During its monthly meeting on Thursday, Oct. 9, the Big Park Regional Coordinating Council nonprofit group invited Sedona-Oak Creek School District Superintendent Tom Swaninger, PhD, to give an update on the sale of the Big Park Community School property.
The school was shuttered by the SOCSD Governing Board in 2018. Since then, efforts to sell the land have been ongoing following the approval by voters in November to allow the property to be sold. The school district voted earlier this year to find a broker to handle the details of the sale.
“In that selection we had — I feel very fortunate — we had received six proposals, six highly qualified brokers,” Swaninger said. “We had a full committee of different stakeholders analyzing all of the proposals separately, going through the rubric and scoring each one separately, and then coming together and gaining consensus.”
The broker, between the internal stakeholder committee, scored Land Advisors Organization an 188.5 out of a possible 200. Land Advisors Organization is a commercial real estate agency based out of Scottsdale.
“So we feel like we’re in good hands,” Swaninger said during meeting. “Actually our first meeting with this organization is later today, so we haven’t even really been able to sit down with them and talk over the specifics of what the marketing would look like and what that process would look like, but we are getting up and running with that.”
On Nov. 5, 2024, an overwhelming majority of voters decided they would allow the district to sell the property, a requirement under state law. It was appraised at $9.5 million in April, which takes into account $300,000 of deferred roof maintenance. The most recent update on the property, which was the decision to find brokers, was approved July 1.
“At some point we would like to come back out to the Big Park property and kind of give an update when we have more information,” Swaninger said. “But I don’t really have much more than that.”
YCSO
Also invited to speak at the meeting was Steve Brazell, Yavapai County Sheriff Office’s public affairs coordinator, who announced the implementation of a new emergency alert system going into effect Monday, Oct. 13.
Over the past few years, there’ve been several different emergency alert systems throughout the state, including Yavapai County, Brazell said.
“This is going to be, we hope, a permanent change,” Brazell said. “Because the Arizona legislature decided that they wanted as many agencies in the state — whether it’s law enforcement or any other first responders, emergency, etc, — to be on the same system, because there were just too many different systems, and people got confused. So they funded agencies to join smart911, or RAVE, and that is a pretty good inspiration to agencies to join that, because, obviously, the state is paying the bill.”
To sign up for the new alert system, text alertYAVAPAI to 78015 or go to smart911.com.
“I might want to add that the Genasys Zone Program is still in effect,” he said. “Rather than having alerts go out by ZIP code or by area or whatever — it was too large of an area. So the county divided the entire county into zones, which are a lot more specific.”
The zones are available to see online at protect.genasys.com.
