Increase well above inflationary rate: McCasland “no,” Harris “yes”
The request from the Yavapai community college administration to increase tuition for the 2017-18 academic year by 5% went sailing through the governing board on Tuesday, February 14, 2017 by a 4-1 vote. Deb McCasland, who represents about one-half of the Verde Valley, voted “no.” Connie Harris, the newly appointed representative from the Verde Valley District #3 fell in line with the County’s west-side majority and voted “yes.” The vote by Harris was the first time in four years that the District #3 representative voted to approve the tuition increase. Ms. Harris did not utter a word during the discussion on the issue of increasing tuition.
Representative Deb McCasland was the only member of the Board who put hard questions to the College during its presentation. The College said it had to increase tuition because it didn’t want to increase the property tax rate. It also blamed the reduction in state aid that occurred about six years ago to justify the increase.
The vote was predicted by the blog earlier this past week. The community college administration has increased tuition every year in some form for more than a decade. Also as predicted by the Blog, there was no information regarding the actual need for such an increase. In other works, neither the budget nor anticipated expenses were discussed. Furthermore, there was no discussion about cutting back on the huge building/remodeling spree that continues in the District.
Tuition will always be increased under this approach because there is never a showing by the College of the actual new expenses that must be covered by an increase. The expenses are discussed from two to three months later.
The following video contains the nine-minute Board “discussion” about increasing tuition. (Apology for word “stater” rather than “state” in early slide.)