Taking state parks totally private a bad idea—Grady Gammage Jr.

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[Source: Grady Gammage Jr.,  Special for the Arizona Republic]

If you only caught the recent news headline, “Arizona state parks system would run better privately, study says” (Valley & State, Jan. 12), you might quickly surmise we should privatize state parks like we’re doing with prisons.

Not so fast. The headline does not reflect the full content or context of the story. Nor does it reflect what the cited report or prior studies examining Arizona state parks truly recommend when it comes to privatization.

In fall 2009, Morrison Institute for Public Policy issued “The Price of Stewardship: The Future of Arizona’s State Parks.” The report looked at the parks system and the agency that runs the parks, and examined what it would take to create a sustainable future.

One of the primary findings was that the park system had been starved by the Legislature, including of money parks take in, leaving it totally at the mercy of general-fund appropriations.

In 2010 the general-fund appropriation for parks was zero. That’s not a typo.

A task force appointed by Gov. Jan Brewer reviewed the report’s cost-saving and revenue-producing options, and made recommendations – including a combination of local partnerships, increased concessionaire use and a modest surcharge on license plates that would give Arizona residents automatic access to the parks.

Both the task force and Morrison Institute report recognized there are inherently public functions connected to parks, such as educational programs, that deserve and require public financial support to survive.

Unfortunately, as the task force reviewed the “big picture” of state parks, Arizona’s budget crisis deepened. Its recommendations went nowhere, lost in the tide of red ink that overwhelms our state.

In reacting to the report and the task-force recommendations, some commentators and lawmakers seized on the concept of “privatization” as the silver bullet for dealing with the parks system, rather than as a component of a more comprehensive solution.

A subsequent report, “The Arizona State Park Privatization and Efficiency Plan,” issued in December by the Arizona State Parks Foundation and conducted by private-consulting firm PROS Consulting, examines specifically the potential for privatization. Some key points:

  • Even in the downturn, Arizona’s state parks represent a tremendous return on investment. The PROS study estimates $223 million in economic benefit to the state in 2010.
  • There is potential for much greater private-sector involvement in managing the parks, primarily in the area of concessions, maintenance and recreational use. And there is potential for local partnerships, reinforcing a task-force finding.
  • Private management of public assets requires serious oversight by the public; privatization does not mean the state can escape all effort and cost.
  • Arizona should give serious consideration to the creation of a quasi-governmental agency to manage the park system. This is similar to what the state is doing with economic development, through the creation of the Arizona Commerce Authority.

Both the Morrison Institute report and the PROS report highlight the real tragedy of our parks system: Arizona State Parks has not been given a fair chance to prove itself. While we say we want it to operate more like an enterprise, since 2003, through various mechanisms, the Legislature has “swept” away portions – or all – of what Arizona State Parks has earned.

No private operator could run a business if its operating income was taken away. It is unfair to Arizona State Parks to expect it to do so. Perhaps a quasi-governmental structure could restore sanity to this equation and save our parks.

Attorney, land-use expert and educator Grady Gammage Jr. is a senior research fellow at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy.

Feds Threaten Major Cuts to Historic Preservation Grants

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[Source: Ryan Holeywell, Governing.com]

President Obama and the GOP don’t tend to agree on much these days. But they’ve found common ground in one unusual place: Both want to cut millions of dollars in historic preservation grants.

This week, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), a GOP deputy whip and member of the Republican Study Committee’s steering committee, introduced a bill that would cut $150 billion over five years through nearly 50 types of spending reductions across the board.

Some of the cuts are politically charged, like rescinding voluntary payments to the United Nations and eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Others are common-sense proposals taken from the president’s fiscal commission, such as requiring the sale of excess federal property and reducing federal travel costs.

A little-noticed proposal was a plan to eliminate two programs that fund historic preservation grants: Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America.

According to a House-issued breakdown of Brady’s proposal:

This amendment would eliminate funding for the Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America Program, as called for by the President who said both programs are duplicative and underperforming.

