Yavapai College capital improvements planned for the 2026-2027 academic year in the Verde Valley include $450,000 for campus signage and marquees and the final steps to the workforce housing projects, totaled at $399,000 across all campuses.
The total budget for the academic year across all campuses is about $2.5 million, according to the college’s Chief Operating Office Clint Ewell, Ph.D.
No planned maintenance was presented in the budget for the Sedona Center campus. The Verde Valley campus in Clarkdale has about $260,000 of the $7 million budget, which included interior and exterior paint repairs and filling cracks and restriping the pavement.
That’s equal to about 3% of expenditures while Sedona and Verde Valley taxpayers fund 28% to 33% of the college’s annual budget.
“There’s more details I can bring to the board, I just think that we start to get into operational initials,” Ewell told the board during a presentation at its March 31 meeting. “We have … renovated those facilities more recently than what’s happened here on the Prescott campus.”
Ewell said the college decides the budget based on a lot of factors, one of which is recency.
“We can’t advance the ball at every campus at the same year,” he said. “We have to take turns.”
The last time the Sedona campus had a planned maintenance budget was in 2024-25 with $500,000 worth of Stucco replacements. The last time it received capital improvement was a $1.345 million improvement in 2017-18, nearly a decade ago.
Through 2031, there are no more capital improvement budgets planned for the Verde Valley campus. The sole budget for the Sedona Center is $265,100 proposed for acoustical and tech upgrades in academic year 2027-28.
“Our student population is roughly 84% west county and 16% east county,” Ewell said.
West county campuses include Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley and its Career and Technical Center, which is also located in Prescott. East county campuses include the Verde Valley campus in Clarkdale and the Sedona Center.
Board member Toby Payne [District 3] said the original planned capital improvements had not made it to the Verde Valley campus in Cottonwood and the plans changed before the RV spots, which finished in January, were used.
“On the Verde campus, we said we had 10 RV spots, we put four of our trailers there,” Payne said. “Then we built foundations for our tiny homes, five of them, and actually placed them on it and actually did the infrastructure to feed them at the location. Then we recently moved those tiny homes to the RV spots to take up those RV spots.”
The end result was five RV spots and five tiny homes.
“We had originally planned on putting the tiny homes on the east side of our property … but in the end I decided that that was a bad idea,” Ewell said. “The reason is because those are very high-cost homes and to have those tiny homes there I didn’t think was a good look and feel for the neighbors. That combined with the fact that we had not been able to fill the RV spots, we decided it would be a better use to place the tiny homes there.”
The tiny homes would add about 24 beds for student housing, Ewell said, and none are currently available.
The RV spots, which were planned as workforce housing, had few workers use them.
“Generally what we find is that people make their decision in May, June,” Ewell said. “They’re going to make a commitment for an apartment rental, they find a year lease, or sign a year lease to rent an RV pad. We missed the window for this year.”
He said that by Aug. 1, the final of the five tiny homes planned for the Verde Valley campus will be ready, along with two six-bedroom apartments and other fields and amenities currently under construction.
Board’s Budget
The board also approved its own budget of $327,000 at the March 31 meeting.
The budget includes $119,973 in administrative support salaries and benefits, $80,000 in election costs, and enough travel money for each board member to attend one conference or summit.
The other largest expenditure on the budget is the legal fees, which includes about $68,250.
“If you look at 2024-25, Dr. Ewell budgeted $55,000,” said Yvonne Sandoval, the board’s executive assistant. “I had to encumber another $20,000 because we had overspent the budget. We actually spent $75,000.”
The board is on track to spend more than $79,000 on legal fees this year, according to Ewell.
