PC 101415 - Laserfiche WebLink

Commissioner Balch further clarified that the subject of the subsequent matter is the other homes in the district that did not make the scope of historic, the 88 homes, but were in the survey. Commissioner Nagler asked if this is an item that is either directly brought back to the Commission for further discussion or recommended to the Council that it be brought back for further discussion. Chair Allen proposed that the Commission wait until after the Commission gets the public comments. THE PUBLIC HEARING WAS OPENED. Linda Garbarino stated that she was a member of the Historic Preservation Task Force and supports the adoption of the Historic Resource Survey, which is a very well done and quite interesting document. She indicated that the City really did a fabulous job on the Downtown historic preservation, starting with the Pleasanton Downtown Historic Context Statement and moving through the process to the Survey. Ms. Garbarino stated that she supports Option 2 as it certainly speaks to the issues that need to be addressed in terms of going back to what was said about the conditions and the looks of the City's neighborhoods. She expressed concern that there were 103 homes that did not qualify as a historic resource for reasons ranging from a very minor to major and significant changes, as outlined by Ms. Petrin. She indicated that when the Task Force first talked about this almost three years ago, the members were told that replacing or relocating a second -floor window of a two -story home in the DTSP area would trigger design review, which seemed understandable; but knocking out a window in the first story of the house and putting in a sliding glass door or something similar would not trigger a design review. She noted that the Task Force found it very inconsistent that the upper story was scrutinized but the first ten from the ground level up was not. She added that the reason given for this was that historically, most homes had fencing and significant foliage around it so most of the lower part of the house was really never shown; it was the issue of what was seen by neighbors of the upper story and the significant impact that would have in terms of other people's rights to privacy. Ms. Garbarino stated that ten feet on a one -story home can be pretty much the whole house, and people have had the experience here in town of waking up one morning and finding out that the lovely little one -story house next -door has been stripped to the studs, and the City knew nothing about it. She noted that there is a major impact for those 103 homes that did not make the list as some of these are beautiful homes that have a significant look to them but could then potentially have some major changes overnight. She indicated that this is a little frightening to those who live in the historic area next to homes that were not approved for whatever reason. She noted that most people tend to want to do the right thing, but sometimes really critical errors are made that are expensive to change. She asked the Commission to consider making a recommendation to the Council to have staff review this and come back with some alternatives that do protect property values and historic property that citizens hold dear in this City. PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, October 14, 2015 Page 12 of 35