Buchanan is named San Luis vice mayor
SAN LUIS, Ariz. – After serving nearly 12 years on the San Luis City Council, Mario Buchanan Jr. has been named as the city’s vice mayor.
While voters in San Luis elect the mayor every four years, the city council annually chooses one of its own to serve as vice mayor. The vice mayor performs the duties of the mayor whenever the mayor is out of town or otherwise absent.
The council recently voted to appoint Buchanan to succeed Africa Luna-Carrasco in the post.
Buchanan had declined to be nominated as vice mayor in previous years, saying he could not make the time commitment for the position owing to his regular job.
“Now is the time I’m going to make the effort to be away from my job” to serve as vice mayor, he said. “I understand what my colleagues say, that I have limited myself for so many years not wanting the post. It was easier for me to say I didn’t have the time and that my family and my work were my priority.”
Buchanan is seeking a new fouryear term on the council in the August primary election. Should he fail to be re-elected, he said, he will step down as vice mayor prior to the end of his current term.
Buchanan served on the council from 2008 to 2012, then from 2014 to the present.
In other action, the council voted to split up nearly $500,000 in discretionary city funds among organizations that provide services to the San Luis. The funding is for fiscal year that begins July 1.
Of that total, $119,900 will go to the Yuma County Intergovernmental Public Transportation Authority, which operates the YCAT bus service between San Luis and other cities in Yuma County; $63,770 to the Greater Yuma Economic Development Corportation, which works to bring business and industry to the county, and $61,500 to Ramirez Advisors International, a consulting firm that has helped the city in its efforts secure federal funding to expand the San Luis I Port of Entry.