Planning Board - workshop

Good evening You got a microphone here Welcome to the joint work session between the HCC and the planning board We've had we've got a few things to talk about I've talked to both Margo and Reagan about some of them, but it's not intent. We're not intended to limit the conversation Too much. We only have an hour. So we'll use what we need One of the topics that has become Think a semi urgent one again is the issue of the boundaries of the historic districts itself and In particular, you know as they look along the Middle Street corridor I'll give that as an introduction and if Reagan if you want to Jump in or I can add additional comments before we have a conversation. I

no I mean I think that we there have been lots of topics that we've discussed lately within the HTC one of the main ones that keeps kind of coming back is the boundaries and whether or not we we know we need to address sort of the unclear boundaries the problematic boundaries along Middle Street but then that also leads to the idea of Is it time with the master plan happening this year to really take a holistic look at the boundaries of the entire district and have a discussion about that as well?

on that latter point that is going to be taking place that's part of the master plan conversation and we want everybody here to definitely take part in that conversation the master plan consultants utile they're going to be working with us to put out a new flash vote poll to get some also some public input on these topics of historic district boundaries various things related to the historic district and Since the all the HTC members won't be here. I'll just pass along one bit of information from the Consultants today. They want photographs from us to put into the master plan So keep that in mind if you're walking around town see something you think is significant for whatever reason and be sure to share your photos you can get them to either to us or to Monty up in Karen's office to get them to the consultants so that's one of those small issues with our prior master plan we didn't have enough local photographic input but we've got plenty of folks who can do it and so let's do that and is this um are they asking for photographs of any sort of input so good things bad things yes needs improvements yes so not sunsets no that might be the cover shot but you know there'll be a competition for that probably but for the you know the folks who know more about historic districts than i do you know there may be historic properties that you feel are really significant and deserve a place in the sections that we'll be talking about historic resources and things that need to we need to pay attention to as a city so keep that in mind but other things you know you know you know a photographic opportunity when you see one and pretty much everybody's got a camera in their pocket these days so we can do that one thing i will add my background is a lot in zoning and land use planning i've been doing it for decades i do a lot of expert witness testimony on the topic and i have a bit of a void or had more of a void until recently in the establishment of historic districts which i've done more research in myself to get myself up to speed on and i can say that the historic district around middle street by establishing a the width from the road was logical but not best practice best practices typically follow property lines and don't go through buildings so something to keep in mind as we go forward uh... and it's also recommended as you go through establishing the limits of historic districts because it is a zoning overlay to go be very careful as you go follow those general guidelines of following property lines Significant natural features where they may exist we don't have a lot of that in our historic district, but some some places you do But to justify if you make a change write it down and keep a record of it because It may be challenged at some later point and it's a good idea to have that have that record to back it up The other thing that we didn't have we we the planning board stopped considering modifying it because of the master plan update process but there's been a lot of conversation lately about reinvigorating that and getting it going to do that we need more public input so beyond the flash vote input we're gonna have some public meetings to generate public input and discussion think it would make sense perhaps to have both our boards get that input but the Planning Board has to get that input because it's a zoning decision so you folks can talk about it and we can talk about it tonight so that's the first the first big topic I've got others but folks want to start talking about that yes was that your hand you didn't bid you just okay

tony i wonder if it'd be possible to have a like a maybe a series of one-on-ones like on topics like development 101 you know historic district 101 because i we want the input to be valuable and like you know input if i were to take facebook input it would not be valuable right like stop the development so why is this going on you know and so there's got to be like a i feel like it's going to be a little bit barrier of entry to A little education, you know, what the rules of the road are, what state law prohibits and allows us to do. And then maybe, you know, I think if we had those forums where we invited people in, I'm not talking about an hour-long session with a quiz afterwards, but just, you know, a short bit. These are what the rules are. This is how we're operating in these environments. What do you think given that?

Were you part of the Municipal Association discussions we had a couple years ago? They came and provided some input. I don't know. We did it with the Conservation Commission. I think you were here Karen yeah I think it might have been before you were here that I know they do that and had a conversation with another counselor recently and the suggestion was to have in addition to our ADU booklet have a ZBA booklet a planning board booklet and an HTC booklet I think that's a great idea and ties into what you're saying too so we can i can reach out to we can reach out to municipal association to talk with them about historic district resources and some of these other topics because they do that on a regular basis and they will come here if they can't come here they could do it by zoom they've got a lot of online probably even better having a third party rather than Well, that's, there's a benefit to that.

