Special interests apparently driving these additions rather than detailed analysis showing need; Are special interests money for limited support being used as a salve to discourage questions about data and need?  

Editor: Robert E. Oliphant

OPINION. It’s hard not to ask whether Yavapai Community College administrators have a double standard when it comes to producing hard data showing a need for a program or project:  One standard seems to exist for Prescott  and a second standard for the east side of Mingus Mountain. 

If there isn’t a double standard, how do you explain, for example,  the current drive on the Prescott Campus to recruit athletes, hire coaches, find offices and add  two new expensive  athletic programs to the already bloated athletic department without publicly producing independent data showing either an academic or community need for them?

These additions come at a time when the Administration has been constantly preaching to the public  at various meetings, especially those in the Sedona/Verde Valley area,  that it will only invest in projects and programs where it is demonstrated by production of reliable data showing an educational and/or community need.  The absence of data showing need, the administrators claim,  is why, for example, it is not planning to expand and enhance the nursing program in the Verde Valley.  The absence of need is why it did not build a 30,000 square foot Career and Technical Education Center on the Verde Campus; only a 10,000 square foot structure (versus 104,000 square foot CTE facility on the Prescott side).  And on and on and on.

This handy off-the-shelf rhetoric to show need is particularly useful  when issues about serious future development of housing to support the fledgling destination programs at the Sedona Center and Verde Campus come up.  The rhetoric was  particularly evident when the current crop of consultants hired by Prescott administrators explained the meager development plans for Sedona/Verde Valley over the next eight to ten-years, ignoring most, if not all of the input from the public at public meetings.

Along with the dual standard comes a salve typically used by Prescott to temporarily divert attention away from the need for data to support any project it wants such as a professional tennis complex (no tennis team), an indoor Olympic pool (no swim team), or a state-of-the-art auditorium that services only the Prescott area.  In each of these projects, Prescott special interests kicked in a little “taste” money to stimulate College and Governing Board approval. After that, the millions of dollars to complete and maintain these projects fell like a heavy financial yoke on the already burdened shoulders of County taxpayers. 

The salve  being used for the basketball programs is a rumor that special interests are going to give a financial “taste” to support the teams for three years.  A good whiff from the balm of the salve is usually all it takes to block rational thinking about the  50 years after that special interest money runs out when  the bill for the teams will be footed by County taxpayers.

For most, adding these teams to the already overstuffed athletic department baggage seems incredible given the relative tiny student enrollment at Yavapai Community College with at least five NJCAA teams already being heavily supported by taxpayers. 

But what the heck.  Isn’t it more important to add the cost of supporting basketball teams than it is to enhance the nursing program in the Verde Valley or expand the Career and Technical Education facilities?  How do you explain this kind of prioritization?

A double standard, I suggest, is all the explanation you need.`