Visit the oldest public building still in use in Arizona, complete with ghosts and great architecture.
>> Michael Grant:
Tonight on Horizon, the Maricopa county Attorney's Immigration Conference, a program for Arizona's Children, and Our oldest operating public building is tonight's Arizona story.
>> Announcer:
Horizon is made possible by the friends of Channel 8. Member who provide financial support to this Arizona PBS station. Thank you.
>> Michael Grant:
Good evening and welcome to Horizon. I'm Michael Grant. A 2,000-mile fence system has been proposed for the Mexican border by Congressman Duncan Hunter. That idea or something like it, of course, has support from some Arizona republicans. On the other hand, Governor Janet Napolitano says it will cost too much. That's just one of several issues debated over the weekend at the Southwest Conference on illegal immigration, border security, and crime. Producer Larry Lemmons gives us an overview.
>> Erin Anderson:
Our family home is on the Arizona /Mexican border, in Cochise County. We would like to say we're the other ground zero. The situation is such that we can no longer live on our land. We can't live on our land, we can't ranch it, can't farm it. We pay a lot of taxes on it, but basically it's because border patrol cannot guarantee our safety. A little bit more than a year or so ago, a border patrol agent who used to parole our area of the border was murdered by illegal aliens, drug smugglers that have recently been released from the Cochise County jail. They bashed his head in with rocks. He was off duty at the time, but that gives you an example of how its become so dangerous for the American citizens and residents of Cochise County along the Arizona /Mexican border.
>> Larry Lemmons:
That's just one of many stories being related at the southwest conference on illegal immigration, border security and crime. The conference is sponsored by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.
>> Andrew Thomas:
Obviously, we need to secure the border, and, and don't miss understand me, I recognize that as a federal responsibility, that under the constitution, the federal government is, is obliged to do that. But, I also believe that the state and local leaders can step up and do their part to deal with this crisis, and clearly, the people of Arizona are expecting us to do that. They are expecting us to try to provide leadership, to argue that we don't have resources or there are other things that are more important. That's just passing the buck, and the public sees that the buck stops with us, and I'm trying to simply provide new ideas and some new initiatives so that we can deal appropriately with this problem.
>> Larry Lemmons:
Last summer Governor Janet Napolitano held an immigration summit in Flagstaff but closed it to the public because, she said, she wanted law enforcement to be able to speak frankly and to strategize. Andrew Thomas criticized the summit.
>> Andrew Thomas:
I was up in flagstaff, when I saw state troopers barring the door to a public building on the NAU campus. Truly to me, it was like the 1960's Alabama, which I didn't expect to see that in Arizona in 2005.
>> Tim Nelson:
It's a very different type of conference. It was a law enforcement conference. When you have law enforcement together in the same room talking about how you are going to engage in law enforcement strategies, that's a different thing. That is not a public dialogue. You don't want the bad guys to come in and find out how the law enforcement is going to stop them. This is a different type of conference. This is, this is an equally important conference and I'm hopeful that it will produce an interesting idea.
>> Larry Lemmons:
The conference brings national speakers to the valley with local speakers to debate the contentious issues revolving around illegal immigration.
>> John Fund:
On the one hand you have people who want to crackdown on illegal immigration and they don't fully appreciate the limits the government of free society has in terms of addressing the problems with mayor enforcement. On the other hand, you have an awful lot of people on the other side who favor the immigrant position, who believe that the people who oppose the illegal immigration are somehow racist or perhaps operate out of bad motives. I don't think either one of those perspectives really addresses the issue. What we need is effective enforcement combined with a guest worker program which can bring people above the underground economy out in the open, so we know who they are, we know how many there are, and we can start to regularize the flow of traffic. Right now a lot of people, once they cross over into this country, stay here because it's so difficult to cross back and forth along the border. We would make the immigration problem a lot easier if we combined enforcement with the guest worker program.
