This week, the Sedona-Oak Creek School District and the Sedona Public Library settled on a lease agreement allowing the library’s Village of Oak Creek branch to operate in the defunct campus of Big Park Community School, which the district shuttered due to low enrollment in 2018.
Since then, SOCSD has leased space in the school to various nonprofits and other partners, including the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, keeping the building in some sort of use and adding revenue to the district’s coffers.
We commend these two institutions — one government, one private nonprofit — for coming to terms on an agreement that benefits both taxpayers and library users.
This should serve as an example for how other institutions and governments work together. Intergovernmental agreements between the city of Sedona and the SOCSD put a uniformed police officer on campus to deal with student issues and school safety. Similar agreements between law enforcement and fire agencies help agencies in protecting our residents and visitors during a crisis.
Conversely, other institutions that should work together are combative and dysfunctional.
State and federal governments often butt heads when states, acting as what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called “laboratories of democracy” in 1932, fall into conflict with national priorities set by Congress, the president or court rulings.
In Arizona, towns, cities and rural have generally operated as locally-controlled and managed governments unhindered by the Arizona State Legislature and the governor so long as they follow state law, but over the last decade, zealous legislators and feckless governors have used legislative power rather than the courts and adjudication to punish not just one offending city but all 91 in the state.
Locally, the Sedona Fire District and the Sedona- Oak Creek Airport Authority have recently been at odds over the long-standing SFD communications tower on Airport Mesa.
The SOCAA is a quasi-government authority operating on behalf of Yavapai County to manage the Sedona Airport.
For decades, the county has allowed SFD to operate the communications tower on the airport, which SFD then subleases to various telecommunications vendors. In exchange, SFD offers emergency response and fire protection to the county at the airport for no cost. This includes responding to plane crashes and accidents, of which there are several a year due to small, light planes landing at the airport’s location atop a windy mesa.
The SOCAA, ostensibly acting on the county’s behalf — and, by extension, county taxpayers — does little more than manage the land upon which the tower stands.
The SOCAA, now hurting for cash to wage a lawsuit against a tour company that only wants to rent space from the SOCAA and give it rent money, has decided to charge SFD thousands of dollars a month for the privilege of using the county’s land for its tower.
For years, the frivolous and doomed lawsuit has consumed more of the airport’s funding than most other individual operations.
And now the Federal Aviation Administration has cut off all federal funding until the SOCAA submits a plan to come into compliance with three of 39 grant assurances required for airports receiving federal funds. The FAA recently determined the airport had violated assurances in past grant agreements, and covenants in the “United States Government Deed of Conveyance” document that transferred ownership of the airport land from the U.S. government to the county.
The loss of funding means the SOCAA won’t be able to dump gobs of money on the doorstep of its lawyer to fight the tour company’s desire to lawfully do business in Sedona.
It would behoove the SOCAA to settle the failed lawsuit, restore its funding and realize it must work with other governments, nonprofits, vendors and partners to benefit everyone rather that act as an independent fiefdom from its perch on high.
It’s board should look to the Sedona library and school district for guidance on how to be a good neighbor and benefit the public at large.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
