner with ADOT, Yavapai County, Coconino County and the U.S. Forest Service.
The biggest choke point is the “Y” intersection. A roundabout works at low volume but breaks down at high volume, and the “Y” is overdue for a serious rethink. The city already owns land there with a disused building, making a dedicated bypass lane for eastbound 89A traffic heading south on 179 achievable without any land acquisition. A similar lane for northbound 179 traffic heading to Uptown would leave the roundabout handling only what it was designed for. Longer term, I’d like to see the city partner with state university engineering programs to model comprehensive solutions. I competed in and won traffic engineering competitions at NAU and know firsthand that format produces real ideas with solid modeling.
None of the solutions I’ve described are new, they’ve been studied and shelved for years. What’s been missing is the political will to pursue them. It’s time we show up with specific asks and follow through.

Essay

I’ve lived in Sedona for 30 years. I grew up on our trails, graduated from Sedona Red Rock High School, built my career here and I’m raising four children here, ages 2 to 9, on the same red dirt I grew up on. When I watch them play in Oak Creek, hike the same paths I hiked as a kid and fall in love with this place the way I did, I feel the full weight of what this generation of leaders either protects or squanders for the next one. It’s not abstract to me, it’s our children’s inheritance at stake and right now, it’s being mismanaged.
That’s why I’m running.
As a musician and an artist, I’ve always enjoyed Sedona’s creative, community spirit that drew artists and nourished artistry here for a century and made this place feel like more than a tourist destination. That spirit has been fading, not because people don’t care, but because city leadership has stopped nurturing it. I want to bring it back. A city that invests in its arts and its gathering places is a city that residents actually thrive in, not just survive in.
I also bring real-world skills this council has been missing. I’m an accountant, a financial advisor, a real estate broker and I’ve owned and operated A Sunset Chateau, a 25-room bed and breakfast, for over two decades. I studied engineering at Northern Arizona University, served two years on Sedona’s Citizen Budget Work Group and have spent my career navigating the same, budgets, building codes and permitting processes a council member needs to know how to manage. I know how to read a budget, evaluate a capital project and posit the questions that never get raised when nobody in the room has the experience to recognize them.
Sedona’s challenges are no secret. Our spending is outpacing our fiscal discipline. Major projects get approved without honest public accounting of what we can afford. We see no-bid contracts without the scrutiny taxpayers deserve. Our Land Development Code is built for a metropolis, not a town of 10,000, strangling the possibility of affordable housing we desperately need. Pre-construction fees exceed $27,000 for a manufactured home before a shovel hits the ground. Our traffic solutions have been studied then forgotten for decades. Our tourism model is reactive and floods Sedona with summer day-trippers. Our council has grown comfortable rolling out the welcome mat for mega-developers while the people who actually live here wait an eternity to be heard. These are solvable problems, but only with leadership that has the technical fluency to understand them and the backbone to act.
I’m not running because I need something from this city, I want to give back. Sedona gave me my roots, my livelihood and my family’s home. I’m running because my children deserve to inherit the same wonderful Sedona I grew up in.
Protecting what you love sometimes means stepping up and fighting for it.
I’m asking for your vote on July 21 so that together, we can build something worth leaving behind.
Jean-Christophe Buillet is one of five candidates running for one of three open seats on the Sedona City Council. Election day is Tuesday, July 21.