The Preserve America Grant Program was established in 2003 (as) a grant program within (the Department of the Interior) to provide ‘planning funding to support preservation efforts through heritage tourism, education, and historic preservation planning.’

The Save America’s Treasures Program in Department of Interior awards grants to preserve historically significant properties. This account is also heavily earmarked. $4.6 million is appropriated for Preserve in FY 2010 and $25 million is appropriated for Save. The Department of the Interior oversees multiple, overlapping historic preservation programs. Additionally, every federal agency is required to maintain a historic preservation program and must appoint a historic preservation officer and comply with the National Historic Preservation Act. In addition, there are numerous other federal grant programs and tax provisions aimed at historic preservation.

But Patrick J. Lally, director of congressional affairs for The National Trust for Historic Preservation, said Brady is downplaying the grants’ significance. Save America’s Treasures is the only federal grant dedicated exclusively to physical restoration of nationally significant sites, and it represents a significant portion of all federal funding for historic preservation.

The historic preservation fund, which is part of the Department of Interior, is usually funded at about $75 million to $78 million, and Save America’s Treasures usually makes up about $25 million to $30 million of that total. Eliminating it would be a huge blow to federal preservation efforts, Lally tells FedWatch. “It’s not like when lawmakers propose elimination of these funds they go to another account within the historic preservation fund,” Lally says. “They go away.”

Save America’s Treasures has provided funding to restore the Montgomery bus where Rosa Parks made her stand, the workshop where Thomas Edison created his inventions and the cottage to which President Lincoln retreated during hot Washington summers, among other projects. Since its 1998 launch, it has provided nearly $294 million to more than 1,100 preservation projects.

While Save America’s Treasures focuses on physical work, Preserve America grants provide funding for things like marketing, research and digitizing records — ancillary work that helps to promote “heritage tourism” to cultural and natural sites. For example, Honolulu was awarded $150,000 to develop programs to showcase its Chinatown, and Oxford, Miss. received $75,000 to fund exhibits about the life of Supreme Court Justice L.Q.C. Lamar in his historic home. Preserve America has provided more than $17 million in grants to more than 225 projects.

This time, the programs are being targeted by a House Republican. But a year ago, it was President Obama who proposed cutting the programs in his 2010-2011 budget. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the White House blog that they “lack rigorous performance metrics and evaluation efforts so the benefits are unclear.”

That decision was especially unusual, given that the White House has previously been a supporter of the programs. In March 2009, Obama signed legislation that permanently authorized them, and in December of that year, First Lady Michelle Obama touted Save America’s Treasures as a way to “empower communities all over the country to rescue and restore this priceless heritage.”

Lally says he believes Obama’s proposal to cut the programs last year was an oversight. Congress ultimately preserved funding for the programs, largely due to the fact that Save America’s Treasures has a record of creating jobs (16,000 since its inception), Lally says. The White House’s budget will be released next month, and preservations are anxiously waiting to see whether it will against target the two programs, like Brady has already done. And given that deficit reduction has been the theme repeated ad nauseum by the new House Republican leadership, the future of the programs could be in jeopardy.

The fact that the two programs are fighting for their survival is especially ironic, considering the $29.6 allotted to them is a pittance of the overall federal budget. Nancy Schamu, executive director of the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, tells FedWatch she doesn’t know why preservation funding is being targeted, especially since it’s basically “decimal dust” in the grand scheme of things.

“That’s something you’ll have to ask the bill drafters,” she says.

Jerome Grand Hotel To Reopen Following Judge’s Injunction

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[Source: Steve Jansen, Phoenix New Times’ Jackalope Ranch]

jeromegrandhotel2.jpg
Tamara Horton

​A Yavapai County Superior Court judge has allowed the Jerome Grand Hotel to reopen following what hotel co-owner Robert Altherr called an “illegal shutdown.”

As was previously reported, the historic hotel’s certificate of occupancy was revoked by town officials on December 8 due to “unsafe” conditions. The move caused the hotel to halt its operations for more than a month. The decision also prompted hotel co-owner Altherr to tell New Times that “Gestapo tactics” were being used against him.

