Suggested Activities in Support of the State Plan

Assist with development of tribal consultation guidelines for use by public agencies in carrying out CEQA and Senate Bill 18 responsibilities.

Reach out to the professional planning community, including the American Planning Association, to provide training materials on integrating historic preservation into land use planning processes and programs.

Submit comments on pending economic development plans to ensure inclusion of preservation in plan strategies.

Train local government historic preservation commissioners, planning staff, and officials in historic preservation goals and practices.

Develop technical assistance that provides guidelines for identifying and evaluating cultural landscapes as a means of helping decision makers see the bigger picture when assessing project impacts.

Teach public agencies that consultation is a relationship, not just a process, and should be ongoing and regular, rather than project-specific.

Work to amend the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to mandate cultural resources protection whenever possible and refine the categorical exemptions to prevent inadvertent site destruction.

Increase the number of contexts (statewide and community-specific) to assist in conducting surveys and preparing individual nominations.

Conduct surveys that focus on resource types that haven’t been adequately identified and evaluated in the past.

Have a preservation presence at statewide and regional conferences of advocacy and professional organizations of potential partners including environmental advocacy organizations, local and regional planning agencies, and economic development and travel/tourism conferences and meetings.

Invite representatives of these organizations and agencies to attend and speak at tribal functions and forums.

Hold workshops or roundtables devoted to landscapes issues and invite land managing agencies and organizations to participate.

Create training programs aimed specifically at non-traditional partners and/or the general public—ensure the programs are understandable and speak to the issues important to their intended audience.

Use various communication methods and media to put forward examples of approaches and projects that can serve as models for future preservation efforts and focus on these specific successful examples in newsletter articles, training, and conferences.

Create positive, proactive working relationships between advocates and agencies that endure outside the confines of any specific project.

Support the use of language in land-conveyance documents to ensure preservation of cultural resources if the land is purchased by a public agency for open space or mitigation purposes.

Get involved with interpretation of historical and cultural resources to ensure tribal issues are included.

Create communications/outreach plans in order to strategically use various communications methods, avoid duplication of efforts, and maximize the reach and impact of messages.