Mission San Xavier del Bac

Attempt to revive voter-approved Heritage Fund stalled in House

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[Source: Jessica Testa, Arizona Capitol Times] – A lawmaker’s attempt to have Arizonans decide whether to revive the voter–approved Heritage Fund is stalled in the House. HCR 2047, authored by Rep. Russ Jones, R–Yuma, earned unanimous approval from the House Agriculture and Water Committee in early February, but the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee has declined to hear it.

The measure could potentially reinstate the $10 million annually that the Heritage Fund provided to Arizona State Parks. The agency used the money to expand and improve its parks and provide grants to communities for trails, parks and historic preservation.

In 2010, lawmakers eliminated the Heritage Fund and reallocated the money to the general fund. Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said the bill wouldn’t be approved because the Legislature needs that $10 million for other natural resources funding, such as state trust land purchases and treatments to prevent forest fires. In addition, he said, the November ballot already has limited space. “The voters don’t like to see 20 or 30 ballot questions,” Kavanagh said. “We get criticized for that all the time. There has to be some triage.” Jones didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.

The Heritage Fund, established by voters in 1990, provided $10 million annually from the Arizona Lottery to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, which used the funds to promote recreation and environmental education and help endangered species, and $10 million to Arizona State Parks. The Heritage Fund was approved too early to fall under the 1998 Voter Protection Act, a constitutional amendment that prohibits the Legislature from reallocating voter-created funds.

“Voters fought for 20 years to protect this fund,” said Beth Woodin, president of the Heritage Alliance. “We’re doing everything we can in our waking hours to bring it back to them.” Woodin said Heritage Fund supporters are attempting to bypass Kavanagh, forming a committee of local political players and airing their concerns directly to House Speaker Andy Tobin, R–Paulden, and Senate President Steve Pierce, R–Prescott.

“The Heritage Fund has a huge economic impact,” she said. “For legislators who are cranking the line about job creation and community pride, this is something really positive to have on your resume.”

The Heritage Fund benefited groups such as Patronato Mission San Xavier del Bac in Tucson, which was granted $150,000 in 2007 to renovate its east tower. The grant was canceled before construction began. Now, with the building rapidly deteriorating, renovations could cost between $1.5 and 2 million, said executive director Vern Lamplot. “The longer it sits, the worse the condition of the east tower gets,” he said. “It’s a shame that voters passed this and legislators saw it fit to undo it.”

Woodin’s group has formed a political committee with members such as Grady Gammage Jr., lawyer and senior research fellow at Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy, and Richard Dozer, former president of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Heritage Fund supporter Lattie Coor, chairman and CEO of the Center for the Future of Arizona and former ASU president, said access to public space plays an essential role in the lives of Arizonans. “We have to stay attentive to that, protecting it and preserving it as the population continues to grow,” he said.

A House concurrent resolution would allow reinstatement of The Heritage Fund, which would help with renovations on buildings such as the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Tucson. Often called “White Dove of the Desert,” this building was founded in 1692. (Cronkite News Service Photo by Brittny Goodsell)

Historic Arizona Icon in Danger

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[Source: Arizona Republic; by Kathleen Ingley, columnist]

The mission known as “The White Dove of the Desert” shimmers with the unworldly glow of a mirage in the dry flatlands south of Tucson.

Kathleen Ingley/The Arizona Republic

San Xavier del Bac, with its asymmetrical towers, elegant curves and exuberant decoration, is the best example of Spanish colonial architecture in the nation. It’s such an important window into the past that it was one of the original listings when the National Register of Historic Places was established in 1966.

But the White Dove is in danger.

The Legislature drained the Heritage Fund, wiping out a $150,000 grant that was supposed to help pay for repairing the east tower. The job was the final part of a two-decade restoration project. Without it, the tower and the entire structure are at risk.

Go to San Xavier, and you can’t miss the problem. The mission’s two towers look like “before” and “after” pictures for plastic surgery.

The west tower has brilliant-white stucco, new balustrades, reworked volutes and a reconstructed balcony made with mesquite.

The shorter east tower, which doesn’t have a cupola, is dingy, chipped and mottled with black mold stains. Parts of the finials and cornices are loose and could come crashing to the ground.

The Revolutionary War had just officially ended and southern Arizona was still part of New Spain when construction started on Mission San Xavier in 1783. The structure, made from fired-clay bricks in an unusual series of 11 domes, has the fluidity and openness of the Spanish baroque style.

Thanks to a series of factors, including a 50-year abandonment, isolation and scarce resources for making major changes, the mission has remained relatively unaltered since it was built. Architect Bob Vint, who has worked on the restoration, calls it “a time capsule.”

Virtually all the art inside, which has been cleaned by an international team of conservators, dates from the late 1700s. The sculptured-plaster altar is covered in gold and silver leaf.

The mission, which sits on the San Xavier Tohono O’odham Reservation, still functions as a parish church. But the building itself is a cultural monument and a major tourist attraction, drawing about 200,000 visitors a year from around the world.

