Craig Sanderson is once against the Mayor of Tusayan. How he got there is a bit complicated.  Sanderson was appointed Mayor after Greg Bryan resigned. In order to run for Mayor Sanderson had to resign as a councilmember because of a recently passed voter initiative that requires councilmembers non in the last year of their terms to resign in order to run for Mayor. Sanderson had two years left on his term. 

Enter Councilmember John Schoppman. He resigned his seat on the council which was set to expire in November. Moments later, he was reappointed to the council to fill the remainder of Sanderson’s term.

Now, the only vacancy on the Town Council was Schoppmann’s term. On August 30^th Sanderson ran unopposed for the Mayor’s office. But his term doesn’t start until January. No problem.

On September 1^st, Craig Sanderson was appointed to Schoppmann’s seat. John Reuter then resigned as Mayor while retaining his council seat. Sanderson was then appointed Mayor.

It was a strange turn of events made even stranger by the fact that Schoppmann voted no on the Sanderson mayoral appointment. It’s not that Sanderson was the only choice to replace Schoppmann. Rob Gossard, who has labored for years on the Planning and Zoning Commission, could have been appointed to the post.

When the dust settled Sanderson admitted it was an awkward process.  Sanderson said, “I want to thank the council for your trust and your vote of confidence.”

Getting to this point was an elaborate process and begs the question, how could the pieces fall into place so easily when this process was never discussed in open session?