The Sedona-Oak Creek School District is delaying its discussions about whether to accept a letter of intent to sell Big Park Community School in the Village of Oak Creek to Yavapai County until July, a proposal that has seemingly come out of the blue.

Many SOCSD taxpayers, VOC residents and Sedona-area stakeholders are feeling blindsided by the county’s offer to purchase a major piece of property owned by local taxpayers — a county headquartered in Prescott that often does not have the Verde Valley’s best interests in mind.

The largest and most important tenant at the school is the Sedona Public Library in the VOC. Yavapai County District 3 Supervisor Donna Michaels recently voted to kill funding to the library, forcing the Sedona City Council to make up the difference and compensate for her failure to protect and serve her constituents.

For residents, the Sedona Public Library in the VOC is not merely a repository of books but a community gathering place and the best use of the Big Park campus since it closed to students.

It’s curious Michaels claims the county has no tax money and must cut $76,826 from the library 2.5 miles from her home, yet that same county can afford tens of millions of dollars to buy property that it has no firm plans to use.

At least when the Sedona City Council spent more than $20 million on the Sedona Cultural Park boondoggle, council promised one day to build affordable housing. Even though units won’t be built there until we’re building a colony on the moon, our as-yet-unborn grandkids have something to look forward to.

Since the proposed deal is a lease-to-purchase agreement that will run for 19 years, the library is likely safe for now. Who knew that bureaucratic delay could be beneficial?

We sincerely hope the SOCSD Governing Board includes caveats to protect the library and other tenants from Michaels’ clutches. They see the district’s facility as their last, best hope for a location, considering that the rental prices of commercial spaces mean that nonprofits would have no home.

It’s not entirely clear why Michaels wants this or why. The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office needs a substation in the VOC, but it would make more sense for SOCSD to rent space to YCSO directly rather than selling the entire campus. Such a station would not be manned 24/7, nor would it include holding cells. It would be a place for deputies to complete paperwork, meet with victims or witnesses, provide a place for residents to report crimes. Surely a room or two would be sufficient, rather than a campus for 750 children.

Michaels said the campus can be used for telehealth, which is seemingly a platform of her 2024 reelection: Running against Northern Arizona Healthcare. A telehealth facility would be better suited for one of the many vacant commercial buildings in the VOC or a purpose-built facility. That would be an easier than commandeering a school campus to convert into a makeshift hospital with no doctors on site.

It’s also not clear what the benefits of the deal would be for the county, which already has a major complex in Cottonwood for supervisors’ meetings and county services.

The Cottonwood area — also in Michaels’ District 3 — is the geographic and economic hub of the Verde Valley and home to most government workers who can’t afford a house in Sedona or the VOC and would have to commute. State government offices like the Motor Vehicle Division and Arizona Department of Economic Security are already there, where they are convenient for 12,100 residents of Camp Verde and 4,200 residents of Clarkdale.

At this point in the election cycle, Michaels has at best a 50/50 shot of winning reelection, and there’s no guarantee that if this deal goes through the next supervisor, who may be based in the population centers of Sedona or Cottonwood, would want a far-flung county office building that was part of a campaign scheme by a defeated opponent.

While there would be a short-term benefit to SOCSD, selling the campus in 19 years would permanently remove it from the district’s inventory. It’s entirely possible that within the next 20 years, demographics may shift and the district will find it needs a second campus if West Sedona School becomes significantly overcrowded.

School districts can only sell land to other governments. Counties lack this provision, meaning SOCSD could sell the land to the county and the county could later sell it to a private developer, for a hotel, resort or shopping center. An affordable housing complex is possible, but highly unlikely.

Given that the county would be the seller, a potential buyer would likely be fast-tracked for approval for whatever project they wanted to put in.

Unless the county’s Letter of Intent is extremely explicit and includes caveats to protect the VOC community far, far into the future, post-Michaels, SOCSD should instead rent out portions of the campus to the county as needed.

Unless the county, including those who will survive Michaels’ term, has a specific, detailed and epic grand vision for the school campus, it makes no sense for the district to sell it on a pipe dream that puts current tenants at risk, throws the future into doubt and leaves VOC and SOCSD taxpayers worse off than they are with merely having a shuttered campus rented out piecemeal.