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Sustainable Preservation: California’s Statewide Historic Preservation Plan, 2013-2017

Plan Process and Methodology

This State Plan was prepared by staff of the California Office of Historic Preservation, in
consultation with the State Historical Resources Commission, California’s preservation
community, and the general public. The “Envisioning 2017” Committee in the Office of
Historic Preservation was headed by Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer Jenan
Saunders and included team members Amanda Blosser, historian representing the Review
and Compliance Unit; William Burg, historian representing the Registration Unit; Ron
Parsons, historian representing the Local Government Unit; Mark Huck, restoration
architect representing the Architectural Review Unit; and Diane Thompson, staff analyst.
Team meetings often included then-State Historic Preservation Officer Milford Wayne
Donaldson, and the team’s efforts were augmented by the work of the State Historical
Resources Commission’s Archaeological Resources Committee, which was carrying out a
public comment process for its Archaeological White Papers while the State Plan public
outreach campaign was taking place.
This plan relies heavily on information collected during the public outreach campaign
developed by the Envisioning 2017 team. This campaign included a series of listening
sessions, two online surveys, and an assortment of one-on-one interviews conducted by
OHP staff. The listening sessions took place throughout the course of the 2011 calendar
year, beginning with a strategic planning meeting of all staff in the Office of Historic
Preservation, a portion of which focused on a vision for historic preservation in California
and a discussion of the most important issues facing preservation at the current time. This
meeting served as a model for development of four public listening sessions, which took
place in Sacramento, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Santa Monica (the Santa Monica session
was held during a workshop of the State Historical Resources Commission, which took place
at the 2011 California Preservation Conference), and which a total of 81 people attended.

In addition to these sessions that were open to the general public, a fifth listening session
was held with Tribal Historic Preservation Officers from northern California during one of
their annual regional meetings, with 11 THPOs in attendance. A sixth listening session,
attended by 45 individuals, was held during the plenary session of the annual conference
of the California Council for the Promotion of History
and was open to conference attendees (which Each listening session
included a variety of public historians, such as focused on two main
archivists, curators, and historic sites interpreters, as questions:
well as cultural resource management professionals).
Each listening session focused on two main questions: • What would
preservation “look like”
• What is the vision for historic preservation in in an ideal world?
California (or, what would preservation “look
like” in an ideal world)? • Which issues are the
• Which issues are the most pressing for most pressing for
preservation at the current time (or, on which preservation at the
issues should preservationists focus our current time?
attention at this time)?

The feedback received at the listening sessions was then used by the State Plan team to
develop the questions asked in the subsequent online surveys and one-on-one interviews.

The first online survey was open to the public from May 27, 2011, to July 15, 2011. A total of
649 people responded to some or all of the questions asked. To review the questions
asked and the statistical responses, see Appendix A.
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