Hope is new President will have the creative skills and courage to stand against the powerful Prescott based politicians and begin to seriously develop post-secondary education for the 70,000 residents of the east side of the County
Commentary
Wow! Have the west side Yavapai Community College politicians and presidents ever delivered to Prescott and Prescott Valley residents in the last two decades! On that side of Mingus Mountain, you’ll find a new tennis complex, swimming pool, therapy pool, 1,100 state-of-the-art dinner theater, renovated residence halls, renovation of all parking lots and every campus building, $20 million new CTE Campus, a huge athletic program, baseball field, softball field, leased soccer fields, major sized gymnasium, new 4-year program with ASU, a new Allied Health facility, new police training building, and much more. Meanwhile, east side residents have either slept through all this selfish development for one part of the County or have been marginalized during this period.
One can only wonder at the self-interest of the West County voting Bloc and the college presidents in terms of equitably sharing post-secondary community college resources throughout Yavapai County. According to College documents, since 2000, the College administrations, with Governing Board agreement (often voting 3-2 during this period) have pumped somewhere around $150 million dollars into west side community college development.
To illustrate, almost $60 million (maybe more) of the $69.5 million 2000 bond went to west County development. In addition to the bond money, the College spent other funds to build an $11 million heating plant, a $20 million dollar Career and Technical Education Campus at the Prescott Airport, and around $7 million to renovate two dormitories. If that doesn’t take your breath away, recall that in 2013 the Governing Board approved in concept spending around $100 million on the west side of the campus for additional construction and renovation. (That has been reduced to something around $65 million.)
Meanwhile, the College spent $18 million to replace the infrastructure, renovate and replace the 40 year-old falling down wooden buildings on the Verde Campus and about a half million for the poorly designed outdoor pavilion. After citizens put a halt to the idea of selling the Sedona Center, and after it was essentially closed for over two years, the College has invested around $5.5 million in renovation and a parking lot and street.
East side taxpayers, of course, paid for all of the renovation and construction on their side of Mingus Mountain. They also paid for a substantial portion of the multi-million dollar construction and renovation program on the west side of the County but receive little or no benefit from it.
Isn’t it time to seriously lay out a clear, comprehensive and understandable post-secondary five-year development program for the east side of the County? Isn’t it time to begin developing new programs and projects on the east side of the County using east side property taxes that now flow to Prescott?
If this is to happen, however, it will require the College’s new president to first recognize the plight of east side residents and then creatively initiate a major development program over here. If the new president continues in the mold of the former president and the West County voting Bloc continues its domination over the 70,000 residents on this side of Mingus Mountain, the east side of the County will eventually become a post-secondary wasteland.