After several weeks of back-and-forth negotiations, the Sedona-Oak Creek School District may soon have a new tenant in its Nancy J. Alexander Administration Center on Brewer Road: The city of Sedona.
By a unanimous vote on Tuesday, July 6, the district’s Governing Board approved a long-term lease with the city of Sedona for the two buildings at that location — which combined are nearly 13,000 square feet. The purpose is to move the city’s municipal court and its offices to that location.
The Sedona City Council is expected to approve the lease agreement on Tuesday, July 13.
“I am extremely excited about partnering with the city in renting the former district office facility on Brewer Road,” Superintendent Dennis Dearden said the following day. “We’ve valued our partnership over the years and this is another example of how working together benefits both the city and school district.”
Dearden said some of the reasons he feels this is a beneficial agreement for both parties is because the building is well-designed for the city’s needs, and the city will lighten some of the district’s groundskeeping needs by maintaining the landscaping rather than requiring the school district to continue providing that service.
“Agreements between governmental agencies amplify the public good when public monies allocated for property rent go back into local student education rather than to private landlords,” he said. “This is the real win-win, the same as with the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind leasing their regional educational space at the Big Park [Community School] campus.”
Dearden added that revenue from rentals largely goes to provide building maintenance throughout the district, including custodial and grounds wages when sufficient.
“This defrays the burden caused by the state of Arizona’s depletion of capital funding for schools,” he said. “This provides some relief to the district’s maintenance and operations budget, which is almost entirely classroom dollars and teacher salaries. The lease is long-term — offering security and stability to both the city and the district.”
The city will pay the district monthly installments of $12,750 for the first year of the lease and $13,500 per month for the second year. The lease itself is for 19 years.
However, in the event the city exercises the option to purchase the property in the future, the district agrees to credit the amount of $2,000 from each paid monthly payment toward the purchase price of the property.
The complex cannot be sold by the school district for another eight years. That’s because it is deed restricted from the original land grant that stated it could not be sold for 40 years.
In terms of why the city is interested in the property, City Manager Karen Osburn last week said, “There are regular conflicts between the use of the Council Chambers for public meetings and as the municipal courtroom. A new stand-alone court facility has been a project in the city’s capital improvement projects for a number of years.”
Osburn also noted that the SOCSD boardroom is already set up with a dais and a public seating area. There is an office, formerly the superintendent’s, with a separate entrance to the boardroom [courtroom] for the judge to enter from, which is a security requirement in courtrooms. In addition, there is a public entry counter for customer service and office spaces for court clerks.
The current tenant, Running River School, a Waldorf-inspired charter school with about 75 students, was paying around $3,700 a month to rent the lower building of about 3,000 square feet. The school was given a 60- day notice to vacate in late May.
