Pittsburgh City Councilwoman Tonya Payne said today that she has a plan to fix and maintain the Hill District's damaged Freedom Corner monument that involves transferring ownership to the city and raising money for a trust fund.

Freedom Corner appeared to be vandalized last month, and former Councilman Sala Udin criticized Ms. Payne for shifting funds from a long-unused account for the monument into a fund for general improvements to her district, which includes the Hill.

The monument is owned by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and had been leased to, and maintained by, the Hill Community Development Corp. before that arrangement expired some time ago, Ms. Payne said today. As a member of the URA board, she will propose at next month's board meeting that the property be transferred from the URA to the city, she said.

"Once it becomes city property, we can maintain it from the same fund with which we maintain other city monuments," she said. Then she will set up a trust fund that can only be spent on Freedom Corner's maintenance and improvement, and approach donors.

"It is a valued monument for the City of Pittsburgh that we can't afford to lose," she said. She said she moved $56,500 slated for unspecified work at Freedom Corner into the district improvement fund because she feared it could otherwise be snapped up for other projects outside of the Hill. "I just wanted to safeguard it until we figure out what we're going to do with Freedom Corner," she said, adding that there are "a million different ways" to use that money to benefit the Hill.

Last month a glass casing that housed a monitor at Freedom Corner had been shattered and the monitor shut off. One of the waist-high light posts ringing the memorial had also been removed, leaving a stub of wires exposed.