In February 2014, I wrote an editorial “Yavapai College’s 10-year plan aims to rob Verde Valley” based on the college’s 10-year plan to siphon Sedona and Verde Valley tax revenue and pour more than 95 percent of its funding into services and programs in Prescott and Prescott Valley.
Oh, how far Yavapai College has come in a year — administrators have changed their desk calendars from 2014 to 2015 and … well that’s pretty much it. The 10-year plan still aims to dump $103 million in capital improvements into the far side of Mingus Mountain while this side of the mountain gets a paltry $2 million over the next 10 years. Verde Valley taxpayers already contribute 17 percent of the college’s funds, but get less than 2 percent back in programs.
Now college officials have added insult to injury: They’re raising tuition and fees on students by 4 percent.
To enroll at Yavapai College will now entail a stiffer cost per hour as well as the added cost of driving 90 minutes to Prescott or Prescott Valley to attend classes that could be available at the Verde Valley Campus in Clarkdale, at a virtually empty Sedona campus or at a Camp Verde campus that was never built.
Students aren’t the only people the college wants to take money from while offering nothing in return: College officials plan to ask taxpayers for a 2 percent property tax increase beginning Wednesday, July 1. Yes, dear readers, the college wants you to pay more for programs and buildings you, your neighbors, your friends and children will only benefit from if they move to the Prescott side of the mountain. Unlike other community colleges in Arizona, Yavapai College does not include “community” in its official name — perhaps the omission is more intentional than it would seem.
College officials have done an excellent job teaching Sedona and Verde Valley residents Piracy 101 and because it’s a two-year school, some taxpayers have almost earned an associate degree.
Meanwhile, college officials have proven an outright failure to listen to the needs and desires of taxpayers while shunting all their funds into Prescott and Prescott Valley campuses.
It’s hard to assume Yavapai College officials really have our needs in mind when even the Verde Valley Campus dean’s home address is in Chino Valley, according to Yavapai County property records. How can the dean claim to fight for the needs of his local students, teachers and neighbors when he doesn’t live on this side of the mountain and more than an hour away from the campus he is supposed to administrate?
Yavapai College formed a Verde Valley advisory com-mittee which voices our concerns to the Governing Board. Yes, the board listens to the committee, but has not changed the 10-year plan. The college agreed to a land swap at the Sedona Center for Arts and Technology, giving the college access to the facility and preventing the impetus to sell the building outright. Osher Lifelong Learning Institute classes are held at the site, but there is no other program planned for the facility.
Sedona’s award-winning Zaki Gordon Institute for Independent Filmmaking fled for greener pastures at a four-year university in 2011 and the replacement Sedona Film School lasted only a short while before Yavapai College officials enacted the film scene from “Old Yeller” on the program in 2013.
College officials made motions to improve relations with the advisory board, but if it does not scrap the 10-year plan and start over to put at minimum 17 percent of capital improvements into our side of Mingus Mountain, our taxpayers and local elected officials should fight the college for every dollar and resist this unfair, unbalanced and unrepresentative course of action.
