City delays decision on pass-through funding for Union Bethel AME church restoration project

City Commissioners again discussed the effort to preserve the historic Union Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Great Falls during their March 18 meeting.

Last summer, the Montana Historical Society was awarded a nearly half-million dollar grant to stabilize and provide safe access to the church.

The $497,712 grant is through the U.S. Department of Interior’s National Park Service and its Historic Preservation Fund’s African American Civil Rights grant program.

Coupled with the church’s $200,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Saving Black Churches program, the funds will provide repairs to the failing exterior brick; installation of a new lift to provide access; create ADA-compliant bathrooms; and update the electrical system, according to MTHS.

The NPS grant program focuses on preserving sites and stories directly associated with African Americans’ struggles to gain equal rights.

Project to preserve Union Bethel AME Church hits snags, but efforts continuing

Last year, the Montana State Historic Preservation Office asked the City of Great Falls to administer the grant to allow more of the grant funding to pass through to the church project since the state is required take a portion of the grant for administrative costs.

During a Nov. 19 City Commission work session, Kate Hampton, community preservation coordinator at SHPO, wrote the grant application for the church, said that her office negotiates that rate with NPS annually and the 2024 rate was 23.5 percent, which is a “big chunk of change.”

City debating whether to administer preservation grant, help maximize funding for Union Bethel AME Church [2024

Hampton asked city staff if they’d assume administration of the grant since they can take a smaller portion of the grant for administrative costs.

During the meeting, city staff and commissioners expressed some concerns with administering the grant and eventually opted not to serve as the pass-through for the grant.

Instead, SHPO is contracting directly with the church to pass the grant funds to them directly, which requires more administrative work to certify the church with the federal agency.

In February, Hampton told The Electric that the combined grants are about $700,000 for the project, but bids came back in much higher, around $1.3 million, so they’re scaling back plans and redesigning the project.

Hampton said they had shifted gears a bit and asked the city to pass about $20,000 from other SHPO funding sources through to cover the cost of those redesigns. That project funding is included in the city’s annual certified local government application for historic preservation funding, which was split into two separate applications.

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The Electric reported that plan on Feb. 12.

Also on Feb. 12, Sam Long, the city-county historic preservation office, told the city-county Historic Preservation Advisory Commission that the application, with the $20,000 pass through request was scheduled to go before commissioners at their March 4 meeting.

The application was not on the March 4 or March 18 commission agenda.

During their March 18 work session, Tom Hazen, city grants manager, asked commissioners for their thoughts on moving forward.

Commissioners said they wanted more information and weren’t collectively ready to direct city staff to move forward.

During the March 19 city-county Historic Preservation Advisory Commission, Sam Long told the group that there was “some confusion” among city officials and the decision had been delayed.

Long is the city-county historic preservation officer and said that she reached out to SHPO, which gave her office an extension while staff works out the issues with commissioners.

Commissioner Susan Wolff said, “I think that the liabilities are limited for the city.”

Mayor Cory Reeves said he was comfortable with the reduced liabilities but “fundamentally disagree with the government being involved in these types of projects, just my own ideologies.”

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He said that he wants any similar grants to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Hazen told commissioners it was the first request of this nature the city had received during his tenure. He’s been with the city for about three years.

In an October memo to commissioners Hazen wrote that the city had acted as the pass through entity before, including several Big Sky Economic Trust Fund awards.

During the March 18 work session, Hazen said the request and agreement would be specific to the $20,000 and the design scope of the project.

Any adjustments to add more would require more review and another agreement.

Commissioner Rick Tryon said he thought they needed more information and “I’m uncomfortable with the city doing this kind of thing. Seems to me like it’s not something the city should be doing.”

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He said he was skeptical about city government being involved since some could see it as the city going into an episcopal church and supporting a denominational or religious activity.

Hazen said the project is a recognition of Black history and civil rights activities in Great Falls, which is what the federal funding specifically noted.

Commissioner Joe McKenney said that he thought the city’s liability on the project was low, but didn’t think that was the key question. He said that setting a precedence creates a new baseline and “there’s always that creep that I’m concerned about with how the line moves with the precedence.”

