The ‘adequate’ reign of Mayor Jablow is over – Sedona Red Rock News
On Tuesday morning, Sept. 30, embattled Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow emailed the Sedona City Attorney to resign from office, ending his 34-month1 tenure.
Keeping Sedona residents informed, we were the first to break the news of his resignation, which should have happened 20 days earlier in executive session on Sept. 10 before Sedona City Council subsequently voted 5-2 to censure him and demand his resignation for “interference with city staff/departments,” “creating/fostering a hostile work environment,” “breaking the confidentiality of attorney-client privilege” “circumvention of city council process,” “acting beyond the authority of the office of mayor,” “acting unilaterally” and “violating principles of ethical conduct for elected officials.”2
It should have happened 13 days earlier on Sept. 17 after our editorial, “For the good of Sedona, Mayor Scott Jablow must resign,” reinforcing council’s seven damning reasons they publicly shamed a colleague.
Any rational, wise and honorable leader would have taken the hint and quit the office with some dignity intact.
Unfortunately for Sedona, Jablow possesses none of those leadership skills, refused to resign and vowed to hold on, though he did figure out a 2026 reelection was untenable and announced he would not run.
On Sept. 19, a new allegation was filed, leading to another closed-door meeting with the city attorney and direction to investigate the claims. While these allegations are not yet public, we can only wonder if they are what led to the sudden reversal.
Due to Jablow’s defiance, council members discussed revising City Code and Council Procedures to add additional penalties to a censure resolution: Striking a council member from any liaison roles, banning access to the Mayor-Council conference room, taking away a city-funded cell phone, declining to pay travel expenses or docking a council member’s limited pay, effectively neutering all the perks of a censured official. Council will still discuss adding these penalties on Wednesday, Oct. 29.
Prior to that discussion, Jablow went rogue and tried to make a public statement bashing his colleagues for voting their conscience and admonishing him 13 days earlier. He began by blatantly misstating a headline from our newspaper3, then proceeded to read what would have been a lengthy rant before he was slapped down by both council members and the city attorney for speaking on issues not properly agendized.
Again, Jablow was breaking the rules by fostering a hostile work environment, circumventing the city council process and violating principles of ethical conduct for elected officials, reinforcing why he was censured earlier.
The next day, the rant was mistakenly posted to Facebook by a third party but quickly taken down, but not before local keyboard warriors snagged screenshots of the rant3. Two days later, he posted an edited version, but both were rife with factual errors, misstatements, falsehoods and what can only be described as lies, a term we journalists do not use lightly.
For instance, he falsely claimed that three Sedona Police Department staffers came forward with allegations of mistreatment and “Allegedly, out of fear of retaliation by the Chief, the employees decided not to pursue their complaints.”
This is so ridiculously false, it must be highlighted: Not only did the three staffers pursue their complaints, the city hired an outside firm — Revolutionary HR Consultants — to investigate them. We published a 2,100-word story on the investigation, posted the entire 29-page Report of Findings and Jablow even cited the misspelled “HR Revolutionary” by name three times in his Sept. 26 post4, so he knew that they pursued their complaints.
He also cites in his post that one of the complaints about the chief came in August 2024, “from the former Deputy Chief, who outlined safety-related issues.”
Jablow neglects to mention the name of the former deputy chief, Ryan Kwitkin, who Revolutionary HR suggested in May 2024 the city investigate for allegations of misconduct discovered during interviews. Ten allegations of misconduct were “substantiated” and Kwitkin was fired by the city manager July 10. Kwitkin filed a $360,000 notice of claim against the city in August. A fired employee who is suing the city bashing his former supervisor? You don’t say.
If Jablow really had cause to displace the chief, he presented nothing to his colleagues and nothing to our newspaper to validate his “concerns.”
“It should be noted he NEVER asked to agendize an item his concerns. NEVER,” a council member wrote to us on Sept. 26.
But Jablow’s myopic push to oust Sedona’s first female police chief led her to file a 157-page harassment complaint against Jablow on July 27, detailing three years of “constant and continuous scrutiny, micromanagement and undermining of her position of authority” and “gender-based discrimination.” Jablow’s resignation comes just weeks before that investigation becomes public.
