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Councilmember McGovern referred to Attachment 1; the resolution, and it talks about the zoning of the property as R-1:6500; one family residential. Then it states that the replacement of the existing home is allowed pursuant to Pleasanton's Municipal Code, etc. She asked if staff was talking about 215 or 205 Neal as the existing home. To her, everyone calls this a shed, but if it is an existing home, then there are two homes and not a shed on the property. Mr. Dolan said there are two homes on the property, and someone is living in the shed. Councilmember McGovern said to her, this is a livable home and is considered by the City a home. Councilmember McGovern said people who know her well knows she really respects the historical homes in the community. When they last voted to have one demolished, it was 103 years old; she fought hard to keep it. There were all kinds of reasons people said it should come down, but to her it should not. The flavor of this community and its character is that there is a history of 103 year old historical homes and many communities do not have that. Pleasanton should be relishing it and showing it to their children. When doing the Alviso Adobe, they had to build buildings back that had been knocked out, and they lost the flavor and history as to where the Adobe was sitting. This carriage house is part of this main development of the Hall family. It is an accessory building to the history of that home, and this to her should be maintained. She thinks that if they built behind it and kept the façade of the front, this would be a way to add to the home. She thinks it is worth saving. She thinks the DSP does 2 things; 1) it tries to protect the flavor of the downtown, but 2) it encourages the knocking down of historic homes for more density. This is exactly what happened on Old Stanley and when a historic committee meets, they should look at the fact of not removing these historic homes just because we want to add density to the downtown. As for the DSP, she stood on the street at the home when it had story poles and again last weekend. In looking at the block, there are 4 houses-the new Mr. Harvey home, the Flail home, the home at 205 Neal and the home on Second and Neal Street. There is a big home being built on the end, a small historic home next to it, and you take the smallest one out and put another big home. This changes the whole streetscape of the street because it varies from new home, old home, new home, old home and right now it looks like a historic block. She actually believes that the design standard of the DSP Policy #17 which talks about avoiding excessive lot coverage and maintaining appropriate separation between buildings does not do that in this case. She also thinks garages in the area are supposed to be done behind the house. She worries about the house that also backs up to this property because she did go in the backyard and it gives a feeling of a tunnel, and this definitely changes the character of that person's home. With this, she does not support the demolition of the carriage house based on those facts of the DSP and the Design Review Criteria. Councilmember Sullivan said there is a real problem in town; they have a historic downtown we want to maintain and keep in good repair because that is the soul of the downtown. But, little by little, house by house, they are destroying this. It seems like every couple of months, this seems to happen. The City Council has a priority to develop some historic preservation guidelines or ordinance, and this is what their focus should be on and finish before looking at any more of these applications. Ms. Shapiro talked about every time a new regime comes in, the rules change. Back when he was on the Planning Commission in 2000, that Planning Commission actually adopted a Historic Preservation Ordinance. It never went anywhere; it ended at the Planning Commission and never got adopted. So, the most important thing to him is get some good guidance in place before looking at any of these projects because they are slowly tearing down the downtown and replacing it with historic look-alike buildings. On this particular project, he feels it clearly is too big for the site. They have tried to come up with 100 different reasons as to why it is okay, 3 variances, and possibly a 4th variance, and he questioned how rational it was for everybody to share their backyards. It clearly does not meet the two standards, as well which are so important to the downtown. He could not make any findings to say they are complying with this. Councilmember Sullivan said there are a few other problems with the application and it disturbs him that he began on the Planning Commission in 1998 and on the Council in 2004, and the kinds of conclusions he has seen in the application are disturbing. A historical study done by a professional says there is no historic significance, yet a common citizen goes to the Museum on Main and finds all City Council Minutes Page 19 of 25 February 7, 2012