In an ironic twist, most of today’s problems come from past efforts at restoration. The exterior was coated with concrete in a misguided attempt to protect the mission. But the concrete ended up trapping moisture, melting away the centuries-old bricks.

The current restoration project strips off the concrete and goes back to the original way the mission was built. The bricks for it are produced in Mexico using a traditional process – including a mule-powered mill to sift sand out of the clay – to match the mission’s bricks in density, porosity and salt content. The mortar is mixed with local sand and lime, plus a natural glue made from cactus pads.

The Patronato San Xavier, a non-profit that promotes the mission’s conservation, has managed to keep the restoration rolling with a combination of fundraising and grants.

The west tower was finished in 2009, and the scaffolding was about to go up on the east tower when word came that the Heritage Fund grant was in jeopardy.

We are not talking enormous sums of money. The Heritage Fund has put in $230,000 over the course of 15 years.

The current grant was just $150,000. But it would have triggered an equal amount of matching money and provided a solid base for starting the east tower project. The total cost is estimated at $1.5 million.

Voters established the Heritage Fund in 1990, dedicating money from the state Lottery to several grants programs for recreation and historic preservation. But the Legislature has been raiding that part of the Heritage Fund for the past three fiscal years, taking a total of $26.3 million.

The San Xavier grant was canceled. And there’s no prospect of getting it back. Lawmakers quietly abolished the cultural and recreational portion of the Heritage Fund.

Interestingly, the part of the Heritage Fund that is administered by the Arizona Game and Fish Department has taken hits in the past but didn’t fall victim to this year’s budget crisis. Maybe advocates of culture and history would be more persuasive if they carried rifles and fishing rods.

San Xavier’s restoration should have been finished in time for Arizona’s centennial in 2012.

That’s impossible now. But it would be a disgrace not to have the work well under way on the state’s 100th birthday.

We’re in a real race against time.

“That east tower is deteriorating,” says Vern Lamplot, executive director of the Patronato. “The longer it sits, the more damage is done to it, which ultimately threatens the whole thing.”

These are tough times for fundraising. But the remaining cost of restoring this irreplaceable piece of Arizona’s history and culture is remarkably small. It’s inconceivable that Arizonans won’t raise it.

Reach Ingley at [email protected] or (602) 444-8171.

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Tucson group’s black-tie ball strives to make up for raided Arizona Heritage Fund grant

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[Source: Loni Nannini, Arizona Daily Star] — In Tucson, they are the hostesses with the mostest: The Silver & Turquoise Board of Hostesses throws a party with purpose.   Over the past 16 years, the Mission San Xavier del Bac has been the sole beneficiary of more than $325,000 in proceeds from the Board of Hostesses’ annual Silver & Turquoise Ball.

Their commitment to restoration of the mission is just one example of the 50 active members’ dedication to the community, according to Ginny Healy, chairwoman of the upcoming ball and 11-year veteran of the non-profit Board of Hostesses.   “The women I have worked with at the Board of Hostesses are some of the most outstanding women in the community.  You see their professional accomplishments and contributions through volunteer service everywhere around Tucson,” said Healy, senior director of development for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Colleges of Letters, Arts and Science at the University of Arizona.

The Board of Hostesses was created 59 years ago to promote, support and encourage the preservation of Tucson’s historical traditions and diverse cultural heritage.  The ball originated as a potluck thank-you for volunteers of the now-defunct Tucson Festival Society, which staged events such as Pioneer Days, La Parada de los Niños and the Children’s Writing and Art Festival.  The potluck soon moved to the Arizona Inn at the urging of proprietor Isabella Greenway and has remained there since.  Healy believes the location, the history and the compelling cause culminate in Tucson’s most enjoyable ball.   “It is really just a party to celebrate people who have volunteered in the community and the work they have done.  It is for people to sit back and enjoy themselves and has really become one of Tucson’s great traditions,” said Healy, who is producing a documentary on the ball with director and co-producer LuisCarlos Romero Davis.

Healy said support of the mission remains a motivating factor, particularly because $150,000 in state funding for the ongoing $7 million-plus restoration was cut on Feb. 2.   The grant had been awarded through Arizona State Parks Heritage Fund, which set aside proceeds from the Arizona Lottery to fund historical restoration projects and trail management.  The money was slated for work on the east tower, where continued water damage could eventually threaten the structural integrity and damage interior artwork.  “Originally those (Heritage) funds were voter-approved, and I don’t think voters approved what the state is doing with them now.  We can’t start work on the tower until we have more funds available,” said Vern Lamplot, executive director of the Patronato San Xavier, a non-profit corporation dedicated to preservation of the mission.

In his appeal for support of the mission, Lamplot emphasized its cultural and historic value as one of the original 10 structures on the National Register of Historic Places and its bankability as a major tourist attraction that hosts more than 250,000 worldwide visitors annually.  [Note: To read the full article, click here.]

San Xavier could be hurt by decision that saves Arizona state parks

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Budget sweeps caused group restoring San Xavier Mission to lose a grant for east tower restoration. (Photo: Jonathan J. Cooper)

[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.]