21 February 2005 | Approved: 21 March 2006
HPC members present: Bob Booher, Chair, Ed Mroczka, Chris Kirtz, and David Neumann. Councilman David Stopak attended as Town Council liaison. George Paine attended as he wished to discuss plans for his cottage on the Circle. The meeting was called to order at 7:30 pm. Mimi Styles was present at the start of the meeting but had to leave due to another engagement.
The Commission members approved the Agenda presented by the Chair. Minutes of the meeting of November 2005 were approved subject to certain changes to be made by Chris Kirtz. Minutes of the meeting of January 2006 were approved subject to certain changes to be made by Chris Kirtz.
David Neumann brought a corrected version of the December minutes and placed them in the HPC Binder. He presented a table showing the status of the minutes from 2005. There were still a number of missing minutes and he said he would continue to look for them. He agreed to take minutes for the present February meeting.
The commission members noted that the new Town computer was up and running in the meeting room.
Review Session
George Paine presented his preliminary plans for a retro renovation of Bittersweet Cottage at 15 The Circle. He presented Town archival photos of other cottages as well as his own showing the changes he intended to make. Marked up color photos on 8×11 paper showing some of his ideas are attached to the archived paper copy of these minutes. Some of Mr. Paine’s plans were for the removal/renovation of the rear portion of the building constructed in the 1970′ or 1980’s by the Dells. Other plans were for further changes to the upper window facing the Circle. Changes to facades are currently exempt form Town and County building permits. The Chair and members of the commission complemented Mr. Paine for his admirable efforts to preserve the cottage and bring it back as far as possible to its earlier more historic form.
Work Session
HPC Questionnaire. Councilman Stopak discussed the status of the Questionnaire. It has been collated, tabulated and summarized. The results were presented to the Town Planning Commission (PC). Council members received copies of the Tabulation and Summary. The latter was also sent out over the Yahoo Listserv and was posted on the Town Web site. It was noted that there was no action so far with respect to the survey by the Town PC. A copy of the results of the Questionnaire will be placed in the HPC binder.
The question was raised regarding what the next step will be after the Questionnaire. One suggestion was that the HPC should reexamine the FAR question and to see if the PC wants to get more involved. It was also suggested that the HPC integrate the results of the Questionnaire and its scale considerations to determine HPC goals for the Town’s Master Plan. It was decided to add the Work Plan Outline of the Committee dated March/April 2005 to these minutes.
Discussed means to ask volunteers who sent in questionnaires that said they wanted to volunteer. The problem was that the Questionnaires were not signed. Thus, it would be difficult to determine who exactly volunteered to assist in Heritage preservation efforts.
The commission agreed a good first step to following up on the questionnaire results would be to use the results to develop goals to be put into the Master Plan. Thus, the new agenda item “Master Plan Goals” should replace the agenda item “Questionnaire.” David Stopak and Bob Booher volunteered to work as a subcommittee on "Master Plan Goals".
Application Process. The members discussed the application process, i.e., the difficulties in the order of approval of permits by the PC and the review of the applications by the HPC. It was decided that little could change under the current zoning and HPC ordinance. Chris Kirtz suggested that a positve approach might be best. He suggested that at the next March meeting we should discuss ways to encourage applicants to discuss their plans earlier with the HPC. He suggested that we needed to emphasize outreach to the residents and think a bit more about marketing our ideas.
The Photograph Project. At a previous get-together of some HPC members the photos of contributing structures were sorted by street, road, and avenue. A second special get-to-gether of some commission members was planned for March 9, 2006 at 8 pm in the meeting room at McCathran Hall to place the photos in albums. Mimi Styles said she would – with her sister Sandy’s assistance – provide three sets of labelled dividers for each contributing structure.
HPC Rules and Procedures. The HPC tentatively agreed to a section 3.1 and 3.2 as drafted by the chair. We agreed that section 4 a-d could be placed into our procedures by reference to the handout that had been adopted by the Town Council.
At the current meeting it was decided that for decks – we would decide on a case by case basis whether we would review and for façades – we will encourage people to bring their plans for changes to façades. Members tabled further discussion of façades and decks until the next meeting.
New Business
Members discussed at length several definitions of accessory structures beyond the existing (in the ordinances) and proposed TC definitions. The descriptive word "contiguous" was discussed in reference to structures having a common wall. Members discussed whether a common roof was needed in the definitions. One idea was that common wall implied that the main and accessory building were on either side of the “common wall” rather than at the two ends of the wall. Some ideas discussed in this connection are attached to the archival paper version of these minutes. Some members felt strongly that sketches depicting what was and what was not considered to be a common wall/roof was vital to applicants understanding of what would and what would not constitute an accessory building as part of the main structure.
Miscellany. The next meeting will be on March 21, 2006 at 7:30 pm.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 p.m.