And we are, the HTC is having, um, a training session day that we, we got clg grant funds for certified local government grants for to do some training by the national alliance of preservation commissions and they're going to come in and we picked out a series of topics that they'll do we are inviting all of you as well as the zba what's the date that we decided was the best it was in october don't remember i believe it was like maybe the first friday in october but once we get that established we'll send it out to you so hopefully you can put it on your calendars those are topics that more pertain to specifically the htc but and it's not necessarily big enough to open it up to the whole public it's more to inform and train our land use boards but at least that's that would be a start i'd love to do obviously we need to do something before october to have this conversation but just so that you know that that's on the horizon and hopefully be aware of that that's going to be more in depth i would assume yeah yeah and that's october 2nd october 2nd so will that be here yes it's a friday and it's like an all-day thing so

back to what you're talking about about having handbooks for everything that it'd be nice if those handbooks were helping people understand how to give us input very specifically because there were a lot of questions around that that have come to us as counselors we've gotten emails and I've had conversations with some people about that and it's a great idea but I want to make sure that when it gets written it's like written plainly so that anyone can understand them and I just want to make sure that's part and back onto the districting Middle Street, are we allowed to take just parts of the district, like just that one street? Because there are streets that we have a lot more pushback and we get a lot more emails about people on both sides of it, which is why I kind of was like, okay, maybe we need to stop and take a look at it. But that one street wasn't one that had any pushback. Right. So I feel like if we could just take at least that one street and move that forward and see how that goes and then maybe look at other aspects, I think that would be a good idea.

I'm not sure what one street is, but yes, you can do that. It's good practice to have a basis for that beyond just the squeaky wheel, if that's possible, and it usually is. If you look at something, if somebody is, got a rationale it may you may not fully agree with it but at least it's the rationale and so long as there's a basis for it yes you can do that so it could be the entirety or it can be sections I fully expect by the end of the year first the next year we'll be looking at revisions more broad revisions to the historic district possibly even extensions to it you know I mean keep an open mind city's not getting any younger

When you say revisions, in what capacity?

Amendments to the limits of the historic district. You know, at one point, I mean, years ago there were two historic districts, as some folks here know, and that became somewhat burdensome. I don't know that we're going that direction, but I know there's a corollary issue of demolition control. Demolition control is a big deal, and it's difficult to do that outside a historic district, but that's currently being researched.

so we'll have some more thoughts about that just a quick comment you just introduced one of the points I wanted to make was we considered some fairly major expansions of historic districts 15 years ago and the conclusion we quickly came to was the workload at the time we were very daunted by the workload it was going to cause not only for the Commission but for the staff and so that will remain a concern I'm sure for all of us and we learned a lot going through that process that there were there were only two opportunities in the state to

regulate architectural design and one was a heritage district do we want to have we considered a heritage district or is that it's been a while since I'm not up on that that's here on my agenda yeah you put your glasses on it's actually Heritage Commission and Heritage Commission is authorized under innovative land use controls which didn't fully exist 15 years ago There are, I believe, on the order of 20 municipalities that have heritage commissions in the state. And in most instances, they're advisory. So it's a group that acts much like a conservation commission, but they don't administer an overlay ordinance like the HCC does. They look at historic buildings, historic places, places of historic significance and provide input. They can also act... The demolition committee does currently where they would review a demolition permit they Put a placeholder on what they can do, but at the moment they can't stop a demolition But they can delay a demolition much like the demolition committee can The thought is for the advisory historic Commission header Heritage Commission is to educate the public on and to educate the applicant to hopefully through education get good results as opposed to being the hammer method where you can't do it because we say so we're going to tell you it's a better way to do it and hopefully you do the right thing sometimes that works it's obviously not going to work in every instance uh... i think Given my latest reading as of just a few days ago, there may be a way to have under innovative land use controls additional, well I know there is, there's additional controls available beyond advisory controls. This raises the issue of are there enough volunteers that want to do it? And can staff handle it if it adds to staff workload? And I don't know the answers to those questions tonight.

Less so about where lines are drawn, but more so how they are regulated or implemented. One of the things we've talked about before is more about sustainability and improvement to historic structures. And I feel as though in daily conversation, one of the inputs the suggestions or insight from people that own historic homes is i love my house i want to stay in my house but it costs a bunch of money to improve my house in the compliance or conformance of the historic district so maybe when we do some of this redistricting or improvement auditing to our hcc we could look at ways to help some of these homeowners, property owners to improve their homes and make them more modern by today's standard while still being compliant. And we've talked about sustainability types of tax credits or trying to get to those, but I don't know if that's been something that you guys have talked about in the HCC specifically.

