YUMA, Ariz. Nicholls, who has served since January 2014, told KAWC he approaches his time in office “one term at a time” and discusses future plans with his family before deciding to run again.
“My response is one term at a time,” Nicholls said during an interview at West Wetlands, one of the city’s most popular parks. “The voters vote every four years and every four years my family and I sit down, we talk about it and see: is it time to stop or is it time to continue or do something different.”
Born in New Jersey, Nicholls moved to Yuma at age 4, graduated from Yuma High School and studied engineering at Arizona State University. He returned to Yuma in 1999 after marrying his high school sweetheart. He is a father of four and a grandfather of two.
A Catholic deacon, Nicholls said faith and family are central to his life. He described himself as a former “strong introvert” and called the COVID-19 pandemic one of the biggest challenges of his tenure.
Looking ahead, Nicholls said the next four years will focus on long-term planning across city departments. “The next four years is dedicated to planning the future,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of great look-aheads with the fire department, our roadways plan, arts and parks trails and recreation plan. Now we need to get the rest of the departments looking forward 20 years, 30 years, so that we can plan what the future looks like.”
On the contentious issues of artificial intelligence and data centers, Nicholls urged caution and updated analysis. He said many reports he has received are several years old and may not reflect current technology or community impact. “Data centers are gonna have higher technology, are gonna look for better ways of doing things,” he said. “If those meet our community, great. There’s opportunities as a community to have some extra revenue that doesn’t impact our citizens. However, if those things don’t actually benefit us, then I’m not interested in it.”
Nicholls said he is not intimidated by his challenger Carlos Adams and remains confident in his ability to lead Yuma into the future.
