The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors voted Wednesday, Dec. 2, to keep the Verde Connect project seemingly alive and undoing a decision made last month that appeared to have killed the 2-year-old project. The new vote leaves the project in limbo until the newly elected board is seated.
On Nov. 18, the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors voted 3-1 to reject bids for the proposed Verde Connect project that would connect State Route 260 with Cornville Road from Coury Drive to Beaverhead Flat Road through a new road built across U.S. Forest Service land in between the two roads.
Despite support from the county for the project throughout the planning stages, the costs of bids for the project exceeded what the board was willing to fund, and the project bids were voted down by a 3-1 vote on Nov. 18. District 4 Supervisor and Chairman Craig Brown, District 5 Supervisor Mary Mallory and District 2 Supervisors Tom Thurman voted to reject the bids and end the project Nov. 18. District 1 Supervisor Rowle Simmons was the lone vote against rejecting bids. District 3 Supervisor Randy Garrison, who has been a longtime supporter of the project, left the meeting after the executive session but before the vote.
On Wednesday, Nov. 25, the board noted that “due to extenuating circumstances, the public may not have heard the motion made by the Board of Supervisors” on Nov. 18, so the board planned to reconvene on Dec. 2 and ratify the Nov. 18 vote, a rare process to essentially re-do a previous vote so that it could be properly witnessed for public record purposes.
As before, the ratification of the vote was likely to again reject all three design-build request for proposals for the Verde Connect Project, authorize payment to the three unsuccessful bidders in an amount not to exceed that specified in the RFP and direct county staff to end all contracts and agreements related to the design and funding of the Verde Connect Project. The county would also have to return a $25 million federal Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development grant to the Federal Highway Administration that was awarded in December 2018.
It was possible but unlikely that the board would reverse its decision. Yet, that’s what the board did, in part.
At the Dec. 2 meeting, the board undid its position with a 3-2 vote. Garrison argued to the board that the decision on the project should be left for the next board.
Garrison’s motion to nullify last month’s vote initially failed 3-2, after Simmons, Mallory and Brown all voted against it.
However, the following vote, to ratify last month’s 3-1 decision also failed 3-2, after Garrison, Simmons and Thurman voted against it.
“This road needs to be done folks. I know you don’t like it,” Thurman said at the meeting about his reversal. “‘You build it they will come.’ I understand that philosophy and it usually does happen. It creates a lot of jobs in the Verde Valley. It’s sad that we worked on this for so many years, that the new elected coming into office are adamantly against it. I can’t shove something down a newly elected’s throat and expect that they’re not going to rebel. I’ve already been told by the ones that haven’t taken office yet that they’re here to kill the contract.”
Garrison said in October that the results of the Nov. 3 election should not change the decisions of the current board with regards to Verde Connect, and that he would try to get the road build even if challenger Donna Michaels unseated him.
“The decision was made months ago and we have already accepted and budgeted the federal monies as well as the county contribution for this project,” Garrison wrote in an email on Oct. 22. “We will be receiving plans and bids at the end of this month, and expect to select a contractor and bid before the end of November, and break ground early January. This has been a very open and transparent process, and we have been following a very strict timeline. The election does not change long-term planning.”
Now that the current board has voted against the project he championed and Michaels defeated him on Nov. 3, Garrison argued that the decision should belong to a future board.
“I don’t want to make a decision based on what the wants are of a future board, so I am going to be asking for us not to ratify this vote, and to send it back and allow our future board members, should they choose, to not pursue sending this forward, allow them to make that vote, allow them to raise their hand in public,” Garrison said. “But we don’t have to do their work for them. They need to look the public in the eye and tell them that at the end of the day they don’t matter. I don’t want this board to do that.”
Michaels has expressed opposition to the project. Thurman is retiring, and his elected successor, James Gregory, has expressed opposition.