>> Eleanor Eisenberg:
I think that, that we're tending to conflate a whole bunch of concerns that are not really immigration concerns. After Oklahoma City, we didn't go after every freckled face kid who served in the Gulf War, assuming that they were here to do harm, and I think that part of that is going on here where we are scapegoating immigrants and, and punishing people who come here to work, not to commit crimes, and who do work, and who don't commit crimes. And, and I think that its uneven enforcement. I think that there is a good deal of racial profiling and racism and xenophobia involved. We are living in an administration and a time where fear is promoted, to enable a certain agenda to go forward. It's not an agenda, I think, that helps our country to develop, and it certainly is not an agenda that, that keeps us safe. In fact, I think a lot of the measures being taken and suggested are, are making it more dangerous. The Real ID Act is a travesty. It's going to take away our ability to travel as free citizens. It's going to hold us open to our identity theft. It's the federal government telling states what they need to do, and in a government administration that, that holds itself out in favor of state's rights. So, there are lots and lots of problems that will impact all of us much more than it will impact illegal immigration.
>> Larry Lemmons:
Some speakers at the conference favored the building of a wall across the border.
>> Frank J. Gaffney, Jr:
Of course, the difference between a fence to keep people in and a fence to keep people out is so self-evident that I'm not sure it requires much further discussion. We, I think, have several, several of us have indicated an obligation to provide security for our borders and, if there are other ways to do it, I'm open to them, it seems to me fairly obvious that, that given the various difficulties that have been described, not the least of which is the sheer numbers of the personnel available and the sheer numbers of people coming through, that a fence to keep people out, except with permission to come through, is necessary.
>> Larry Lemmons:
Other speakers assailed the federal government for what they see as its failure to control the borders.
>> Glynn Custred:
So, when it comes to public safety, we find that the government is falling down on its responsibility, it's reneging its responsibility, and therefore, it's jeopardizing its legitimacy and it's undermining the rule of law, plus the very real fact that people are in danger in some places because of criminal activity that should be prevented, criminal activity that can only thrive when you have this massive historical -- historically unique stream of people coming in without any kind of control at all.
>> Michael Grant:
Here now to talk about his involvement in the conference impressions, where to go from here is state representative Steve Gallardo, and also we have invited representative Russell Pearce, but he has been unavoidably detained. Steve, it's good to see you.
>> Steve Gallardo:
Thank you. How are you?
>> Michael Grant:
You are on the panel on impact on local communities?
>> Steve Gallardo:
That's correct.
>> Michael Grant:
You know the, the person here from Cochise County, Erin Andersen, I think, was her name, describing a pretty, pretty bleak -- unfortunately, I don't think unusual story about how people are being impacted in the border counties and further into the state.
>> Steve Gallardo:
You know, our border communities have been impacted dramatically by illegal immigration, and that's a no-brainer. I think we'll all agree on that. What the state can do in order to, to help our local communities in terms of their overburdened problems, law enforcement, medical, that sort of stuff, I believe that the state can play a role. That we can put money down into our local law enforcement agencies to help unburden the actual cost that they have contained in terms of illegal immigration, and then I think our governor of the state of Arizona has done that with the state of her call for a state of emergency on illegal immigration, which she brought $1.5 million from federal government to our state government to aid some of the burden that the local law enforcement has.
>> Michael Grant:
And Steve, I'm not going to run down any contribution to the effort, but you and I both know $1.5 million is, you know, a drop in the bucket, and it still comes back to the fact that a lot of people feel that the federal government is failing miserably on enforcing the border.
>> Steve Gallardo:
They have, they have. This has been a failure on the federal government. There's no doubt in my mind or in a lot of folks' minds at the conference this weekend that this is a federal, federal responsibility. The federal government has failed not only the state but the entire country when it comes to deterring illegal immigration. They have not done anything in terms of trying to seal up our border or even to try to reform our immigration policies. It is a crisis here in the state of Arizona. I believe the federal government has to get off their bottoms and, and actually do something.
>> Michael Grant:
Why not go with something physical like, like a fence? I think a whole lot of people sort of poo-pooed that idea originally, but let's face it, they used fences in California, and to a certain extent, in Texas, and what they have done is they have really forced, you know, the, the corridors into the state of Arizona. Why not, why not rip the fence across southern Arizona?
