Has it become the Rodney Dangerfield of Yavapai Community College? 

Poor building “L.” Has it become the Rodney Dangerfield of Yavapai Community College? Rodney once joked:  “I get no respect at all – When I was a kid, I lost my parents at the beach. I asked a lifeguard to help me find them. He said, `I don’t know kid, there are so many places they could hide'”. 

The year 2000: It seems that nobody has respect for Building “L”  and the future of Building “L” is hiding.  Recall that in 2000 County voters in approved a $69.5 million bond to improve community College facilities in the district.  Among those improvements was construction of Building “L” as a Career and Technical Education (CTE) building on the Verde campus in Clarkdale.  Voters approved spending about $1.3 million of their tax money the Federal Conference Department Workforce Development Center added another $1.2 million. 

Eighteen years ago plan. Eighteen years ago the College plan was to aggressively develop a CTE facility on the Clarkdale Campus to serve at least three counties in northern Arizona.  At the time the College staff said that “[T]he (Center) will provide much-needed educational space and resources to further develop job training programs to benefit residents of northern Arizona.” It was intended to provide an opportunity for northern Arizona residents to gain specific work related skills that would allow them to seek immediate employment or increase their level of income in their current positions.

The year 2004: By 2004 the building “L”was completed and  the College launched an aggressive effort at developing the CTE  program. The staff explained that “the basic vision was to not only provide livable wages for the jobs currently available in Northern Arizona but also to identify new opportunities, such as higher technology, to upgrade job-skills training.” Staff also said that the CTE program was intended to improve skills training for the jobs that are already here. “We’re going to get more involved in the building and construction trades.”

According to staff, “the bottom line of the project is to help rural Arizonans find good jobs.”

But things did not go well for the development of the program.  Hardly had it got off the ground when the Prescott dominated Governing Board began exploring creation of a sophisticated and forward-looking CTE campus for the west side of the County. 

The year 2007:  With little serious consultation with the east County residents, the College Governing Board purchased the huge 105,000 square-foot facility at the Prescott airport. It  opened a CTE campus that serves almost exclusively residents and high school students on that side of Mingus mountain.

Unfortunately, the vision of a major CTE program on the East side of the County began to fade as soon as the new CTE campus on the west side of the County was opened.  Classes on the East side of the County were closed.  Over the past twenty years, the college has invested in taxes, grants and contributions something around $20 million in the Prescott CTE campus.  Meanwhile, it has essentially ignored the problems of access to sophisticated, advanced CTE training on the East side of the County. 

The years 2007-08: In 2007 and 2008 the College indicated it had expanded the nursing facilities in Building “L” by spending about $1.4 million on renovation during a two-year fiscal time period (using College expenditure reports).

The year 2013:  In December 2013 the College announced its ten-year Master Development Plan and said the nursing program was leaving building “L” and labs for agricultural classes were going to be installed. Here is what the College wrote in its Master Plan:  “Building L currently houses the Nursing program. As the program migrates to the Prescott Valley campus, the master plan recommends renovating this building for use by the agriculture programs relocating from the Chino center. As laboratories already exist in Building L, the addition of the agricultural classes will virtually recreate the Chino Valley Center’s main building.” Page 67 2014 Master Plan.  https://masterplan.yc.edu/files/2014/01/Final-Report-RPT-2014-0218-WEB_UPDATED.pdf.

“Following construction of the new center (sic), the existing Prescott Valley programs and the Nursing and Allied Health programs from Prescott and Verde Valley would migrate to the new location. This, in turn, would free up space on the Prescott campus for NARTA/AJS to move to the second floor of Building 2 and for agriculture to move from Chino to Verde Valley.”   Page 89 2014 Master Plan. https://masterplan.yc.edu/files/2014/01/Final-Report-RPT-2014-0218-WEB_UPDATED.pdf

Interim 2013-17: Nursing program apparently has not moved from the east side of the County.  The idea of closing and selling the Chino Valley campus has apparently been tabled.

March 2, 2017.   On March 2, 2017 the Community College Governing Board received an updated Master Plan report from Vice President Clint Ewell stating that Building “L” would undergo another renovation for Career and Technical Education facilities somewhat similar to some of those at the Prescott airport.  That report as written by the College read:  “Verde Valley: Building L has now been scheduled for a major renovation to enhance its ability to offer Career Technical Education (CTE) programming. We plan to do this work in FY19, giving VACTE a year to conduct their planning and to provide input to YC. Verde Valley Campus will continue to offer Nursing, as well as other CTE programming such as Viticulture, Enology, and Film & Media Arts. This represents an increase of roughly $3.8M.”  https://www.yc.edu/v5content/district-governing-board/sub/2017/03/agenda_full.pdf

November 28, 2017 Sedona City Council meeting:  Verde Campus Executive Dean James Perey told the Sedona City Council that Building “L” would most likely be renovated for nursing.

January 10, 2019: A hand-picked group (invitation only) is being assembled by the Community College to once again discuss the future of Building “L.”