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In a message dated 4/5/2004 4:58:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
the point I hoped to make was that we can demand of our This and the explanation that followed in your note were good points.
We have tried to get the Historical Commission to revisit its "Rules and Regulations" (an actual document) with an eye toward just the kinds of reforms you mentioned. Mrs Blackwell said she was open to tabling her Bill if the Commission offered to do just this and provided at least reasonable assurances it would do so in an open and transparent manner. I even thought that John Gallery of the Preservation Alliance agreed that this would be a solution that could maximize the benefits of preservation while minimizing its shortcomings.
Unfortunately, the Commission has totally ignored this recommendation. In fact, at their meeting in February, it was twice suggested (by Mr Sklaroff) that they "try to understand the motivation behind Bill 040003" and twice quickly dropped the topic and instead discussed "how to fight it."
There ought to be some room for flexibility here. It's clear that the the way the Commission operates, which isn't necessarily how the Preservation Ordinance originally intended, has caused a great deal of contention and polarization in a community we all seem to agree is tolerant of diversity (and that has to imply of viewpoints as well as ethnicity and cultural mores). Maybe a grassroots group with people holding diverse biews on this topic should meet with the idea of approaching the Commission (and Mrs Blackwell) with a proposal that the Commission lay out and follow a procedure for examining, in light of several years of experience including the reaction of this neighborhood, those rules and regulations.
The group might recommend that the Commission be explicit about the goals of historic preservation. Is it to preserve the visual fabric of an area as one passes through, or to somehow keep all features of a building true to the original? As an example, it's one thing to be concerned about the windows on the front of a house that's in an essentially intact stylized row, and another thing to be punctilious about those in an alley between twins that you can only see if you stand in a certain place and know where to look. Likewise, there's a difference between readily reversed elements like porch spindles and essentially permanent changes like changing the opening of a doorway. A current example -- th Commission allowed a mural on a wall in Society Hill because it wasn't an original outside wall (it was exposed when the building on the lot was torn down and was originally the inside of the fire wall for the now-gone structure), but they said they wouldn't have allowed it if it were the original outside wall of the standing house. What were they preserving? It had nothing to do with something anybody could see -- that "fit" or "didn't fit" the area. The whole discussion made no sense.
The group might also recommend that they examine which of the regulations get ral bang for the property owners' buck, and which are are past -- even well-past -- the point of diminishing returns. And that they eliminate or greatly downplay those that are really contribute little or nothing to the objectives.
Do you think that those of us (not excluding myself by any stretch of the imagination) who've taken opposite sides of this debate, who've occasionally let our emotions override our senses of civility, can agree that this form of introspection by the Commission has been shown long overdue by the dissention in Spruce Hill (arguably, the first nominated district where people knew what was happening long enough in advance to really look into it)? And, if so, can we present a strong, united, and non-partisan argument to the Commission and perhaps to City Council? If so, let's give it a shot.
Al Krigman
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