The city of Cottonwood and the Greater Cottonwood Chamber of Commerce hosted a meet-and-greet for the candidates for City Council on Wednesday, March 20.
There are four seats open on the Cottonwood City Council in this election cycle, including Mayor Tim Elinski’s seat and the seats of council members Helaine Kurot, Derek Palosaari and Michael Mathews. Elinksi and Palosaari are not running for reelection.
Mayor
The mayoral candidates are Ann Shaw and Michael Mathews.
“The reason that I’m running for mayor is to continue the well established order for conducting the city’s business,” Shaw said. She added that she wants “to make good decisions regarding progress without undermining the balance required for maintaining resources.”
Shaw has lived in Cottonwood for 30 years. Her mother and sister live in town and her brother is also in the area.
“This has become our family home,” Shaw said. “Its value is hard to overestimate for us.”
She said that she is most proud of her teaching career and helping many students. Her area of expertise was high school English and social sciences. Shaw also served on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission for 20 years.
“I am in awe of the brilliant entrepreneurship that has brought such vitality to this city,” Shaw said. She added she is aware of continuing concerns and work to still be done.
“The office of mayor is nonpartisan,” Shaw said. “If I were elected I would approach the job respecting that it cannot be used to advance a party or personal agenda. My only agenda is to focus on the mayor’s role in carrying out the functions of government in a professional manner.”
Mathews previously spent four years on city council prior to his appointment to Jackie Nairn’s seat in December. He said he has seven years of experience with local city government and had spent one year as vice mayor in addition to his career in real estate.
“We’ve got a lot of really great people in this town,” Mathews said. “We’ve got over 250 employees and they do the same thing as City Council. They work for you and we work for you. We work together.”
Council Candidates
There are eight candidates running for the three open seats.
Councilwoman Helaine Kurot is running for reelection. She grew up on Long Island, N.Y. She moved to Arizona in 2014. She was elected to council in 2020. Kurot owns 360 Automotive, which works with automotive students from Mingus Union High School.
Felicia Coates has lived in Cottonwood for the past 11 years after moving here with her husband for the rural lifestyle.
“I am running for a council seat because I care deeply about Cottonwood and the Verde Valley,” Coates said. “I had been galvanized to run because of the discord on council. This discord is not limited to council chambers. It has a ripple effect adversely affecting city staff, the local economy and its residents.”
Coates spent her career in healthcare research and development. She has accumulated 11 years of volunteer public service including working on trails in the area. She also co-led the Cottonwood historic home and building tour for the past four years and sits on the Historic Preservation Commission.
“I want to be part of a council that works together and is laser-focused on enabling core city functions and advancing the strategic plan,” Coates said. “I want to be part of a council that supports the vision of a city where diversity of people coexist and thrive.”
Holly Grigaitis was in the real estate business in Cottonwood between 1998 and her retirement in 2017. She previously ran for mayor in 2016. She said that the problems of 2016 are still present and have not improved and also claimed that the city is $100 million in debt.
Grigatis argued that her main goal is to get the city back on a fiscally responsible path. She said she made her living fixing up broken houses and that the city is just one big house that everybody lives in that she wants to better.
Robert Marks worked for 22 years for a global bank after six years working for the U.S. Army. He said that he has a wide variety of experience managing both people and budgets as well as working collaboratively. He is a pickleball enthusiast and a court-appointed special advocate.
“I advocate for children who go through the Arizona state foster care system,” Marks said, which he argued has given him insight into the challenges that families, courts and law enforcement are facing.
He added that he has been concerned with events over the past couple of years and that the city has not been meeting its potential.
Lindsay Masten owns a creative design agency and has spent the past two years as a professor at Yavapai College, where she leads the graphic design department. She has been on the Planning and Zoning Commission since 2018 and is currently chairwoman, which she said had showed her the city’s need for housing. She stressed the importance of having smart growth in the region to support the needs of both people relocating and existing residents.
“Growth is inevitable but how you grow is important,” Masten said.
Joy Mosley is an 18-year resident of Cottonwood and a business owner who formerly managed her family’s real estate investment company. She is an original member of the Verde Valley Homeless Coalition.
“My personal core values that have served me well are faith, family, integrity, service and adventure, and this is certainly a new adventure,” Mosley said. She said that she strives for nonpartisan, data-driven decision making.
Mosley said that as she gathered signatures, one concern that was expressed more than others was perceived partisanship in the decision-making of the current council. She said she wants to help hold the council accountable and if they can’t be held accountable, she wants them to revisit the proposed code of conduct that failed last December. She added that she is a mother of nine and not easily intimidated.
Billy Tinnin was born and raised in Flagstaff. He joined the U.S. Army and spent eight years in Berlin working in military intelligence before becoming a machinist and welder and later going into real estate. He has done volunteer work with the Cottonwood Police Department and has served on the Airport Commission for the past 13 years. He is also the commander of the American Legion post in town.
“Service to Cottonwood is what I believe in,” Tinnin said.
Heather Piper White’s family has been in the Verde Valley for four generations, with her great-grandparents homesteading in Sedona.
“I’ve seen countless times how the lack of foresight, the lack of sustainable growth and the lack of collaboration has made it so that we don’t have enough housing, we don’t have enough jobs,” White said
She added that her family had to move away for a while and couldn’t easily return due to a lack of jobs.
“My primary focus of running is to really collaborate with the folks here to see what we can do for more sustainable growth,” White continued. “We have to optimize the resources that we already have … My goal is to make it so that the future high school graduating class doesn’t have to move away.”
Election Dates
The city’s primary election will be held on Tuesday, July 30, and the general election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 5. To be eligible to vote in the primary election, residents must be registered to vote by Monday, July 1. To be eligible to vote in the general election, residents must be registered to vote by Monday, Oct. 7.
