UA group ponders cactus garden in closed meeting

Tour the Joseph Wood Krutch Garden Elizabeth Davison, director of the University of Arizona campus arboretum, talks about the plants, history and future of the Joseph Wood Krutch Garden on the UA mall.

The group recommending what to keep in the Joseph Wood Krutch garden met behind closed doors only a few days after UA President Peter Likins raised the question of how the issue became so adversarial.

"That speaks volumes to how this process has unfolded from the beginning," said UA alumnus William C. Thornton.

Thornton, class of 1966, is among hundreds of people who came forward to support the little garden after learning about plans to move it from the University of Arizona mall to make way for a $2.5 million Alumni Plaza.

After protests, including 2,000 petition signatures, the Krutch garden is now part of the plaza in a new plan. But it is subject to modifications that could include removing any plant except its rare boojums, which have been there about 70 years.

The garden is named for a prominent author, revered by conservationists, who wrote about the Tucson desert after settling here in the late 1940s.

"We still don't have any kind of a final sense of what they plan to do with the garden," Thornton said. "If there really is an intention to proceed in a conciliatory manner on this, why are they insisting on closed-door meetings of this working group?"

David Duffy, the UA's director of campus and facilities planning, said he closed the group's meetings to reduce distractions. "It's a small working group and we have a specific charge. We felt that charge could best be met with some intensive sessions," he said.

"We certainly will make public our recommendations, at such time as we've finalized them, but we're not there yet," he said.

The group met Feb. 11, three days after Likins wondered aloud how the plaza-planning process got so contentious. The meeting started at 1 p.m. and ended nearly five hours later, and at least two more meetings are needed, Duffy said. They aren't yet scheduled.

James D.V. Stevenson, a UA law school alumnus, was turned away from the Feb. 11 meeting after UA officials cited an opinion from their lawyers that it could be closed to the public.

"It may be technically correct under the letter of the law, but I think it violates the spirit of the open meetings law, and I don't think it does anything to increase public trust in the decision-making process regarding the Krutch garden," Stevenson said.

"I wanted to have an opportunity to hear the thinking of the committee members," he said.

Douglas D. Metcalf, an attorney with Brown & Bain, which represents the Arizona First Amendment Coalition, said advisory committees that serve the university president are not specifically covered under Arizona's open meetings law.

Duffy described the eight-member working group as an "excellent representation of views and of expertise." He said several members are "well steeped" in the history of the garden and its namesake.

The Feb. 11 meeting delved "into really technical details" of the garden, he said. Some plants appeared there mysteriously over the years, he said, and several were relocated a year ago from a coach's office. There are duplications and a "significant number" of specimens that are not native to the Sonoran Desert, Duffy said.

* Contact Inger Sandal at 573-4115 or isandal@azstarnet.com.