Last month, Yavapai County District 3 Supervisor Chip Davis asked a Yavapai College Governing Board member a question most of Sedona and the Verde Valley already ask: “Why do you allow this culture to exist – that Yavapai College allowed their staff members to go out in the community and not be a productive member of it?”
In speaking to Yavapai College, Davis said of the college employee booted from the county workforce board, “It’s been … two years of constant frustration; two years of disrespect to fellow board members; two years of disruption during meetings; two years of stopping forward progress in creating great programs; two years of somebody failing to research their subject and causing disruption for those that did do their research prior to the board meetings.”
Part of the problem is a top-down culture at the college that has little to no understanding about community needs or understanding how projects or operations at other government agencies might serve the community. A community college should be an ally, not a hindrance, to other local governments.
A day later, Sedona City Council approved Mayor Sandy Moriarty sending Yavapai County President Penny Wills a letter that demanded she come before council and explain the college’s plans for the Sedona Campus and the Verde Valley, the college strategic plan, budget and tax information and District Governing Board meeting dates and locations. Wills makes such few trips to the Verde Valley that more residents have seen jackalopes in the wild than their taxpayer-paid community college president.
Moriarty’s letter stated in part: “The Sedona City Council feels strongly that Yavapai College should provide more educational opportunities and an active physical presence in Sedona, commensurate with the financial investment being made by Sedona’s residents and businesses through their property tax assessments.”
Sedona provides $6.6 million of the college’s $43.7 million budget, yet the college only supports Osher Lifelong Learning Institute classes for a total of $46,000 a year plus another $170,000 via “in kind” services, which Sedona rightly feels is woefully insufficient.
Other Verde Valley towns and cities provide funding to the college, most of which winds up paying for improvements to the Prescott Campus as well as a new campus in the open rangeland of Prescott Valley, in the hopes that there may be students there someday. Meanwhile, students on this side of Mingus Mountain routinely have their services and classes cut or moved over the hill.
Verde Valley taxpayers are owed commensurate services, classes and facilities to the revenue we generate on par with other cites. A few percentage points here and there is understandable given capital improvements, but to gut funding to a collection of communities for years is unconscionable for a public institution.
The administrators of Yavapai College recently tried to entice the Governing Board to combine the Verde Valley Board Advisory Committee with a group run by Verde Valley Campus Dean James Perey. The move would have denuded the quasi-independent advocate for Verde Valley communities and placed it under the direct authority of the dean, who then would have set the agenda and choose members.
Under Wills, the culture of the college has become so myopic and unresponsive to the Verde Valley that secession from the college taxing district and the establishment of our own college is gaining ground. The other option might be removing the troublesome administrators from the top down, and build a new college culture responsive to all taxpayers equally.