Jablow claimed the council-manager form of government limited his ability to manage the city — but after 10 years and 11 months on council, he’s not new to the job — he should know it’s both Arizona state law and how Sedona’s municipal government works.
His greatest sin against Sedona residents, however, was the debacle over automated license plate reader cameras. Wowed by the new surveillance toy in early 2024, Jablow pushed ALPRs relentlessly by himself in order to track and surveil Sedona residents and visitors on city streets without their knowledge. He was told flat-out by the former city manager to cease acting unilaterally without his colleagues’ knowledge or approval, then proceeded anyway by contacting Verde Valley law enforcement leaders about their ALPR data and instructing them not to email city staff but him directly for “personal” research5. He pushed the new city manager in 2024 who seemed unaware of her predecessor’s rebuke of Jablow and signed off on the project appearing not to be aware of Jablow’s surreptitious behavior.
When she asked when she should schedule a public meeting, Jablow explicitly told her not to make it public6 — hiding from his own constituents the proposed mass surveillance of their movements — 5th and 6th Amendments be damned — an utter betrayal of his duty as an elected official.
That revelation only came to light when furious readers notified us cameras were tracking them without warning [689 comments on our story as of Sept. 30]. Residents demanded answers from the city and council members heard from the public on Aug. 13, all learning for the first time how Jablow’s duplicitous actions wasted tens of thousands of tax dollars and engendered fear and distrust that will take years to rebuild.
When running for mayor in 2022, Jablow said his top three priorities were short-term rentals, OHVs regulations and affordable workforce housing, the reduction of which he largely attributed to short-term rentals.
On all three issues, Jablow failed utterly.
Despite all his talk to outside media outlets about the negative impacts of short-term rentals, there are more STRs in 2025 then when he was elected mayor, tripling since 2020 and now numbering more than 1,100. New STR legislation Jablow championed as the “fix” never became law and most bills were killed in committee; 11 died in 2024 alone without ever getting a floor vote. Jablow lacked the political charisma or swagger to convince lawmakers on his key issue.
Under the guise of “safety,” Jablow proposed an ordinance in April 2023 to ban OHVs on Sedona streets unless they had Department of Transportation-approved street-legal tires — a requirement that was technically and legally impossible. Jablow penned a guest perspective in June focused on “safety.”7 Activist lawyers smacked down Jablow’s backdoor ban and all three of our state lawmakers said the proposal conflicted with numerous state laws.
Jablow tried to get the U.S. Forest Service to ban or limit OHVs on lands west of Sedona, serving not Sedona residents but landowners outside city limits and outside his jurisdiction, an utter dereliction of his purview and beyond the authority of a mayor.
When OHV rental owners bowed to the coercive power of the state to save their businesses, Jablow’s negotiated ordinance lacked any reference to “airbags, stability control, crumple zones, rear bumpers and DOT-approved tires” proving the ordinance had nothing to do with safety but with getting OHV business to kowtow to his power. In the end, Jablow’s only “success” was getting a 15-mph OHV-only speed limit on ½-mile of Morgan Road.
When you pass an OHV driving on State Route 89A, remember him.
Jablow has completed no affordable workforce housing projects in his 34 months as mayor or 10 years on council. In fact, when counting several workforce housing areas that were sold to developers who proposed higher-end redevelopments, Sedona had a net workforce housing loss under Jablow’s leadership.
Jablow sent out campaign mailers in 2022, showing him with a shovel in hand8, which suggested he was a builder, but the photo was from the groundbreaking of SFD Station 6, not housing. Other than a toothless “housing shortage emergency” declaration, Jablow can point to no substantive achievements and ends as a footnote, sans legacy.
His high mark was installing a 9/11 memorial at Sedona Fire District Station 6 when he served on the SFD Governing Board. Unfortunately for us all in Sedona, he then sought higher office on Sedona City Council.
Back in 2022, we wrote that Jablow was “known to sway with the wind, changing his votes based on who last had his ear before a council meeting. Even allies and donors note this unsteady fickleness. Adaptability is a virtue, inconsistency a vice.” So Jablow’s Sept. 10 decision to remain and his Sept. 30 reversal to quit is no surprise — it was entirely expected.
