{"id":46339,"date":"2021-06-11T01:52:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-11T07:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/matthew-keefauver-fills-cortez-city-council-vacancy\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:31:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:31:00","slug":"matthew-keefauver-fills-cortez-city-council-vacancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/matthew-keefauver-fills-cortez-city-council-vacancy\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Keefauver fills Cortez City Council vacancy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=45783df4-e4f1-4420-9639-f9062186a8ee&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Local educator Matt Keefauver, shown speaking at a Southwest Open School commencement, has been appointed to serve on Cortez City Council. (The Journal file)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Local educator Matt Keefauver, shown speaking at a Southwest Open School commencement, has been appointed to serve on Cortez City Council. (The Journal file)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>The Cortez City Council has voted to appoint Matthew Keefauver to replace Amy Huckins, who resigned in April 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Keefauver will take the oath of office at the council meeting June 22. His term will run through April 2022.<\/p>\n<p>The other three candidates who submitted letters for the appointment were Mitchell Toms, Alan Rolston and Houston Frizzell. The candidates were interviewed by City Council at the June 8 workshop.<\/p>\n<p>The council voted unanimously to appoint Keefauver.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMatt is very experienced and knowledgeable about the area,\u201d said Mayor Mike Lavey. \u201cHe previously served on City Council, is an educator, and is forward thinking and intelligent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Keefauver has worked in education for 26 years and has a master\u2019s degree in linguistically diverse education.<\/p>\n<p>He has worked at Southwest Open School as director and assistant director. He also taught sixth through ninth grade math at Cortez Middle School and fourth grade at Kemper Elementary School.<\/p>\n<p>Keefauver previously served two terms on the Cortez City Council. He is co-owner at Cliffrose Garden Center &amp; Gifts and owns Tierra Madre Herbs, a Cortez business that  sells at local farmers markets and to greenhouses and nurseries.<\/p>\n<p>To find out more about who your council members are and how to contact them, please go to <a id=\"link-884300f7ef413e504dd3d915d13aec7a\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.cityofcortez.com\/111\/City-Council<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Educator and co-owner of Cliffrose Garden Center previously served two terms <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,155,896,28,29,265],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-46339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-education","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86838,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46339\/revisions\/86838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46339"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=46339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}