2007 California Education Code Article 1. General Provisions

CA Codes (edc:20050-20052.5)

20050.  This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the
California Cultural and Historical Endowment Act.



20051.  The Legislature finds and declares the following:
   (a) Every civilization defines itself in part by its past, and an
understanding of its past helps determine its basic values and future
aspirations.  Understanding of the past is strengthened and deepened
through contact with the buildings, physical places, and artifacts
of earlier times.  Through learning this past, our young and future
generations come to better understand the society in which they live
and to better understand themselves.
   (b) As America's physical culture and built environment become
remarkably similar throughout the country, it is left to the natural
environment and the structures of the past to give a unique sense of
place to our communities.  Preserving these structures is becoming
increasingly compelling as the homogeneity of our physical culture
increases.
   (c) The buildings, other structures, and artifacts that embody
California's past are in escalating danger of being redeveloped,
remodeled, renovated, paved, excavated, bulldozed, modernized, and
lost forever.
   (d) For history to be part of our lives, we must include it in our
daily lives, through the adaptive reuse of historic structures in
our older commercial districts and inner cities.
   (e) California has one of the most diverse populations on earth
and its cultural and historic preservation program should reflect
that fact.  Early cultural and historic preservation efforts often
focused on the structures and activities of our European ancestors.
Without minimizing their contribution, it is important to pursue
other historical threads that are important to California's Latino
population, to African-Americans, to Asians and Pacific Islanders, to
Native Americans, to Jewish persons, and to many other groups of
peoples with uniquely identifiable cultures and histories.  It is
increasingly important to preserve the physical and cultural history
and folklife of these many groups' presence and contributions to
California's history.
   (f) Historic preservation should include the contributions of all
Californians.  The study of history once focused largely on the
actions and works of wealthy, powerful, noble, brilliant, or famous
persons.  More recently, historians have tried to increase
understanding of how more ordinary people lived and thought.
California's historic preservation efforts should allow its citizens
and visitors to experience something of the physical world of both.
   (g) In 1997, California's Statewide Historic Preservation Plan was
prepared pursuant to the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966
and includes seven statewide goals, including the goal to promote the
preservation and stewardship of cultural resources among a
diversified state population representing all levels of the
socioeconomic spectrum.
   (h) California's retained past certainly includes sites important
to its prehistoric and later Native American people, and the
remaining great structures of the 19th century.  But the state also
needs to consciously preserve selected remnants of the 1930s, of
California's great role in World War II, as well as representative
structures and sites that were culturally or economically important
during the 1950s, 1960s, and, in some cases, even more recently.
   (i) California's historic missions are among California's most
evocative historical structures.  Their continued protection and
restoration should continue to have high priority.
   (j) California's museums are among the most important and
cherished repositories of the state's cultural and historical
heritage.
   (k) California's partnerships with federal, state, and local
governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations have helped us
understand the range and diversity of California's history and
historic and cultural resources and artifacts and have helped develop
a better understanding of the educational, environmental, and
economic benefits of, and tools available for, the preservation and
interpretation of historic and cultural resources and artifacts.



20052.  As used in this chapter, the following terms have the
following meanings:
   (a) "Development" includes, but is not limited to, improvement,
rehabilitation, restoration, enhancement, preservation, protection,
and interpretation.
   (b) "Endowment" means the California Cultural and Historical
Endowment created pursuant to Section 20053, or the board of the
endowment, as appropriate.
   (c) "Museum" means a public or private nonprofit institution that
is organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational or
aesthetic purposes and that owns or uses tangible objects, cares for
those objects, and exhibits them to the general public on a regular
basis.
   (d) "Nonprofit organization" means any nonprofit public benefit
corporation that is formed pursuant to the Nonprofit Corporation Law
(commencing with Section 500 of the Corporations Code), qualified to
do business in California, and qualified under Section 501(c)(3) of
the Internal Revenue Code, that has, among its principal charitable
purposes, the preservation of historic or cultural resources for
cultural, scientific, historic, educational, recreational,
agricultural, or scenic opportunities.
   (e) "Preservation" includes, but is not limited to,
identification, evaluation, recordation, restoration, stabilization,
development, and reconstruction, or any combination of those
activities.
   (f) "Public agency" means a federal agency, state agency, city,
county, district, association of governments, joint powers agency, or
tribal organization.



20052.5.  It is the intent of the Legislature that consideration be
given to the transferring and fully integrating the Office of
Historic Preservation with the California Cultural and Historical
Endowment, which is created pursuant to this chapter, for the
following purposes:
   (a) To increase the stature, visibility, authority, and
entrepreneurial capabilities of the Office of Historic Preservation
in the interest of helping it carry out its missions and purposes.
   (b) To allow the California Cultural and Historical Endowment to
benefit from the Office of Historic Preservation's experience and
expertise, and from the experience and expertise of its constituents
and supporters.
   (c) To synergistically increase the state's effective commitment
to historic and cultural preservation.