18 August 2009 | Approved: 15 September 2009
Chair Bob Booher called the meeting to order at 7:30 pm. Bob Booher, Chair, David Neumann, Margot Bohan, Mimi Styles, David Stopak and ex-officio member Sandy Klingenberg were present. Councilor Favret, liaison to the HPC was also present. Member Neumann agreed to take minutes for the meeting.
Approval of Agenda/Adoption of Minutes
The agenda proposed by the Chair was reviewed, modified, and then adopted by the members. Minutes of the regular HPC meeting of July 16, 2009 were not ready and member Bohan agreed to prepare them for the next meeting in September.
Review of Projects
There were no projects to review.
Council Report
Councilor Favret presented a report on Town Council issues relevant to the HPC.
HPC-PC Work Sessions
The Chair reviewed for the HPC commissioners the status of HPC/PC work sessions.
Rule of Procedure
Member Neumann regretted that he had not put together a new draft of the HPC Rules of Procedure.He said he would try to prepare a draft of parts of the Rule of Procedure for the HPC for the next meeting in September. The Chair explained that he would like to incorporate some of the recommendations in the report by the Maryland Association of Historic District Commissions (MAHDC) into our procedures.
Member Bohan explained that she had examined the material on the Town Web site that is made available for applicants for a building permit. She explained that the explanation of the process is not sufficient. She had created a test of the procedure and found many vague, unclear, and inconsistent, or irrelevant questions that would be difficult for a person unfamiliar with the process to understand. She felt that the Town applicants for a building permit had to fill out a form by the County which was not consistent with the Town process or which did not really explain the Town process. She felt there was a need for a separate form for Town applicants for a building permit.
Members felt that would be appropriate and important that we prepare a draft of the HPC Rules of Procedure so that the PC could discuss modifications to the Building Permit Application process and modifications to the instructions for applicants on the Web site. Members agreed to write out a new set of procedures for building permit approval, not rewrite the old ones. Margot Bohan agreed to write out her ideas after her recent test run through the Town web site part of the process.
We discussed approaches to obtain speakers for the Woman’s Club and to coordinate with the Woman’s Club an outreach program to assist in educating residents on the role of historic preservation in the Grove. Margot and Sandy will be contacts for this effort.
Items postponed to the next meeting were: Contributing House identification, Heritage Day, and the photography project. Ed Roberts will report on the latter at the next HPC meeting.
Adjournment
The next meeting will be held Tuesday, September 15, 2009, starting at 7:30pm.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:30 p.m.