This weekend, celebrate Arizona by visiting a state park (before they’re forced to close due to lack of adequate funding) or other place of interest. For ideas, visit Arizona Passages or Arizona Heritage Traveler.
99 groups sign up to protect Arizona’s Heritage Fund! Who will be 100?
One group shy of 100 has signed on to help protect the Arizona Heritage Fund. Who will be number 100?
If you or your organization would like to sign our letter (and be that #100), send us an e-mail and include your name, mailing address, e-mail, and state legislative district. To locate your district, click here. Thank you for your interest and support in preserving and protecting Arizona’s cultural, natural, and historic resources.
Fate of Arizona state parks to be debated by parks board, Feb. 20 in Peoria
The February 20, 2009 meeting of the Arizona State Parks Board will take place at 10 a.m. at the Peoria City Council Chambers, Municipal Complex, 8401 W. Monroe Street in Peoria. The Council Chambers are located near the center of the north half of the complex. Click here for map of the Municipal Complex. The public is invited to attend.
Parking is available in open lots accessed from Monroe Street or from Cinnabar Avenue, or in parking garages located at the southwest and southeast corners of the complex. Limited covered Library parking is available in the southwest parking garage. Public parking is on the upper deck of both parking garages.
How to get to the Municipal Complex:
- If you are traveling on Loop 101 (Agua Fria Freeway): exit at Peoria Avenue eastbound. Take Peoria Avenue to 85th Avenue. Go south on 85th Avenue to Monroe Street.
- If you are traveling on I-17 (Black Canyon Freeway): exit at Peoria Avenue westbound. Take Peoria Avenue to 83rd Avenue. Go south on 83rd Avenue, across Grand Avenue to Monroe Street.
- If you are traveling on I-10 (Papago Freeway): exit at 83rd Avenue northbound. Continue northward to Monroe Street, or exit onto Loop 101 (Agua Fria Freeway) and follow the directions above.
San Xavier could be hurt by decision that saves Arizona state parks
[Source: Jonathan J. Cooper, Cronkite News Service] — Late last year, crews removed scaffolding that covered the west tower of San Xavier Mission. Preservation experts had spent years removing a concrete coating, replacing disintegrating brick and restoring the original lime mortar cover.
Restoration work was supposed to move this year to the mission’s east tower, where the structure is disintegrating from the inside. But the scaffolding could stay on the ground and the tower could continue to slowly crumble now after lawmakers closing the state’s budget deficit swept millions from a fund that had committed $150,000 in lottery proceeds to the work here. “The whole thing is frustrating because you want to believe the state lives up to its word,” said Vernon Lamplot, executive director of Patronato San Xavier, a nonprofit organization created to restore the 212-year-old mission south of Tucson.
An Arizona icon dubbed “The White Dove of the Desert,” San Xavier stands a vision of contrasts. One tower is gleaming white, while the other has yellowing paint and mold. The exterior is cracked, with stucco falling from the brick walls. The restoration at San Xavier is one of about 120 projects, some already under way, that stand to lose grants from the Heritage Fund, which designates up to $20 million of state lottery revenue annually for parks, trails, historic preservation, and wildlife conservation. Voters created the fund in 1990.
There is some hope for the grants. A bill by Rep. Warde Nichols, R-Chandler, was amended to reallocate money to help prevent some state parks from closing and, among other things, replace the $4.9 million swept from the Heritage Fund. A House committee endorsed the bill, but it would require a three-quarters vote from both chambers to pass. The plan may prove unpopular because it would take the money from the Growing Smarter Fund voters created in 1998 to conserve land.
The dozens of Heritage Fund grants around Arizona are especially important now to stimulate the economy and encourage tourism, said Doris Pulsifer, grants director for Arizona State Parks, which administers much of the money. “To develop these projects provides jobs because someone has to go out there and build them,” she said. “And money is spent on the equipment and the materials.”
Dennis Hoffman, an economics professor at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, said the Heritage Fund grants probably do create some jobs and have a small economic benefit. But he said it’s hard to argue that one state program is more beneficial than another as they all fight for a dwindling number of dollars. “You’ve got a million ducks fighting over two croutons,” Hoffman said. “We need more croutons. There’s just not enough money going around to fund everything that most Arizonans would agree needs to be funded.”
Beth Woodin, president of the Arizona Heritage Alliance, an organization that lobbies the Legislature to continue supporting the Heritage Fund, said the sweep shows a lack of commitment to historic preservation, parks, and wildlife. “It would seem that sane and reasonable and educated people would care about the Heritage Fund,” she said. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]