A Cronkite News Service Weekend Special
Sweep of grant funds leaves San Xavier restoration, other projects, in limbo
NOTE: SUBS grafs 6-11 to CLARIFY that Arizona State Parks administers half of Heritage Fund’s $20 million and ADD that $5.1 million of that share could be put toward agency’s operating expenses due to budget cuts.
Photos Available (thumbnails, captions below)
By JONATHAN J. COOPER
Cronkite News Service
TUCSON _ 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.
Arizona State Parks has sent letters telling Lamplot’s group and about 120 other recipients not to spend money based on grant commitments because of moves lawmakers made to close the state’s budget deficit, said Doris Pulsifer, the agency’s grants director.
Money for the grants comes from the Heritage Fund, created by voters in 1990 to distribute up to $20 million in lottery proceeds each year for parks, trails, historic preservation and wildlife conservation.
Arizona State Parks administers $10 million of that money, and lawmakers swept $4.9 million of it. The agency’s board is considering whether to use the remaining $5.1 million to help cover the agency’s operating expenses due to other cuts by the Legislature, Pulsifer said.
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 money swept from Arizona State Parks’ Heritage Fund proceeds.
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.
Pulsifer said the dozens of Heritage Fund grants around Arizona are especially important now to stimulate the economy and encourage tourism.
“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 right now to argue that one state program is more beneficial than another.
“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 advocates for the Heritage Fund and its goals, 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.
While the debate continues, construction is stopped at San Xavier, the legacy of Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, a Roman Catholic priest who explored much of what is now the southwestern United States. Kino planted a church near the mission’s present location in 1700, and the current church opened in 1797 after 14 years of construction.
The mission is still a Catholic parish serving the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Patronato San Xavier spent years raising money to restore and protect the mission’s iconic towers, said Lamplot, the executive director. The $2.5 million, five-year west tower restoration was completed in December.
The work is sorely needed, Lamplot said, because a 1950s attempt at preservation actually weakened the structure. That work coated the towers with concrete that has cracked and allowed moisture to get inside and slowly dissolve the bricks that form the walls.
The rest of the work is expected to cost around $1.5 million, and Lamplot said delays would raise that figure because the structure’s bricks continue to crumble.
He said the $150,000 Heritage Fund grant, which his group had to match with other donations, was supposed to get work started on the east tower and encourage more donations.
Without the grant, he said, donors might not be as willing to pitch in.
“You’re able to raise money for two reasons: because people believe in your cause and because they believe you will do what you say you will do,” Lamplot said. “It could affect the credibility of our organization because we believed Arizona would follow through on its commitments.”
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PHOTOS: Click thumbnails to see full-resolution images and download; caption information is in the file under File>File Info.
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-GRANTS-SAN XAVIER: Budget sweeps caused a nonprofit group restoring iconic San Xavier Mission in Tucson to lose a grant intended to start work on the structure’s east tower. Grants for this and other projects to preserve historic, cultural, natural and wildlife resources come from the Heritage Fund, which draws from lottery proceeds. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Jonathan J. Cooper)
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-GRANTS-SAN XAVIER: A balcony at San Xavier Mission in Tucson shows damage that a nonprofit group had hoped to start repairing with a state grant that was cut due to budget sweeps. Grants for this and other projects to preserve historic, cultural, natural and wildlife resources come from the Heritage Fund, which draws from lottery proceeds. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Jonathan J. Cooper)
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-GRANTS-SAN XAVIER: A wall at San Xavier Mission in Tucson shows water damage that a nonprofit group had hoped to start repairing with a state grant that was cut due to budget sweeps. Grants for this and other projects to preserve historic, cultural, natural and wildlife resources come from the Heritage Fund, which draws from lottery proceeds. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Jonathan J. Cooper)