On Tuesday, Nov. 29, Yavapai County Schools Superintendent Tim Carter released the names of five candidates to fill the Yavapai College Governing Board District seat recently vacated by Al Filardo.

Hal Alford, Mary Beth Barr, Connie Harris, Thomas Yager and former Sedona City Councilwoman Jessica Williamson.

The candidates have yet to be interviewed by a committee consisting of a Yavapai College student, a Yavapai College instructor, a taxpayer, a business person and a community member. The interviews take place in Cottonwood on Wednesday, Dec. 7.

While the committee will do its due diligence and select a candidate who will make the biggest impact and be the best advocate for District 3 and Yavapai College as a whole, I would like to offer a suggestion.

In looking at the biographies released by Carter, all five candidates seem like talented experts. Alford, Harris and Yager are all educational professionals with a list of administrative credits to their names. Barr has a lengthy history working as a marketer in the semiconductor industry of California. These are excellent skills that would be prized on a typical community college governing board.

But Yavapai College is not typical, and the board does not need an educational administrator, it needs a tenacious voice who will fight tooth and nail for college programs and funding to be returned to Sedona and Verde Valley taxpayers equal to what we pay.

We urge the committee to choose Williamson.

She recently departed the Sedona City Council and proved in her four years that she has the community’s best interest at heart.

For years, Yavapai College President Penny Wills has come before Verde Valley town and city councils pretending to treat our taxpayers equally to those in Prescott and Prescott Valley, like a taxpayer-funded government body is supposed to. However, Wills’ statements are a fiction and by merely looking at the bookkeeping we can see we’ve been shortchanged by millions and millions of dollars. Classes have been cut, programs have been moved to Prescott area campuses and the number of Verde Valley students who take Yavapai County classes on local campuses has dwindled.

In Wills’ many meetings before Sedona City Council, Williamson had zero trouble calling Wills out, over and over, and demanding Yavapai College give us our due. But Wills has no obligation to Verde Valley towns and cities, and if she chooses to kill programs and classes and make it more difficult for local students to get a community college education, no one can stop her but her own board.

Thus, we urge the committee to select Williamson to be one of Wills’ bosses. Williamson will hold Wills’ feet to the fire and provide Verde Valley students more classes and programs and equalize local students’ educational opportunities with local taxpayers’ contributions.

Williamson is also keenly aware that the Carter method of governmental policy, which the college practices, is flawed especially when a government is in crisis as it gives too much of the board’s jurisdictional power to hired administrators.

Williamson can also convey to the other Governing Board members why Verde Valley taxpayers are enraged at the college and work with them to alleviate our anger.

If the committee instead chooses Alford, Barr, Harris or Yager, we urge these four to fight hard for our taxpayers. Remember that Wills is your employee, you are not hers and if she continues to shortchange the Verde Valley, it’s time to find a new president.