The Big Park Regional Coordinating Council nonprofit group held a Zoom meeting on Thursday, June 22, to discuss a proposed rent-to-purchase agreement for the Big Park Community School campus between the Sedona-Oak Creek School District and Yavapai County.

Residents’ desire for answers as to how the agreement would affect the area came up against the inability of SOCSD and Yavapai County District 3 Supervisor Donna Michaels to provide those answers because the lease agreement has not yet been finalized.

“Our attorneys from the school district and the county have not gotten together and worked on developing a lease agreement,” SOCSD Governing Board President Randy Hawley said. “We’re not going to do anything until that is developed. So it’s hard for us to say we can answer all these questions. We don’t have the answers yet because we don’t have a lease.”

The meeting was broadcast from Michaels’ office. Michaels hosted Hawley and BPRCC President John Wichert. The meeting was being held in response to a Friday, June 16, announcement by the BPRCC that it had only been made aware of Michaels’ proposed lease following her presentation about the matter to the SOCSD board on June 13.

The SOCSD board originally planned to vote on the next steps in the proposal on Friday, June 23. “This seems to be the first our community has heard of this plan and we feel that the community should know more about the plan, but especially about how it would be administered,” a BPRCC press release announced on June 16.

Wichert noted that the community has heard interesting ideas about how the facility can be used by organizations such as Spectrum Telehealth and Verde Valley Caregivers to provide telehealth care options to VOC residents.

“Unfortunately, we’ve had a lack of information,” Wichert said. “It depends on what articles people read and what forums people go to. But many people expressed concern over a lack of information regarding what the proposal has been for the SOCSD to lease the Big Park school to Yavapai County to serve these purposes and to develop that vision that Dr. Michaels expressed.” 

Michaels referred to her presentations on the matter as “usefully vague.”

“Because when you’re starting something, you first want to make sure you have anchors in the project,” Michaels said, adding that the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office, Spectrum Telehealth and Verde Valley Caregivers have all expressed interest in the property.

SOCSD was $1.3 million in debt when the board closed BPCS five years ago. Since then, the district has built up an operational cash reserve of $331,000.

“We use the same process for leasing to the county, the exact same process,” Hawley said. “Up until now. Nobody has expressed any concerns about how we’re doing it, not knowing anything about what’s going on and all of a sudden we had this uproar about ‘We don’t know this.’” 

Hawley stressed in his opening comments that the Sedona Public Library in the Village, which currently leases the property from SOCSD, is in no danger of being closed and that there have been further talks about expanding its services, and that no one who currently rents on the property will be evicted as a result of a lease to the county.

Later in the meeting, Hawley also mentioned that the school board has been discussing a county lease since its September board meeting.

These reassurances from SOCSD have recently been communicated to one of the tenants, a satellite campus of Christian Faith Fellowship, according to its pastor, Dave Dahlberg.

Resident Carolyn Fisher mentioned to Michaels during the Thursday meeting that Michaels had attended the BPRCC regular meeting on Thursday, June 8, prior to her SOCSD presentation without ever mentioning the lease.

Fisher also asked Michaels who would manage the property under a lease. Michaels said it should be managed within the Verde Valley but did not suggest by whom. Michaels also said that it was her view that it wasn’t her place to mention it during the June 8 meeting.

“I’ve never had anyone indicate to me either in my office or at a public forum that I’m withholding any kind of information, Michaels said. “That is smacking at a negative comment to my integrity and I can tell you that you need not worry when I know something, I share it. But I won’t speculate in the marketplace and cause exactly what is happening now.”

“I won’t approve anything that doesn’t provide some sort of monitoring of how it’s being run, who is being allowed to be on there,” Hawley said.

The topic of local control came up later in the meeting

“There’s no intent for [the property] to become Prescott-centric,” Michaels said. “They didn’t know about this idea. They didn’t know about the Big Park location and, frankly, they’ve not approved it yet. There’s all of that to do. I’m advocating exactly for … local control and you do that through a process of voting people in there to go to advocate for that, whether it’s on a school board or county supervisor, or any other number of organizations. We have to have a voice.”

Wichert suggested that Michaels and Hawley sit in on future BPRCC meetings as a measure to improve communication.

YCSO

Hawley clarified that the SOCSD is working to offer administrative space to the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office under a separate agreement than the one Michaels is proposing. That agreement will require roof repairs to be completed  before a lease can be final- ized; the repairs will be paid  for by the county and will be deducted from the final cost of the lease.

A resident expressed concern over the effects of noise from YCSO operations on Oak Creek Country Club Estates. Michaels stated that traffic studies would be completed and that YCSO wants to install administrative offices without jail rooms at the site.

Library

Yavapai County Librarian Corey Christians also took a few moments to stress there are no plans to close the Sedona Public Library branch on the property and to discuss supplemental services that his district sees as potentially filling the space, rather than having “the same library 100 feet away from” SPL.

“We could provide supplementary services to what the library’s already offering there,” Christians said. “Specifically a maker space with 3D printing, a STEM lab, which the library there currently does not have and which would also work well with business incubation and doing prototyping for certain tech companies that want to start a business there and they need a place to go and produce the stuff they need as an example to help  get investors. That will also pair nicely with the Prescott Center for the Future if they are going to be our neighbor as well.”

Christians added that he and Michaels have had discussions with the Verde Valley Caregivers Coalition about offering telemedicine  at the campus and that he will be having discussions with the University of Arizona and the state library about funding the idea. 

Michaels also mentioned in conjunction with the discussion that she will be seeking reelection next year.