He said he was a no on the pass-through for the night and wanted more information.

Wolff said she didn’t want to let the church disappear and “I am perfectly comfortable” with the design portion of the funding passing through the city.

Brock Cherry, city planning director, offered additional information saying that the city’s historic preservation office, housed within planning, had facilitated similar grants in the past.

“I don’t know how drastic it is participating in this type of process,” Cherry said.

Long, the city’s historic preservation officer, said that her office had done similar pass-through grants in the past as technical assistance grants to multiple properties, including the Arvon Block, and that was the catalyst for the major project that is not the Celtic Cowboy and Arvon Hotel.

Long said the funds pass through the state and have to go to a certified local government, which the city is.

If the city opts not to pass the $20,000 through to the Union Bethel restoration project, the money will go to another Montana community, Long said.

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Long, who has been with the city for a few years, said during the March 18 work session that she wasn’t sure of the specific grant rules at the time of those technical assistance funds, which were allocated in 2011-2012, according to multiple city documents, but “we found the liabilities acceptable at that time.”

McKenney asked staff to help settle his “angst” at having been told by staff that the pass through grant request was unusual and the city had never done it before and then hearing that wasn’t correct and the city had administered similar grants.

Cherry said that the project should go through regardless, but they were trying to maximize the dollars available for the project rather than administrative costs forcing a reduced scope of work.

Based on the additional information, Reeves said he would support the $20,000 pass-through funding for the Union Bethel preservation process but didn’t think it was a good idea for the city to be a pass-through generally and asked if the city could create a policy.

Hazen said he was working with Melissa Kinzler, city finance director, to develop a grant policy.

City Commissioners adopted a federal grant financial policy in 2018, but it doesn’t appear to directly address whether the city should pass grant funding through to local organizations.

The May 2018 staff report stated: “federal grant guidelines requires the city to have a federal funds grant financial policy. The finance department has written this policy at the suggestion of the city’s external auditors, Anderson
ZurMuehlen, to document the procedures that have been in place and are currently followed by the City
of Great Falls. The city federal grant financial policy is to ensure all federal requirements for grants are being
implemented in full accordance with the Code of Federal Regulations, Uniform Administrative Requirements, cost principles and audit requirements for federal awards. This city is responsible for complying with all requirements of federal awards.”

Wolff said it sounded like the project could move forward regardless of their decision but was okay holding off to get more information.

Tryon asked if a design firm had been selected.

Long, the city-county historic preservation officer, said yes a local architect was on the project and he had served on the city-county Historic Preservation Advisory Commission for a long time.

Tryon asked who it was, to which Long responded it the firm was Sievert and Sievert.

Tryon responded, “they’re local?”

Ken Sievert is a local architect who specializes in historic preservation. His wife Ellen Sievert served as the city-county historic preservation officer, housed within city government, for many years.

Ken Sievert is a permanent member of the HPAC and both Sieverts are active in local historic preservation activities.

Reeves asked staff for more information such as how often they’d handled grants in the past.

A simple search of the city website for “passthrough grant” pulls a variety of results, to include that the city serves annually as a passthrough of federal funding to Great Falls Transit, as well a “pass-through” of state funds in 2016 for the Sun River Trail project for the non-federal match, but the program through which those funds passed has since changed, according to city staff.

That search of the city website, plus discussion during the March 18 commission work session, led The Electric to search the city site for technical assistance grants, which produced multiple documents about grant funding from the National Park Service that passed through the state, then to the city to create grants that supported multiple local projects, to include mention in two years worth of city planning annual report documents here and here, in which the city celebrated those grants as successes.

Those technical assistance grants were mentioned in meeting minutes here, here and here.

The city also acted as the pass-through for $832,500 from the Big Sky Trust Fund to the Great Falls Development Alliance for ADF International development in 2013; $150,000 for Calumet in 2014; $330,750 for BAE Aerospace in 2015; and $195,000 for FCR in 2016.

The city also handles federal Community Development Block Grant and HOME funds annually, which are used to support local projects, some internal city projects, and many by local agencies.

Long provided The Electric with further background information regarding past grant funding from SHPO and NPS.

