17 July 2005 | Approved: 21 March 2006
The July 19th meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission was called to order at 7:30 p.m. HPC members present were Bob Booher, Chair, Chris Kirtz, Bruce Rothrock Ed Mroczka, and David Neumann. David Stopak attended as Town Council liaison. David Neumann volunteered to take the minutes. Due to threat to his property Ed Mroczka had to leave shortly after the meeting was called to order.
Minutes of previous Meeting:
Minutes of the meeting of April 19 were approved subject to agreed upon changes to be made by Chris Kirtz. Minutes of the May meeting were not yet available to be approved. Minutes of the June meeting were discussed and approved subject to modifications to be made by David Neumann.
Review Session
There were no reviews.
Old Business
Town Archives. Chris Kirtz and Bruce Rothrock were acting as coordinators with the Town Archivist. As Bruce Rothrock is stepping down as a member of the HPC Chris will remain as lone coordinator. He agreed to check with Mary Challstrom regarding the progress towards the purchase of a second computer for the Town to be kept in the meeting room area and the archiving – database software for the machine. He agreed to report on the status of the purchases at our next meeting.
Rules of Procedure. We made a copy of the draft Rules of Procedure for the HPC for each of the members.
Contributing Structures. We did not discuss augmenting the list of contributing structures, except for one building. It was agreed that the house currently owned by David and Brenda Gumula at 205 Maple Avenue should be added to the list of contributing structures. The question of editing the house histories that are now on the Town Web site was discussed. As the Town histories were written by Claire Kelly, the discussion centered on how to coordinate this effort and whether to or how to find volunteers for the Heritage committee to do such work.
Photograph Project. Chris Kirtz said that he would get the project underway.
FAR Subcommittee. Reported that the members of the subcommittee had devised a Questionnaire. The Town council had approved it. It will be put into the bulletin for September. Bruce Rothrock suggested that we test out the Questionnaire on several people. It was decided that we would each try it out on a small group of people. The question was raised, but not answered, as to how several members of a household could respond to the Questionnaire, if only one copy was sent to each household. The questionnaire could be downloaded from the Town Web site and additional copies could be made available from the Town Clerk upon request. It was agreed to make sure that Bill Saar, the Town Webmaster should receive a copy and put it on the TWG Web site.
The Intercounty Connector (ICC). Bob Booher, chair reported on his efforts to contact Bruce Grey, Assistant Director of the Office of Planning and Preliminary Engineering of the Maryland State Highway Administration in Baltimore on the subject of the noise effects on the Town due to the proposed construction. The Chair sent a formal protest to ICC officials with a copy to the State Historic preservation officials. Basically, this is an ambitious effort to protect the historic character of the Town, namely as a quiet refuge away from urban sprawl. Members of the HPC agreed that there is no doubt that the construction of the ICC will affect the noise level and viewscape of this historic district. They agreed to the content of the correspondence as written by the Chair.
A copy of the Chair’s letters to Mr. Grey dated February 14, 2005 and May 30, 2005 are included in the paper copy of these minutes. The letter of February 14, 2005 is available on the Town Web site as (LettertoSHA.doc).
Board of Zoning Appeals: The Chair reported on the BZA hearing on the building permit application for 103 Brown Street. Permit was denied by the Planning Commission. Under appeal the BZA decided against the Town Planning Commission and for the plaintiff that the interpretation of the particular zoning ordinance by the PC was incorrect.
Town Master Plan. Members agreed that the HPC will need to participate in the writing of the next or revisions of the current Town Master Plan.
New Business
Façades and Decks. The members agreed that we wanted to review changes to the façades of contributing structures. The discussion centered on the problem that at present, to the members knowledge, no permit is required to alter the fafaçade of a building. We discussed decks and the consensus was that we were primarily interested in reviewing decks if they were visible from the "front" of a house, but were less interested in reviewing them if they were on the rear of a residence.
Next Meeting: The next meeting was scheduled for August 16, 2005 at 7:30 pm.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:30 p.m.