Jablow did not send us any statements about his resignation, did not respond calls on his cell phones and home phone from the NEWS to comment about his resignation, attempting to deny you, his former constituents, an explanation. Luckily for you, our dear readers, his attempts failed. Fortunately, his former council colleagues were more than happy to speak to you on the record.
When endorsing his opponent in 2022, we warned voters that Jablow was cowardly in comparison to his predecessors, communicating only second-hand whispers and rumors rather than directly, adding that “the mayor’s office. It offers no armor” … “aversion to bravery is trivial; as mayor, such behavior is perilous for the city.” Contrary to claims, Jablow is not a New Yorker with alligator-thick skin. He refused to return our calls about his resignation, has refused to speak with me because we endorsed his opponent three years ago and refused to shake her hand after their first debate9, an act that “reeked of cowardice, misogyny and disrespect and spoke to the character of both people on stage,” we wrote.
Fear is what led to his downfall. Fear of public scrutiny of ALPRs by council and residents, fear his colleagues could not be persuaded by his arguments on issues, fear of staff doing what they were hired to do within the bounds of policy and the law, fear that the city-manager form of government — that places management in the hands of professional administrators he hired — can achieve his desired goals without him having to circumvent it and overstep policy and the law.
We warned voters that Jablow would be, at best, an “adequate” mayor. He turned out to be far less. Far from a high note, Jablow leaves office in disgrace — the first mayor to be censured and the first directly-elected mayor in the city’s history to resign10. He can blame council, or city staffers or this newspaper but none of us repeatedly and relentlessly broke policy, bent procedures, violated rules and lost the public trust.
Now-ex-mayor Scott Jablow did that all on his own.
Christopher Fox Graham, Managing Editor
Kyle Larson, General Manager
Footnotes:
- 1) Scott Jablow falsely claimed in a self-released press statement that by resigning on Sept. 30, 2025, he was “bringing to a close more than three and a half years of mayoral service,” however, Jablow was only mayor for 34 months and 3 days — or 2 years and 10 months, or 1,038 total days, from Nov. 28, 2022 and Sept. 30, 2025 — less than three years and a full eight months shorter than the “three-and-a-half years” he falsely claimed to have served as mayor.
- 2) Sept. 10, 2025 Sedona City Council Executive Session Minutes:
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- 3) An Facebook post purportedly from Jablow appeared on a Cornville-based Facebook page on Sept. 23. It was removed in about 30 minutes but captured by other Facebook users. Jablow later confirmed the writing the post was his but claimed he did not know how it had appeared online. The person we contacted who posted Jablow’s statement provided erroneous means about how it was obtained and unsubstantiated.
In the Facebook post, Jablow misstates the headline, claiming: “A recent headline in the local paper reported that this Council must restore trust in our city,” when the actual headline was “Sedona City Council to Mayor Scott Jablow: Resign to restore trust.”
- 4) Jablow’s Sept. 26 post specifically cites the outside human resources firm that conducted the investigation into Sedona Police Chief Stephanie Foley, though he misspells Revolutionary HR Consultants as “HR Revolutionary.”
- 5) Sedona City Manager Karen Osburn wrote to Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow on “This isn’t a current project and until it is and until we were to know there is an interest in pursuing this and capacity to implement LPR technology, it wouldn’t be reasonable to do any grant seeking. You continue to pursue this unilaterally without ever having discussed it with council and after I have repeatedly told you that PD is in no position right now to conduct the research necessary to explore how this technology might integrate into their systems, let alone acquire and implement. lt may be even longer before anything, even current and more urgent projects like body worn cameras, can advance due to the current disruptions happening in PD.” Yet on April 6, 2024, Jablow continued to press the issue, contacting Camp Verde Marshal Corey Rowley to ask about Camp Verde’s use of ALPRs, stating his request was for “my own research” and to send the information to him and sidestep the Sedona Police Department and, by extension, Sedona Police Chief Stephanie Foley.
- 6) Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow told Sedona City Manager Anette Spickard on Nov. 23, 2024, that he does not want the discussion on automated license plate reader cameras to be made public.
- 7) Objecting to the headline of a May 5, 2023, NEWS story, “Mayor pushes OHV ‘safety’ ban for Sedona,” Sedona Mayor Scott Jablow penned a Guest Perspective, published June 7, that used the word “safety” or a derivative six times.
