15 January 2002 | Approved: 19 February 2002
Washington Grove’s Historic Preservation Commission held its first meeting on January 15th, 2002. Members present were Clare Cavicchi, Bob Booher, David Neumann and Chris Kirtz (designee). Larry French was unable to attend due to a conflict with other duties.
Mayor John Compton spoke at the start of the meeting. He informed the Commission that the Grove had a Historic Preservationist under contract and thought the Commission might want to meet with him/her during its work. The Commissioners expressed an interest.
David Neumann, who had prepared a draft meeting agenda, agreed to serve as Chairperson. Bob Booher agreed to serve as Vice-Chair. Chris Kirtz agreed to serve as Recording Secretary and to coordinate closely with the Town Clerk, the Commission’s Administrative Secretary.
Minutes will be reviewed via email, adopted at the next meeting and forwarded to Mary to be made public. The quorum was discussed. It was understood that a minimum of three members in attendance is required for the Commission to meet.
The Commissioners felt it was important to keep strong links with the Heritage Committee (HC) and decided to send Heritage Committee members copies of all final HPC meeting notes.
Clare Cavicchi will serve as a link to the HC and will coordinate what items of work they can help with.
David Neumann presented an initial draft of possible Rules and Procedures for the Commission. He also provided copies to members of the Bylaws and Procedures of the Carroll County and City of Annapolis Historic District Commissions. Some of the material in the draft rules and procedures were discussed. It was agreed to e-mail additional comments and suggestions to David in time for him to incorporate them into a new draft version for review and — possibly — adoption at the next Commission meeting.
The Commission felt it was important to understand the flow of applications to and from the Planning Commission and to and from applicants. Procedures were discussed for presenting recommendations to the Planning Commission and to applicants. It was agreed to examine how it could work best and, possibly, to do a “test case” run to explore how an ideal process might best proceed.
It was agreed that the nomenclature of the HPC’s work was extremely important and settled upon the term “Certificate of Review” to describe what would be issued and any recommendation[s] which might be contained therein.
It was further agreed that HPC guidelines, at minimum, must address three areas.
- Categories of "resources", i.e. to what degree a structure contributes to the historic and architectural character of the historic district.
- Which review standards or criteria to apply in reviewing projects; and
- Which items the Commission intended to review and which not.
The HPC will meet again at the Town Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, February 19th.