The Sedona-Oak Creek School Governing Board may be voting in July to move forward with exploring a proposed lease of the Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek to Yavapai County.
The rent-to-purchase agreement may be finalized at a future board meeting that SOCSD Governing Board President Randy Hawley said he would like to see in the next few months.
County Letter of Intent
The proposal for the county to lease the school originated with District 3 Supervisor Donna Michaels, who represents Sedona, the Village of Oak Creek, Cottonwood, Clarkdale, Jerome and parts of Cornville.
“We’ve had six or seven discussions with her,” Hawley said. “She’s presented before, we’ve talked with her about our concerns, and she talked to us about what she’d liked to see.”
Hawley said he would like to lease the building because it is still incurring maintenance costs while it remains vacant. The lease agreement is currently being drafted, and Hawley hopes that it will be presented to the school board in the next few weeks.
The county’s letter of intent is nonbinding and the letter itself only serves as a starting point for negotiations. Outgoing superintendent Dennis Dearden said that SOCSD has not drafted its own letter of intent but will do so if the board votes to continue with the lease. The letter of intent proposes a lease for up to 19 years at a rental rate of $1.25 per square foot. The rent paid would be applicable to the closing cost of a possible purchase under a lease-purchase agreement.
Dearden said the property is in need of appraisal. 19-Year Lease Yavapai County’s letter offered to pay for all initial repairs needed to occupy the property; the cost of any subsequent repairs will be credited against the rent.
“There are roof issues [on the property],” Hawley said. “There’s leaking in some of the ceilings and some classrooms. The district does not have the money to fix all that [because] it’s very expensive. So part of the agreement is that the county … at their cost [will] repair all the leaks.”
The county’s letter also discussed the possibility of using Building C on the campus as affordable housing for county employees. SOCSD was planning to convert the building to condos for teacher and staff.
“I don’t know what organizations for sure [Michaels] wants to put in there,” Hawley said. “We need to have some language in [the agreement] that any of the current organizations that are leasing [there], that we will honor those for as long as they want to stay. We’re not going to lease to any organization that’s going to be a competitor to what’s in there already … Ultimately, we’re still the owners of the building, and we have the final say on what goes in there.”
Current Tenants
Two organizations currently use the property: A satellite campus of Christian Faith Fellowship, based out of Tucson, and the Sedona Public Library in the Village.
The church’s pastor, Dave Dahlberg, said on June 19 that no representatives from Yavapai County or SOCSD had been in contact with him about the proposed lease and that parishioners have been greatly confused by how it might affect them. However, SOCSD has since been in communication with Dahlberg and offered the district’s reassurance on their current lease.
Officials from SPL met with County Librarian Corey Christians in January, when Christians mentioned that the county was looking at telemedicine and a possible collaborative workspace as potential uses for the property. Christians asked SPL staff if they wished to continue to operate in the VOC, and staff replied that they were committed to remaining in the VOC.
This was followed by a February meeting between SPL Director Judy Poe and Michaels, during which Michaels stated that she would like to add “additional library services” to the property.
What she meant was not clear to SPL officials, as there has been no communication between the library and Supervisor Michaels since February. “I do not know what the impact on Sedona Public Library in the Village would be,” Poe said.
Michaels Cuts Library Funds
At a meeting on June 13, the Sedona City Council voted to give the Sedona Public Library $865,200, which included the city’s normal contribution as well as funds to offset the cuts to the library that Michaels approved.
“The way that Yavapai County funds libraries is their taxing district,” SPL Director Judy Poe explained to the Sedona council. “They collect taxes from every property in Yavapai County. Those taxes are then given to the county librarian, and he decides how they are distributed for fiscal year 2023. Sedona residents within the city limits paid $407,577.92 toward their library tax. They are receiving back $169,453, or 41.5%.”
“Our county supervisor [Michaels] did not advocate for our residents in the face of these cuts,” Sedona Councilwoman Kathy Kinsella said at that meeting.
“There’s only so much advocating that you can do when there’s no money,” Michaels later stated when reached for comment. “Our library district has seen inflationary and cost-of-living increases totaling over a half million in the past two years.”
Yavapai County officials said inflation concerns were why an increase in the tax levy to avoid the library cuts was not considered.
The county cut funding to these libraries in the Verde Valley:
Sedona Public Library: $76,826
Cottonwood Public Library: $47,065
Camp Verde Community Library: $25,570
Clarkdale Public Library: $11,538
Jerome Public Library:$7,133
The unincorporated areas of the county were spared the cuts because often the library is the only civic service available in those areas,” Christians said.
Other Uses
“I and my director of Yavapai County Free Library District Corey Christians would like to see expanded services as it relates to technology,” Michaels said. “There’s the books side of the library and then there’s the offerings, such as tele-health.”
Michaels said she sees a partnership with the Verde Valley Caregivers Coalition for telehealth at the site as one potential use of the space. The library is not mentioned in the letter of intent.
Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office
The Yavapai County Sheriff ’s Office has expressed interest in setting up a substation at the property, and Michaels also referred to the campus as a potential venue for technical search and rescue demonstrations by YCSO.
“We definitely need a substation out in that area,” YCSO spokeswoman Kristin Greene said. “We haven’t had one for a while. That’s a very large and important area. It was important for us to have a substation out there and a[permanent] presence rather than transient patrolling.”
YCSO would have to wait for the lease approval and roof repairs to be completed before it could move into the Big Park campus from its current location at Castle Rock off State Route 179.
“We don’t have a specific day of when we’re going to be able to move in,” Greene said.
There is no indication that SPL will be negatively affected by a county lease, but school board officials have been unable to communicate with them about the details of proposed changes to the property because the county has refrained from discussing its plans with them.
“We will honor their lease for as long as they want it,” Hawley said. “We’re not kicking anybody out, we’re not making any changes to those leases. We can’t really talk specifics about what’s going in there because we don’t know.”
Lack of Communication
The meeting announcement followed a statement by the Big Park Regional Coordinating Council, a Village of Oak Creek nonprofit, several days earlier that Michaels’ presentation to SOCSD was the first time its members were made aware of the proposed lease.
BPRCC President John Wichert did not respond to multiple interview requests.
“I don’t understand how they cannot know,” Hawley said. “I’ve talked with a couple of the Big Park members. I know they’d been informed months ago that we were going to lease this building. The whole issue is there’s a few people upset they think that the county’s going to replace the library.”
Michaels was also at a loss to respond to BPRCC’s statement, saying she had discussed the matter with an ex-president of BPRCC, Camille Cox, who no longer has a role with the nonprofit, along with other VOC residents.
Hawley said that the county’s communication with residents about the agreement has not been poor and said that this is the same process SOCSD has used in prior land negotiations, as in the case of the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind and the library, adding that the issue has been unsubstantiated rumors of closing of the VOC library.
“I can only come to the community at large at this stage or this moment of the evolution of a potential relationship,” Michaels said. “I don’t want any readers to think that this is a done deal. This is an evolutionary process in partnership with many, and that will continue.”
