County Intends to Give Cross to Historical Society : Civic affairs: Following court order, officials disclose a deal to keep the landmark atop Mt. Helix.

Seeking to avoid removal of the Mt. Helix cross, San Diego County officials have worked out a deal to transfer ownership of the giant hilltop symbol near La Mesa from public to private hands, officials disclosed Friday.

The deal calls for the county to transfer the 36-foot-high cross and a small patch of ground around it to the San Diego Historical Society, which would then maintain the landmark, officials said.

Society officials are “hopeful and confident” that the deal--a transfer, not a sale--will go through, said James Vaughan, executive director of the society. However, atheist activist Howard Kreisner said he opposes the deal as an end run around the San Diego federal judge’s Dec. 3 ruling that the cross must come down.

In a far-reaching opinion, Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. ruled that the Mt. Helix and Mt. Soledad crosses, both in public parks, must go by March 3 because both violate the California Constitution’s ban on mixing church and state.

For the same reason, the judge also ruled that the city of La Mesa must change its official insignia, which features a depiction of the Mt. Helix cross.

On Thursday, a federal appellate court denied a bid by the city and county to extend Thompson’s March 3 deadline.

While the appeals grind forward, city officials say they will seek a way to transfer the Mt. Soledad cross to a private group. County officials said Friday that they have already been working for weeks on such a plan for Mt. Helix, disclosing the proposed transfer to the historical society.

The cross, built in the mid-1920s and situated in a 4-acre park owned by the county since 1929, “is a historical site, and transfer to a historical society is consistent with that,” said Dana Quittner, an aide to county Supervisor George Bailey, who represents La Mesa and other East County communities. Bailey has sought to keep the cross.

The Board of Supervisors is due to vote Feb. 25 on the transfer, Quittner said.

Vaughan said Friday that the society’s board will consider the deal Tuesday. The group, which runs four museums and has a membership of 3,500 people, would need about $5,000 annually in donations to maintain the cross, he said.

Vaughan also said he would recommend that the society place a new historical marker at the foot of the cross, one that would “honor the principles of church and state.”

“This (proposal) is certainly not an effort to circumvent (Thompson’s ruling), but to honor the law, interpret it and use the cross for educational purposes,” Vaughan said.

Atheist activist Kreisner, who brought suit challenging the Mt. Soledad cross in a case that was joined with an American Civil Liberties Union challenge to the Mt. Helix cross, called the proposal “a clever way to elude the court order.”

“It’s an evasion which fools no one,” Kreisner said. “It’s almost as if they’re trying to fool me.”

Betty Wheeler, legal director of the ACLU’s San Diego office, could not be reached Friday for comment.