12 - Laserfiche WebLink

DRAFT commented about the value and uniqueness of the City, a big part of which was the historical character in the City's buildings. Commissioner Nagler stated that he completely agreed with Chair Allen. He noted that this is a terrific, important, valuable, Herculean effort which completely speaks to the underlying character of the community and is an important effort that matters and he applauds; and, as one person commented, to stop the incremental degradation over time with the character of the community is incredibly important to look at. He indicated that he supports the inclusion of review for the first ten feet because not covering that would lead to inconsistency. He stated that the trick in all of this seems to be how the City strikes the balance between encouraging the maintenance of these 88 homes which would necessarily periodically require remodeling, reconstruction, shoring up, residing, replacing front doors, etc., on the one hand, and maintain the historical integrity of the building on the other. He made an anecdotal, historical comment that it is hard to live in this community and care about the town enough to get into conversations with people about architecture and construction and preservation and all that, without the conversation at some point turning to how difficult it is to work with the Planning Division when they want to make any changes to their historical structure and how it can easily become a nightmare. He indicated that he is not suggesting that it is true, but it does beg the question: What is the City's attitude towards again, on the one hand, encouraging the maintenance of buildings so that they do not become dilapidated and maintain their historical integrity, but on the other hand, doing it in a way that discourages people from applying for changes to avoid what could be a nightmare and difficult encounter with the City and, therefore, avoid making the improvements to the home which ironically will maintain that home's integrity over time and bring value to the community? He noted that it is a comment that is not necessarily on point with what is being recommended this evening, but it certainly raises the issue of how this gets implemented in the real world in the individual experience of people approaching the City to make changes to one of the 88 structures. Commissioner Nagler stated that he thinks the survey is terrific, and that he completely supports the changes and would highly recommend it to the Council. He indicated that the changes and the color are entirely appropriate and necessary, but asks, going forward, how all this gets implemented in a way that strikes that balance. Mr. Beaudin stated that in the community survey that was done this past summer, people's perception and the survey results show that the satisfaction rate for the permitting process is actually fairly high, that in general, people have had a fairly positive experience with the Community Development Department and with the Planning Division in particular, and that is statistically relevant survey results that were done. He acknowledged that there are a lot of anecdotal stories and that there are certainly realities to the situation. He noted that the City is always looking for ways to improve the permitting process and will continue to do that. Mr. Beaudin stated that a lot of what was done here tonight or in the survey itself was an effort to identify the resource, to create a system that does streamline the review so people do not have to do this themselves every time; there is a baseline for what this DRAFT EXCERPT: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, 10/14/2015 Page 14 of 18