SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Cristobal Lopez\u2019 first visit to Mission San Jos\u00e9\u00a0was unforgettable.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven walking in it now, you see how big it is, how pretty the church is, how peaceful and tranquil it is,\u201d Lopez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More than 300 years of stories told within the walls of this Spanish colonial mission.\u00a0Four of these missions make up San Antonio Missions National Historic Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe connection that people have here because people were born here, they were baptized here, they were married here,\u201d Lopez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lopez is with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), serving as a program manager for parks in San Antonio and El Paso.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The missions that make up the park and The Alamo combined are a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site \u2014 the only one in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are huge economic drivers because they get tons of visitation,\u201d Lopez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last year, more than 1.2 million people visited Missions San Jos\u00e9, Concecpion, San Juan and Espada.<\/p>\n
Coffee shop Sit & Sip With Me sits right across from Mission San Jos\u00e9.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely is an economic booster for us because they are from all around the world and they are coming here to San Antonio,\u201d Jaclyn Tarrango, co-owner of Sit & Sip With Me said. \u201cThey are coming to Mission Road visiting the missions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to NPCA, traffic for the missions has increased by 16% since 2023. But financial support has seen an opposite trend, the association says.<\/p>\n
\u201cStaffing has gone down about 20%,\u201d Lopez said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lopez says budget cuts this past decade left employees wearing multiple hats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recent cuts, he says, have taken an even bigger toll.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did a study and we found that National Parks Service has lost an additional 24% of staff,\u201d Lopez said. \u201cJust since January, just since the beginning of the year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Changes that impact businesses across the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would start their day here with coffee and then there would days at a time we wouldn\u2019t see them (parks employees), weeks at a time,\u201d Tarrango said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All eyes are on the nation’s capital as both the Senate and the House are discussing what that funding looks like.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them is the House interior bill, which has a proposed cut of about $176 million to the National Parks Service,\u201d Lopez said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the Senate, which is proposing that funding remain the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tarrango plans to host an event on Oct. 7 at her coffee shop, where folks will write postcards to their congressman to push to protect National Parks Service funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2014 Cristobal Lopez\u2019 first visit to Mission San Jos\u00e9\u00a0was unforgettable. \u201cEven walking in it now, you…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":249241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,7363,7362,7366,5281,93584,50,7202,7203,358,41035,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":{"0":"post-249240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-app-community","10":"tag-app-nested-news","11":"tag-community-news","12":"tag-ctv","13":"tag-jose-arredondo","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-san-antonio","16":"tag-sanantonio","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","19":"tag-tx","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa","26":"tag-vod"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115254299518562481","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}