Property owners will see their tax bills increase after the Maricopa County Community College District governing board approved a hike Tuesday.
The 2 percent increase in the tax levy will mean an additional $2.31 in taxes per $100,000 of assessed property, starting July 1.

TUBA CITY – Harold Begay drives around Tuba City, on the Navajo Reservation, showing a visitor boarded-up buildings and ramshackle houses abandoned by the federal government and left to rot.
Begay, who is superintendent of Tuba City Unified School District, tells his visitor about high unemployment on the reservation and the sense of alienation in many young people who feel cut off from their culture and the traditional Arizona classroom. Like most Arizona districts on American Indian reservations, Tuba City’s is struggling.

With drastic declines in state funding, the Maricopa County Community College District’s tuition increase seemed nearly inevitable.
There was almost no opposition when the district governing board voted to raise tuition $5 per credit Tuesday night, a 6.5 percent increase.

A tuition increase for students of Maricopa Community Colleges would pay for a fundamental change to the district’s security culture, from an uneven patchwork of guards and aides at the many campuses to a full staff of certified, armed officers.
The community-college district’s chief of police is seeking $2 million to hire 23 additional officers, a 50 percent increase in staffing for the district’s Department of Public Safety.

As state funding dries up, the Maricopa County Community College District is seeking the second tuition and tax-levy increase in three years.
Administrators say they need the extra money to pay for additional full-time faculty, more police officers and programs to increase student success.