- 8) When campaigning for mayor in 2022, then-Sedona Vice Mayor Scott Jablow sent to voters this mailer, misleading voters into believing he had been involved in housing the projects. In the photo are not homebuilders but Sedona Fire Distict Governing Board member Scott Jablow, left, board member Corrie Cooperman and Board Chairman Ty Montgomery. The July 20, 2021, NEWS story referenced in the flyer “Sedona teams up with developer on housing,” is about the Sedona City Council approving “a resolution authorizing the city to enter into a development agreement with Sunset Lofts LLC for the development of a multi-family workforce apartment complex at 220 Sunset Drive.” According a NEWS story “Sunset Lofts proposal given extension through 2026,” published Nov. 17, 2024, the MK Company of Scottsdale in the story failed to begin work on the project by the first deadline of July 13, 2023, and the second deadline of April 1, 2024, focusing instead on a 60-unit townhome development on Navajo Drive in West Sedona and the city acquired title to the 2.2-acre property and the plans for the proposed 46-unit apartment complex. As of Oct. 2, 2025, the land is still totally vacant.
- 9) After the Oct. 6, 2022, mayoral debate hosted by Larson Newspapers at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre, then-Sedona Vice Mayor Scott Jablow visibly dodged the offer of a handshake extended by his opponent, Samaire Armstrong. In our Oct. 27, 2022, endorsement of Armstrong for mayor, this visible act of disrespect in from of the gathered crowd opened our editorial, in which we wrote “The younger person, the woman, the single mother, offered her hand. The retired older man, the ex-cop, the elected official, the public servant, refused it. It reeked of cowardice, misogyny and disrespect and spoke to the character of both people on stage. The snub begs many questions: Where does Jablow’s partisanship end? As mayor, will Jablow refuse to shake the hand of Ken Bennett, a Republican running to be our state senator? What of Republicans Selina Bliss or Mark Finchem, should they win their races? Or congressional candidate Eli Crane? Senate hopeful Blake Masters? What about Kari Lake, should she be elected governor? More importantly, what about the Sedona residents who want to serve on city commissions or committees or who receive awards for their service? … that show of disrespect, in our house, as our guests, was unacceptable. We demand that our mayor rise above pettiness to serve all, but it appears Jablow is not yet mature enough for the office he seeks.”
Bliss and Finchem were elected to the Arizona State Legislature and Crane was elected to Congress.
- 10) Scott Jablow was Sedona’s 13th elected mayor, the third to resign and the first-directly elected mayor to resign. Mayor Alan Everett resigned in 2002 to run for Congress and Mayor Ruth “Pud” Colquitt resigned in 2005 in order to run for Sedona mayor under new rules allowing voters to directly elect the mayor in the 2006 election.
Sedona incorprated in 1988 with June Conelison appointed as provisional mayor on the Provisional Sedona City Council and served from January to April 1988. She was elected to the first Sedona City Council and served as Sedona’s first elected vice mayor and second elected mayor.
From 1998 to 2006, Sedona City Council would vote from among themselves the mayor and vice mayor at the first meeting after the election canvass. Nine mayors of Sedona were elected by this process: Pat Pomphrey (1988-1990); June Conelison (1990-1992), Thron Riggs (1992-1996); Ivan Finley (1996-1998); Alan Everett (1998 until his resignation Jan 8, 2002, to run for Arizona Congressional District 1); Anita McFarlane (January to May 2002); Dick Ellis (2002-2004); Ruth “Pud” Colquitt (2004 to December 2005. She resigned in order to legally be able to run in Sedona’s first direct election for mayor). Susan Solomon (December 2005 to June 2006).
After 2006, voters directly elected the mayor to a two-year term. Sedona City Council would vote from among themselves the vice mayor at the first meeting after the election canvass. There have been four mayors elected by this process: Ruth “Pud” Colquitt (2006-2008), Rob Adams (2008-2010, 2010-2012, 2012-2014), Sandy Moriarty (2014-2016, 2016-2018, 2018-2020, 2020-2022), Scott Jablow (2022-2024, 2024 to 5 p.m. Sept. 30, 2025), Holli Ploog (acting mayor from 5 p.m. Sept. 30, 2025, to present).