>> Steve Gallardo:
Well, and first of all, first of all, who is going to pay for it and what happens when the fence doesn't work? I think when you start dealing with illegal immigration, you can't piecemeal this problem. You have got to deal with it entirely. The fact is that there is a number of folks that are coming into our state, our country for the purposes of working. Our economy is driven by a lot of undocumented immigrants, especially when you are looking at the agricultural industry, the tourist industry. They depend on the immigrant workforce to come in and help out in that effort. So, when you started talking about illegal immigration, you can't just piecemeal this process. You have to deal with it entirely.
>> Michael Grant:
But, as you well know, a growing number of them -- the security concerns are quite valid. The crime concerns are quite valid. You are certain to get into the exportation with a lot more crime across the border to the extent that you throw up a physical barrier, like a fence, coupled with, you know, obviously you don't walk away from it and leave it alone with manpower. Why doesn't that become a better deterrent?
>> Steve Gallardo:
You know, first of all, there's no question that we have to secure our border. We have to do more to make sure from the homeland security -- I ask that we do have a secure border, but there's much more that needs to be done. We have got to lean towards increasing the number of border patrol agents along the border. We have to start looking at comprehensive immigration reform, not just a wall. Granted, a wall may be a temporary patch to it, but at the bottom lines, they are still going to find a way to come into our country, as long as the workforce demand is here and as long as our economy is in need of this labor, they will continue to come. It's a magnet driving them to our country.
>> Michael Grant:
So Steve, what I'm reading is that -- I am not trying to trap you here -- but obviously, Senator Kyl's legislation has got a strong emphasis on border security. You would be in favor of that, but you want a more comprehensive look at the thing, as well? Maybe along the lines of the Mccain/Kennedy approach.
>> Steve Gallardo:
Exactly. I think we need more of a program of something that is needed heavily in our industry, especially in agriculture and tourists, so along with that, along with what do we do with the folks currently in our country now? So, we need a legal path of citizenship, as well, not just a guest worker program, but a legal path of citizenship. Family unifications are other issues that we need to deal with, so there's a whole broad of spectrum of things that we can look at. The fact is we need to start dealing with it now.
>> Michael Grant:
Here's the problem a lot of people raise with the guest worker program. They see it as an amnesty program, and I think this came up in the conference in the last week and over weekend. You look at what happened in the 1980's with an amnesty program that was supposed to give us all a clean start. It was supposed to normalize the situation, and instead, 20 years later, we're a ton worse off than we were in the mid 1980's. Why didn't the same thing happen again if we get a guest worker program --
>> Steve Gallardo:
What happened in 1986 with the amnesty, again, we're going back to the piecemeal. They never secured our border, they never reformed our immigration policies in terms of a legal path of citizenship. They just granted amnesty to folks that were in our country undocumented. That's not the way to solve the problem. We cannot piecemeal this problem. We have to focus on it entirely. So, when you start looking at just amnesty, it's not going to work. We need to secure our border -- we need a legal path of citizenship, we need family unifications, we need all these parts to be fixed out before we can solve the problem.
>> Michael Grant:
I made the comment last week that immigration is getting to be a lot like the weather. Everybody is talking about it and nobody is doing anything about it. Did the summit here advance the ball at all?
>> Steve Gallardo:
You know, it did. I wasn't too sure exactly what to expect being on the panel. Come to find out that we're not that far apart in terms of what we want. We all want to tighten our border security, we want comprehensive immigration reform. I think this was at least a step in trying to get local folks to talk about it, as well as national folks, but when it comes down to it, we're not that far apart, and if anything a plus that came out of it is exactly that, to realize that we're not that far apart, we just need to start discussing, roll up our sleeves and get to work. The federal government has failed us. We need to make sure and hold the federal government's feet to the fire that this is something that needs to be taken care of and needs to be taken care of now. Arizona has a crisis, and it needs to be dealt with.
>> Michael Grant:
We are going to have burned feet. Representative Steve Gallardo, thanks for being here. The campaign is called "You're It," and it's designed to get the attention of community members, policymakers, leaders, and parents to focus on the importance of early childhood education. At a rally today at the State Capitol, children signed banners urging community involvement in preparing preschoolers for school. Governor Janet Napolitano on hand getting the students to learn, and said it's a wider responsibility in the community.