Though Altherr is jazzed that the hotel’s certificate of occupancy has been reinstated (which occurred during a preliminary injunction hearing on January 14), he and his attorney will still pursue an $8-million-plus lawsuit that they filed with Yavapai County Superior Court on December 14.

“The five percent of people that run this town are wackos,” says Altherr, “but the other ninety-five percent are good people.”

In the meantime, the Jerome Grand Hotel will start getting back to business starting tomorrow and Friday during an open house while the weekend will feature a grand reopening bash with live radio broadcasts and giveaways.

The hotel is on 200 Hill Street in Jerome. For more information, check out its official website.

Anthony Tung to be Keynote Speaker at AZ Historic Preservation Conference 2011

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[Source:  PRLog (Press Release)]

© Janet Vicario

Renowned author and international historian Anthony Tung will be a featured speaker during “Valuing Historic Perspectives,” the Ninth Annual Historic Preservation Conference, to be held June 22-24, 2011 at the University Park Marriott Hotel near the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Author and urbanist Anthony M. Tung has been a New York City Landmarks Preservation Commissioner, an instructor on architectural history at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a visiting professor on international urban preservation at MIT. He has lectured in Singapore, Madrid, Amsterdam, Istanbul,San Juan, Edinburgh, Athens, Mexico City, Vienna, Kyoto, and across North America—consulting on heritage conservation policy with officials in Toronto, Halifax, New York, and New Orleans.

His first book, entitled Preserving the World’s Great Cities:  The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis (hardcover: Clarkson Potter, 2001; softcover: Three Rivers Press, 2001) is a detailed socio-cultural portrait of preservation efforts in eighteen cities across the globe—described by Publisher’s Weekly as an “important contribution not only to the literature of urban studies and city planning but to architectural history and sociology,” by the Atlanta Journal Constitution as “a remarkable chronicle of human spirit and architectural heritage,” by Architectural Record On-Line as “an epic, or rather, 18 little epics packed into one important book,” and by The Washington Post, as “a landmark of creative urbanism . . . Tung’s breath of vision and rapid-fire insights recall Lewis Mumford at his best.” (more here)

“Valuing Historic Perspectives” held jointly by Arizona State Parks, the State Historic Preservation Office, Main Street / Department of Commerce, non-profit Arizona Preservation Foundation, the Arizona Historical Society, and the Arizona Archaeological Council will bring together more than 300 people and organizations interested in current topics and program management best practices in preservation, drawn primarily from architectural, archaeological, historical research, consulting, real estate development, construction, general contracting, Tribal, legal, and state and local government organizations from across the Southwest.

Sessions at the 2011 Conference will include:  Folk Baroque: the Art & Architecture of San Xavier del Bac – National Historic Landmark, built 1783-1797; Preserving the History of Arizona and the West in the Levi Strauss & Co. Archives; Introduction to Prehistoric Analyses in Arizona; Doing the Business of Archaeology in Arizona: Integrating AZSITE, the State Historic Preservation Act and the Arizona Antiquities Act into Arizona Archaeology; and The Basics of Historical Period Artifact Identification.

“Valuing Historic Perspectives” will be based out of the University Park Marriott Hotel, just outside the campus of the University of Arizona.  Registration information is available online at www.azpreservation.com. Conference registration begins at $225 per person; member and early registration and professional affiliation discounts are available.  Full-time undergraduate and graduate student rates are available.

Conference underwriters include: Arizona Department of Commerce; the National Park Service; the National Trust for Historic Preservation; Arizona State Parks; the City of Tucson; Desert Archaeology, Inc.; Statistical Research, Inc.; Archaeological Consulting Services; the Tempe Historic Preservation Foundation; the Arizona Historical Society; Local First Arizona; HistoricStreetscapes; Baker Custom Photo; the Arizona Archaeological Council; and the Arizona State Museum.  More information about Arizona Preservation Foundation, its goals and mission, is available at www.azpreservation.org.