After Yavapai College Board District 3 Representative Toby Payne brought up concerns in May 2025 of the budget being unfair toward taxpayers on this side of Mingus Mountain, including the areas around the Verde Valley campus in Clarkdale and the Sedona Center, college President Lisa Rhine, Ph.D., suggested Payne look at past years’ numbers.
When he did, he saw the trend began long before he took office about three years ago.
Verde Valley Shortchanged
The college’s capital improvements budget for Fiscal Year 2026, which was approved 3-2 in May with Payne and District 1 Rep. William Kiel dissenting, was $5.7 million for the west side of the mountain, which includes the main campus in Prescott and only $372,000 for the east side, about 6.16%, all of which went to theVerde Valley campus. The Sedona Center hasn’t seen any capital improvements since 2018.
While no agendas for the 2026 Yavapai College Board meetings have been posted online, the board is scheduled to hold a budget workshop on Tuesday, Feb. 24, from 9 to 4 p.m. over Zoom. The board still refuses to meet in person. The livestream link is on the Governing Board page on the college’s website atyc.edu/v6/district-governing-board.
The 2025 budget included about $18.4 million for the west side and $523,700 for the Verde Valley campus, or 2.77%.
The 2024 and 2023 budgets had 25% and 0% of the capital improvement budget, respectively.
For the past five years, the average portion of the capital improvement budget taken up by the east side is 12.3%.
In the 2019-2020 budget, the college built the Center for Learning and Innovation, which brought up the total capital improvement budget for the east side to $5.3 million, which was almost 85% of that year’s budget. Including that outlier, the average over the past 10 years for the east side overall has been 20.8%. Omitting that year, the average has been about 14.4%.
The Verde Valley provides about a third of the college’s total budget.
Culinary Program
At the time of the May board meeting for this year’s budget, the final semester of the Culinary Program at the Sedona Center concluded.
“I learned of the Culinary Program being canceled through my constituents weeks before the press release from the college,” Payne said May 27 following a budget workshop. “I know the budget must address the needs of the entire county. This budget does not. I must take a stand for my district.”
The maintenance budget has similar discrepancies.
The Sedona Center received $500,000 worth of Stucco replacements in fiscal year 2025 and $30,000 refrigeration unit maintenance in fiscal year 2024. Before that, its last maintenance budget was in 2017.
In 2023-2024, the Verde Valley Campus received about $1.1 million for planned maintenance, and this year received about $60,000. Other than those two years, it hasn’t received anything since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Master Plan
The 2022 facilities master plan for the college lists as goals, recommending building 60 beds at the Verde Valley Campus as one of its first top priority projects.
Since then, there has been a 10-spot trailer park installed near the campus, which is only about half full this semester.
Comparatively, the college increased housing at the Prescott campus, which it said could support 74, and has since added the Prescott Pines project, buying a 41-acre Prescott Pines camp in May 2024 for $5 million, making improvements worth an estimated $6 million and which cost the college about $1.6 million this year in capital improvements.
“The 42-acre property has space for 110 students plus 12 RV sites with full hookups, and 12 single-family homes for employees,” a 2024 college press release stated. “It offers many existing amenities, with 66 buildings total on the property, including two cafeterias and an activity center, among others.”
In April, the college’s chief operating officer, Clint Ewell, Ph.D., said plans were in the works to build a 16-bed facility at the Verde Valley campus, but the supplier’s design did not meet code for their intended opening date of fall 2025. He said his hopes were its availability to open in 2026 for students.
The project, which is combined in the budget with housing projects at the Chino Valley Center, cost a total of $1.14 million for this fiscal year.
During the November board meeting, Ewell said the college’s budget is made up of 48% property taxes, another 12% is tuition and fees, 9% and 2% are federal and state government funds respectively, and 14% each from the fund balance and the “other” category.
While no breakdown of the tax funds were released to the public, Ewell has estimated at past board meetings — after questions from Payne and Kiel — that about one third of the tax funds come from the east side of the mountain.
No Public In-Person Meetings
The board hasn’t met in the Verde Valley or Sedona in over a year and voted to continue virtual meetings for the foreseeable future in October after District 2 Rep. and Chairwoman Deb McCasland decided to make all meetings virtual in February, without board discussion or vote.
It hasn’t met in person at all since Jan. 28, 2025, or held a call to the public since October 2024.
If interested in voicing an opinion, Payne, the District 3 representative, said he’s happy to take emails from constituents at toby.payne@yc.edu. Contact McCasland at deb.mccasland@yc.edu.
Budget Overspent
Like other parts of the college, the board has its own cutout of the overall budget.
“As you know from previous discussions about the Board Budget — which is a portion of the college’s budget — we are on track to overspend this fiscal year due to increased legal fees and other costs,” board Secretary Kimberly Whitman wrote in an email to the board on Dec. 17. She was speaking about the National Legislative Summit for the Association of Community College Trustees, scheduled for Sunday to Wednesday, Feb. 8 to 11 in Washington D.C.
“McCasland has therefore determined that the college will not cover the costs for board members to attend this February summit,” she wrote. “As you know, the college did cover the cost of board members’ attendance at the ACCT Leadership Congress in October. If you want to attend the ACCT National Legislative Summit, you will have to cover all costs of attendance, including travel; there will be no reimbursement from the college.”
Payne said he had wanted to attend, but wouldn’t be able to without the college’s financial support. He said board members Steve Bracety, Patrick Kuykendall and McCasland have all attended in previous years — at the college’s expense.
When he asked who had signed up to attend this year, Whitman told him she’s “not able to disclose information related to Chair McCasland or President Rhine’s travel to other board members.”
Whitman did not cite a legal reason to withhold information from other board members or the public about elected officials traveling to represent the college.
