Citizen Knowlege of Six Million annual tax support of College beginning to make College respond to Sedona

First, you have to beccome aware that your taxing district is paying over $6 million a year to support Yavapai Community College.  Then, it pays to be vocal about being totally ignored.  (Recall the Wills’ Administration was on the way closing down the Sedona Center until citizens and the Mayor and Sedona Council expressed outrage at the idea.)  Finally, if you are persistent and loud, as evidenced by the renewed attention the Wills’ Administration is giving Sedona, you will start getting a little of that money back.

For example, the Administration claims it will invest more than $2 million to renovate the Sedona Center in the next year and consider putting in a culinary institute.  It has also announced it will send three entertainment programs during the academic year 2016-17 to Sedona.  Those programs were once provided only to Prescott citizens on the Prescott Campus.  Here are the three programs:

Windam Hill: Winter Solstice Concert, November 20, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. to be held at the Sedona Red Rock High School.  Admission is $40 per person.

Golden Dragon Acrobats, March 4, 2017 at 7:00 p.m. to be held at the Sedona Red Rock High School. Admission is $40 per person.

Ballet West II, April 29, 2017 at 7:00 p.m.  to be held at the Sedona Red Rock High School. Admission is $40 per person.

Two other programs will be offered in Camp Verde.  For more information about tickets, you may click here.

Exhibition is Saturday, May 14 at 1:30 p.m. at the Mary D. Fisher Theater, 2030 Highway 89A, Sedona, AZ. Free Admission

The ingredients of good film making, a sneak peek at scripts-in-the-making and a demonstration of the medium’s enormous historical and informative power will all be on display when the Yavapai College Film & Media Arts Program presents its FMA Student Film and Screenplay Exhibition, Saturday, May 14 at 1:30 p.m. at the Mary D. Fisher Theater, 2030 Highway 89A, Sedona, AZ. Admission is free.
 
The FMA Student Exhibition will begin by offering film buffs a chance to watch the script development process. Student screenwriters bring their recent pages out for an open “table read.” The event, which features actors performing selected student scenes aloud, lets instructor Jeff Wood’s FMA screenwriters hear and evaluate dialogue and storytelling as they hone their scripts for the camera.
 
The exhibition then moves to the other side of the camera, as Film & Media Arts Production students showcase their films from the previous year. FMA instructor Dave Lehleitner supervised production on a broad slate of styles, including comedies, dramas and films about personal discoveries and growth.
 
No filmmaking exhibition would be complete without a demonstration of the medium’s capacity to educate and inspire. That’s why YC’s FMA program will unveil two of its Service Learning documentary film projects:
 
·         A client-based video, for the Friends of the Verde River Greenway, takes a Native American perspective on the history and habitats of the Verde River, including the local nonprofit’s efforts to protect it.
 
·         Clips from a short historical documentary on Miss Lassie Lou Ahern, one of only 12 silent films stars living today.
 
The programs demonstrate the variety of training available through YC’s Film and Media Arts Program. Based at the College’s Verde Valley Campus ­ with classes taught in-person and on-line ­ the FMA program will offer certificate training in Film Production, Screenwriting and their newest program, Animation, this fall. Registration is now open at: www.yc.edu.
 
The exhibition is free, but only a limited number of seats are available. . Please contact Helen Stephenson, at [email protected], for tickets.

Adjacent property purchased by Nuclear Company — April fools joke

The Sedona Redrock News reported on April 1, 2016 that a nuclear power plant may well be in the works on the land adjacent the Yavapai Community College Sedona Center. It was an April fools joke.  But some folks probably took it pretty seriously.

The paper wrote that in January, the property adjacent the College’s Sedona Center  was sold to a private firm, Burns Holdings LLC, which has owned and operated a small nuclear power plant in Springfield, Ore., since December 1989. The plant would be jointly owned by Arizona Public Service, Burns Holdings, Salt River Project and Southern California Edison. Areva would own a minor portion for the first 10 years, before divvying up its share proportionally among the other stakeholders. “We feel the Sedona site is excellent for our plans,” Burns Holdings CEO and owner C. Montgomery Burns said. “Excellent.”

Construction would likely not begin until summer 2017, after the conclusion of a National Environmental Policy Act assessment, which is set to be conducted this summer.

To read the complete story in the Redrock News, please click here.  (A great April fools joke.)

Sets up four “teams” to consider future programs

It has been about three years now since the Wills’ administration striped the Sedona Center of all its for-credit classes and putting it on the auction block.  Having been forced to back-off the sale of the property by citizens, the Mayor and Council, it is responding to enormous public pressure to reopen it as a for-credit academic facility.

A first-step in that direction was announced by Dear James Perey January 20, 2016 when he explained to the Verde Valley Board Advisory Committee that four teams had been set up to examine various potential programming areas at the Center.  They are:  Culinary & Hospitality, Arts and Music, Community Education, and General Education.

Perey also told the Committee that Yavapai Community College Arts and Humanities Dean, Dr. Craig Ralston, is exploring future concerts and other events to be put on at existing venues in Sedona such as the Sedona Performing Arts Center.  Perey did not given any deadlines for the teams reporting back on their efforts.