>> Governor Napolitano:
The schools can't do it by themselves. We all have a role to play. We need the parents and families to be involved, business leaders to help us shape public policy. Political leaders to do the same. Our faith-based community definitely has a role.
>> Ken Burdick:
Arizona ranks 41st in overall child well-being. 48th in the percent of children without health insurance. 41st in the percentage of children living in poverty, and that's out of 50. Those are not numbers that we ought to be proud of. When you look into those beautiful faces, what you can't see is that 90% of their brains were developed by the age of 3. Those first few years are incredibly important. When you look at those faces, somehow there's a disconnect with those numbers that I just reported. Those children and hundreds of thousands just like them in the state of Arizona deserve better. So, here's the question -- how do we improve upon those figures? The very first step is to recognize that, in fact, we can and we must do better.
>> Michael Grant:
Joining us now to tell us more about the statewide campaign is the chairman of the Partners for Arizona Children, Dave Howell, who I haven't seen in a long time. Dave, how have you been?
>> Dave Howell:
Doing well. Good to be here, Michael.
>> Michael Grant:
All right. We have kicked off the "You're It" campaign. What is "You're It"?
>> Dave Howell:
I am going to try to enroll you in it in the process. Partners for Arizona 's children is a coalition of representatives from the private sector, the public sector, the nonprofit sector, includes educators, includes practitioners in the early childhood world, and the common thread for us is a firm belief that it is in all of our best interests to care about and invest in Arizona 's youngest citizens, to make sure that every child growing up in Arizona has that chance to be -- to arrive at school healthy, safe, ready to learn. Lots of components to that. Lots of different ways to get there, but our goal is to raise the level of public will in this state to, to make those kids, those youngest kids a higher priority.
>> Michael Grant:
Yeah, and let me -- let me stress that aspect of it, as I understand the campaign. It's not a specific programmatic-recommended campaign. It is that elevation of awareness about the situation generally, about what happens in those years and, and what, what may or may not happen later depending upon what does or doesn't happen in those years?
>> Dave Howell:
That's a very fair assessment of it. There are lots of policy ideas about, about how, how to achieve these ends. Some involve considerable governmental intervention, some are private-sector driven, but at this point, we think what is most important for Arizona is, is for all of us to have a better understanding of how critical those early years are and how that investment in those early years can reap a very dramatic return later on. The most recently statistics from the researchers who have been tracking children now for decades, these are now adults, about the impact of this kind of early access to higher quality, early education and those kinds of components, that return, they are saying is $17 for every dollar you spend. It's that ounce of prevention versus pound of cure. It's the dollars you don't spend on the prisons and the social service and things like that.
>> Michael Grant:
I think that some people look at this. Understand it's well intentioned, maybe even understand the merits of it, but get concerned that, you know, you lock in these kinds of programs, and they tend to become institutionalized. They tend it become one-size fits all, bureaucratic, those kinds of things, and they say, you know, I'm not sure -- I really want to go down that path.
>> Dave Howell:
Well, that's why we are at the, at the partnership, we are specifically trying to stay out of this year's solution de jour, if you will, from somebody's political agenda. The model that we have gravitated towards on a programmatic side is really one of local choice. North Carolina has been a pioneer in this, and there is certainly some tax funding, public funding that supports it, but the decisions on what to do are based on a community-by-community basis. It's what this community needs, what Page in Arizona might need compared to what Maricopa county or, or the greater Phoenix, itself, might want, totally different. The environments in those communities are different. The response, the solutions may be entirely different. And that's why we have stayed away from being this prescriptive mandate. We think that local people getting engaged in this dialogue at a local level with their peers can reach the solutions that are right for their community, and that's the kind of grass roots mobilization and empowerment we're trying to facilitate.
>> Michael Grant:
All right. Dave Howell, Partners for Arizona Children. Good to see you again.
>> Dave Howell:
Good to be here.
>> Michael Grant:
The first phase of the Florence courthouse project has now been completed. The clock tower has been stabilized. It is no longer held together by wire. In fact, one of the best-kept secrets in Arizona history involves that very same tower. The Florence courthouse is the oldest public building in our state and still being used for public purposes. Producer Mike Sauceda brings you this Arizona story from the heart of Florence. The story was done before the clock tower was stabilized and suggests there might be something still haunting the courthouse.
