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College doubles construction investment in one month; move is nice but not necessary; third major campus on West side of County underway

Commentary

President Penelope Wills’ is following through on the lobbying pressure from the Prescott Valley (PV) politicians that she get going on developing the Allied Health Campus. As have others in the past, the PV folks have found Wills’ and the Community College an easy target for their lobby.
The following timeline illustrates how effective the local lobbying effort is at the College. As far as one can determine objectively, there is no great necessity for the moves or the construction the College is undertaking. It claims it is meeting all of its Allied Health objectives. The moves are nice but hardly essential to programming. But there is just too much easy money in the budget available to Wills’ and her administration to spend pretty much as they see fit.
1. Original Master Plan. In the College Master Plan, announced December, 2013 the College stated the following: “In addition to maintaining the two existing campuses, the Master Plan recommends a larger, consolidated facility in Prescott Valley to accommodate the new Nursing and Allied Health Center of Excellence. Consolidating the programs from Prescott and Verde Valley, while still offering pre-nursing classes at each campus, will allow the college to leverage the resources allocated to an advanced program. Moving the EMS/EMT program to the new campus will build on the synergies these programs have with the Nursing and Allied Health program further reinforcing the focus of the new campus.” (P. 52, Master Plan.)
The Master Plan also stated that: “The Phase 1 development will focus on the academic core with classrooms, laboratories and simulation labs to serve these focus programs and general education. Office and support space would be required as well as student services, student life, learning center and common space to create a functioning center.”
Phase 1 of the Plan was estimated to cost $30 million. (P. 82, Master Plan.) That was later raised to $45 million and at the May 2016 Governing Board meeting that figure had been raised to $50 million.
In 2015 the College announced it was moving the Prescott Valley Allied Health Campus development into the third phase and extending the time period to 14 years. That will turn out to be a little misleading.
2. January, 2016 an entire PV lobbying group appears at the Governing Board meeting. The lobbying was led by the CEO of the Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerce, who applauded the College for all of its work with Prescott Valley. She was followed by Mike R. Paredes, Executive Director of the Prescott Valley Economic Foundation. He expressed his gratitude and appreciation to the College and its work with his Foundation. Prescott Valley mayor Harvey Skoog poured gallons of political syrup on the Governing Board in a two minute speech. He began by congratulating the Board on the “super job [it] was doing” and declaring that “the best community college in the state is Yavapai College.”
Skoog slipped in a comment about the Allied Health Center stating that he felt like “we’re making good progress in that direction.” (He must know more about the project than the Board or County citizens to be able to make this statement.) In closing he reiterated how much he appreciated the Governing Board’s “good work.”
Skoog was followed by Larry Tarkowski as the cleanup hitter on the local lobby effort. He reminded the Board that the Prescott Valley was the largest community, was growing younger, and was the fastest growing community in Yavapai County.
He also said that the Board should make good use of the ten-year-plan and “move heaven and earth to accelerate” the plan. “We really hope you will move heaven and earth to move forward with your Master Plan that does have an Allied Health element growing here in Prescott Valley,” he said.
3. February, 2016 tentative budget responds to lobby. In the February, 2016 tentative budget (PowerPoint presentation) the Wills’ administration responded to the PV lobby. It included in the budget the renovation and expansion of the PV Center. It decided to keep YC facility adjacent to Bradshaw High School and consolidate the Yavapai College and Mountain Institute Joint Technical Education Allied Health program there.
4. Initial investment. In the February, 2016 tentative budget the College announced it was going to invest $1.5 million in the PV project in 2016-17 and $225,000 in 2017-18 (total $1.725 million).
5. No change in investment. In the April, 2016 draft budget those tentative figures remained.
6. Blindsiding the public. In the final budget rolled out in May, 2016, which was shown on PowerPoint slides with copies not provided to the public either before the meeting as a part of the College agenda or during it, the College doubled its investment in PV. It recommended and received Governing Board approval to spend $2 million in 2016-17 and another 2 million in 2017-18 (total $4 million). No one on the Board asked why the figure had suddenly doubled in one month. I suspect everyone knew why.
7. $14 million on the shelf. The College also announced at the May meeting that it may be putting an additional $14 million into possible future construction but not right now. It appears at this point that the $50 million dollar PV Campus is no longer on the table. But as one can see, the PV lobby is strong and the College is willing to respond to it quickly. Furthermore, mystery surrounds what NAU may do as a part of this scheme.

Hang on to your pocketbooks property taxpayers of Yavapai County.