MARK WAITE / PVT Bill Verbeck relaxes at his desk at the Great Basin College Pahrump Valley Campus. Advertisement

There has been a change at the top in the administration of the Great Basin College system and of the local Pahrump Valley campus. Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons wants to cut $898 million from the state budget for the next biennium.

Still, there's a ray of light in the quest for a new Pahrump community college campus. Land negotiations are ongoing and local proponents are hopeful the Great Basin College system could erect a Pahrump college campus under a design-build-lease arrangement.

Also, Great Basin College officials are close to executing a lease for a 10,000 square-foot building to house the general college education courses.

During a visit to Pahrump in February, Great Basin College President Paul Killpatrick said funding for a Pahrump campus would be their only capital outlay request for the 2009 state legislature. That was before the state budget crunch became public. Killpatrick has since left Elko to take a job at Tahoe Community College.

"What has been voiced is there will be no capital construction projects in the next biennium unless they deal with safety and security issues," Killpatrick said before leaving Great Basin College.

College officials had hoped to ask the state legislature for $5.5 million for the Pahrump college, Killpatrick said. But if the college system is able to acquire the land -- by acquiring U.S. Bureau of Land Management property just east of Manse Road and Highway 160 near a BLM fire station -- he said that will be an incentive to get money from the state legislature.

"We're still moving ahead with the acquisition of the 280 acres," Killpatrick said. "We've got to get the land before we can even think about getting a building."

Local lobbyist Bob Swadell said the 280 acres has been scaled down to 120 acres. He said local contractors have committed $500,000 to extend infrastructure to the site.

John Patrick Rice, Great Basin College director of institutional development, said the design-build concept is being considered. A contractor would design and build the building, then lease it back to the college system.

"It's a concept that's used in other states quite successfully and is one that could work for us. That creates some opportunities," Rice said.

"The land acquisition has been something that has been in the works since before we took over administration of the college. There's been a lot of interest in fast tracking that acquisition. That will make things a heck of a lot easier for the state," he said.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who sponsored the Nye County Higher Education Campus Conveyance Act in September 2004, to convey the same half-section of BLM land to the university and community college system of Nevada, has expressed a willingness to sponsor another bill.

In an official statement, Reid spokesman Blair Hinderliter said, "Senator Reid is a strong supporter of higher education in Nevada. The university system has raised a number of public land issues that may need to be addressed. Senator Reid is looking closely at what he can do to help."

Nye County Commissioner Butch Borasky said he inquired about the possibility of rezoning the BLM property to a community facilities zone to stop developers from grabbing it, during a visit to the site by a Reid staffer. He said members of the congressional delegation are promoting an all-inclusive Nye County lands bill.

"One of Reid's staffers said if I signed onto the (county) lands bill it would be no problem getting this piece of land," Borasky said. He declined to endorse the bill, saying it contained proposals for wilderness in parts of the county that are prime areas for mining or other land uses.

"There's other ways to get lands than a lands bill," Borasky said.

Besides the departure of Great Basin College President Paul Killpatrick in Elko, Bob Lurker has left as director of the Pahrump Valley Campus. Lurker was replaced by Bill Verbeck who took over as interim director April 1.

Verbeck retired to Pahrump two and a half years ago. He was formerly dean of instruction of the Edison Campus at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno for 15 years. Before that Verbeck was president of Western Dakota Technical College in Rapid City, South Dakota for nine years.

Verbeck said he took the interim director job because of a combination of local leaders and college officials.

"It's a combination of seeing the passion of community leaders for a college along with the present administration from Great Basin asking me to step in as the interim," Verbeck said.

The dual credit program -- in which Pahrump Valley High School students can take college credit at the same time as high school -- has been highly successful but ties up the current Pahrump facility in the day time, Verbeck said.

The move into new leased space "puts us in, I feel, a strategic position to not only offer day time programs but bring our image that we are a college to the community rather than an extension of the high school," he said.

Verbeck said he became very familiar with Nye County School Superintendent Rob Roberts in Northern Nevada, who was formerly a principal at Reno High School. While Verbeck would like to get the Great Basin College building away from Pahrump Valley High School, he talked with Roberts about the possibility of having a new high school and community college in close proximity to share vocational and technical programs.

Local developer Tim Hafen, a strong advocate for a new community college campus, which would be located near his developments on the south end, encouraged Verbeck to think 50 years ahead, with abundant acreage for a campus, he said.

"Any capital improvements are on hold," Verbeck said of the upcoming state legislature. But he added, "it is our hope that the leasing budget is still there for facilities in the system."

Verbeck, who is initially scheduled to be interim director through the summer, is excited about working with on-the-job training for any new employers, like Home Depot, or a federal detention center.

Verbeck noted the growing population in Pahrump. He sees the high price of fuel as another inducement to attend college classes in Pahrump instead of traveling over the hill to Las Vegas. Interactive video classes, in addition to personal instruction, make it possible to get a baccalaureate degree from Pahrump, he said.