>> Mike Sauceda:
Time stands still at the county courthouse in Florence, at least on the stamped metal clock faces.
>> There's never been clocks in the clock towers, there wasn't enough money, so they brought in clock facings, and these are made of pressed metal.
>> Mike Sauceda:
Some think they read 11:44, others read 9:00 or 11:43. Here's one version of why the hands rest where they do.
>> John Swearengin:
That when they built this courthouse, they set the time on there at about a quarter to 12:00, so people coming into town would know that they could come to the courthouse and get their business done before they shut it down at noontime.
>> Mike Sauceda:
But there's no doubt that time has been flying for the rest of the structure. The oldest, continuously used public building in Arizona. The 111-year-old courthouse was built in 1891 for $29,000.
>> John Swearengin:
This was the second courthouse that the county built. This was the third courthouse they used. They rented the first one, which was an adobe building. The second one -- or the first one they built is in the state park.
>> Mike Sauceda:
The courthouse was constructed to show the county was planning to prosper, even though the curtains in the clock tower are actually just paint.
>> Ernie Feliz:
This is American/Victorian architect prosecutorial style. It's a bit later in the period when we began to see we're getting away from adobe construction, and we were able to -- we have a railroad now, and we can bring in materials from other parts of the country.
>> Mike Sauceda:
The building is rich in architectural detail. The work abounds throughout. Some of the original doorknobs are still in use, not something you can get at Lowe's. Feliz's family has lived in Florence for as long as the courthouse has been around and has fond memories of the building, especially the staircase.
>> Ernie Feliz:
I'm talking 5 years old my mother brought me in here, and walked in and saw that split staircase, that was something that I wanted to run up and down all day on because it looked so fabulous, you know.
>> Mike Sauceda:
But the building where Swearengin worked as a clerk of the court in the 1930's is falling apart.
>> John Swearengin:
The only thing it has done really since I worked here was deteriorating, more or less, because like me, it got older, and you have to allow certain deterioration.
>> Mike Sauceda:
The total cost of renovations depends on which plan the county decides to use. The most complete renovation would involve taking away parts of the building built after 1891, especially the parts where the brick and mortar didn't match the originals. That would restore the building to its original cross shape.
>> Ernie Feliz:
Complete restoration would involve removing the additions of 1982, 1975, 1933, and 1917. So, then you would have the cross-shaped building in 15,000 square feet. If you go back to -- the other alternative was keeping 1917 and getting rid of all the other additions, and then, and then, and then the third alternative was to keep 1933 and get rid of the two later additions. The fourth alternative was to keep all the additions.
>> Mike Sauceda:
The old courthouse in Florence has seen a lot of history from murderous Winnie Ruth Judd, who had an insanity date there. The last stagecoach robber in America had her trial in it. And there's even talk of ghosts.
>> John Swearengin:
The one thing that I can say there might be a ghost somewhere in there, if not the ghost, really, it's the, the ones left behind in the cemetery. This building sits on what used to be the town cemetery, and when they took all the bodies out, they missed a few, naturally because a lot of them weren't marked. Some of those ghosts may be floating around. That's the only basis for our ghost story that I know of from this building here.
>> Mike Sauceda:
But ghosts don't stop people from loving the ole courthouse.
>> John Swearengin:
they love this place. It's a treasure for the whole county and for the state, really. The people in Florence, particularly, because it's part of our lives.
>> Merry Lucero:
What are the benefits of increasing Arizona 's opportunities in the biosciences and biotechnology? Arizona has a skilled biotech workforce but needs to build greater capacity for the 21st century economy. That was discussed at a recent Arizona town hall. We'll have that and more on Tuesday on "horizon."
>> Michael Grant:
Wednesday, we'll present a Horizon special on education. Thursday we'll be looking at Payday Loan Centers, and then, of course, on Friday, please join us for the journalist round table review of the week's news' events. Thank you very much for being here on a Monday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Have a great one and good night.
Steve Gallardo:State Representative;Dave Howell:Chairman, Partners for Arizona Children;