The city has received annual passthrough grants from SHPO as part of the Certified Local Government program, which is funded by NPS. In recent years, it’s been about $6,000 annually, Long said.

Those funds support local preservation activities and if they aren’t used by Great Falls, they’re reallocated to other Montana communities. The program sometimes offers additional funding for special projects, Long said.

The funds currently proposed to pass through the city for the Union Bethel restoration project come from that program, not the NPS Civil Rights program that’s funding a larger portion of the actual construction at the church, Long said.

Past examples of special projects, Long said, include:

• 2011–12 technical assistance program: A $21,500 SHPO grant supported feasibility studies for five downtown historic buildings. Awarded through a competitive process, the funding directly benefited private property owners and leveraged matching contributions from local partners. The city directly paid the contracting architects rather than passing funding again to the business owners. The five buildings that benefited from the grant were the Baum-Trinastich Building at 114 3rd St. S., the Rocky Mountain Building at 601 Central Ave., the Arvon Block at 114-118 1st Ave. S., the Geo. Mill Building at 112 1st Ave. S. and the Suhr Warehouse at 117 Park Drive S.
• 2023 Boston and Montana Barn structural assessment: SHPO provided a $5,000 supplement to the annual grant for a structural study of the city-owned barn, which was matched by $15,000 in private grants. The assessment now informs ongoing fundraising efforts.

“The local preservation office has also engaged in several grants with organizations like Montana Main Street, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Montana History Foundation, for the benefit of both public and private property,” Long told The Electric.

A 2011 Montana Main Street grant engaged a consultant that gave a public talk on building rehabilitation. The Main Street Program and the Business Improvement District provided funding to help downtown properties like the Rocky Mountain Building, Arvon Bock, Lobby Bar and others produce façade renderings to guide rehabilitation projects, Long said.

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The Union Bethel AME church stands at 916 5th Ave. S. and is “one of the most significant properties associated with Montana’s African American Civil Rights history. Organized in 1890, congregants dedicated Union Bethel’s current church in 1917. By the 1910s, discriminatory ‘Jim Crow’ laws infiltrated Montana’s codes and local ordinances, placing restrictions on Black residents’ ability to marry, work, and patronize businesses. Unofficial but pervasive policies placed many constraints on African Americans. In response, Union Bethel AME became the center of Great Falls African American citizens’ civil rights work for social uplift, education, and equality at the local, state, and national levels,” according to a MTHS release.

The church that remains today was the second church on the location and completed in 1917.

According to the NPS’ document entering the church onto the National Register of Historic Places, the church is a “tall, one-story, rectangular, wooden structure with brick veneer that is sheltered by a steep gable roof. The overall presentation of the church is one of studied formalism, tidiness, and substance. Drawing predominately from Gothic Revival influences, the church also exhibits eclectic influences, borrowing from Tudor styles in the parapeted gable roof, crowsteps and the unbroken wall surface on the southern elevation. Features possibly drawn from Italian Renaissance styles include the square, centered tower and the wide overhangs supported by paired, wooden brackets. Exterior wall surfacing on the church is running bond and decorative brickwork is understated. It includes a soldier course above the foundation and double rowlock perimeters at the window heads.”

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The church underwent minimal repairs or alterations during the “period of significance from 1917-1950,” but after 1950, vandalism destroyed the original stained glass windows, which were replaced with textured glass, according to the NPS document.

“Despite this diminished integrity of materials and design, the building still retains sufficient integrity to convey its significance. The steeple roof also has been reshingled. Original lights and pews perpetuate the interior historic feeling. Overall, the building retains a high degree of historic integrity in terms of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling and association. During the period of significance the parsonage was reduced from the size it attained during the expansion of 1924, and was completely razed from the property in 1982,’ according to the NPS document.

Pastor Betsy Williams describes the Gothic Revival-style church as a jewel in the neighborhood and in a MTHS release, said, “I see life that comes from here. It’s a shining brightness…in the middle of this neighborhood; [it] is somewhere where you can gather, where there can be resources, where there can be help, where there can be spiritual uplifting.”

Photos courtesy of the Montana Historical Society