We have, and actually, that's also one of the things that's coming is that we have, a year ago or two, we had money set aside to actually have an additional chapter written for our guidelines specifically on sustainability and resilience and so we just need to actually like get the consultants under contract and do that but that will be and that will be we'll have a public input component of that where there will be a discussion and education on like how how can we bring in better ideas and values and and

and guidelines on what is appropriate for balancing those two things yeah I look at like programs like New Hampshire saves and how they offer so many incredible rebates and resources like they'll connect you with these contractors or they'll connect you with people that can do a home audit and while it might be very niche and you wants to offer that specifically to our historic district at least putting those resources out there and saying to homeowners or property owners that you know, we get it, we are fully understanding that it's tough and challenging and expensive to maintain these homes in this order. But at least it's an olive branch to these folks that otherwise may not exist.

Absolutely.

I think there are two big issues here that that we probably do need to address when we're talking about specifically zones like Middle Street and the way that Middle Street is drawn every month that we delay fixing the lines on Middle Street a homeowner that is adjacent to Middle Street that that is unintentionally in the district has to think about getting permission and doing work that is compliant with district rules when they probably won't be in the district in a year or two years when we finally get to the place where we're redrawing these lines so we're we're basically costing them money to do things that are compliant with district rules when they they won't be in the district down the line and I think that that's really unreasonable for homeowners so so I think it's important that we move forward more quickly than we've been thinking about moving forward simply for that that reason but I think there's also the secondary issue of homeowners needing more guidance our guidelines are very subjective which is very challenging for your average homeowner and having a little bit more guidance whether or not that's in a booklet that says you know this is generally what is acceptable not not here the guidelines that are subjective but here are the actual materials that that you can use on your home that is a certain period which other communities have in their historic district guidelines I think we need to consider some of these elements because it saves you money if you know in advance as speaking not just from being on the historic district commission but living in the historic district if you know what is approvable before the historic district commission and what is an acceptable material You don't have to necessarily hire an architect, hire someone. You can just go out and pull an administrative approval and do that work. And that saves you time and money. So we need to be thinking a little differently as well.

sensing from the two councillors comments that there may be a more urgent need to address a particular topic especially when the word fix is being used so yeah that's that's I'm aware of that I'm in my mind I was thinking it's a this year issue anyway but it may be a sooner than this year issue I spoke with the homeowners today it's in that exact situation their house is outside of the HTC

but the garage that they want to fix up is in the district so i said that has to be here so um see that's not good practice yeah i mean but it is what it is i'll just echo uh what kate said joy kerr um

I'm on. Part of my why for being on the Historic District Commission is because of my experience going through it as a business owner and a homeowner on Sears Street. I think if there had been a materials list, I just would have bought those windows, but instead it cost me more than $30,000 in custom-built windows and saving a light that is trash, frankly, now that I know about it. So that's one thing I'm advocating for strongly is that we have I understand every property is different, but at least some reference that potentially could be approved because all of that information is actually in every single packet. It's just unstructured data. I have a technology background, so I'm going to talk a little bit in tech. It's unstructured data and 250 pages of one PDF that you just can't access. But if someone were to go reference it, they could say, hey, this window was approved. Marvin windows tend to be approved. But the average homeowner or business owner does not know that. And that's really, I think, what's leading to some of these increased expenses, fears. When you hire architects to do that, had I just been able to be like, here's little windows that would be approved on a very standard looking property. Secondly, I think the urgent issue is these lines going through property, this ambiguity in the city hall, Position to say look at map geo that's open to interpretation right now like is my house or is it not and you have to click eight times to get through what you can't even get to from the HTC site a Friend of mine bought a house on why bird in December and she thought for sure she had to go through the historic district because everybody told her she did she called me I couldn't even answer if she did or didn't in the moment I think amending these property lines that go through property lines and having a clear list that's accessible to homeowners is a very simple, easy step that feels a lot more difficult than I feel like it actually is to execute on right now. And then we'll get the boundaries moving ahead. So those are my two comments about what is urgent and then what should be the approach for redefining boundaries.

Regarding guidelines and materials and so forth, when I was on the Commission with you, Reagan, we did put together very robust guidelines. I don't know how widely they're used or even distributed now amongst members. When I watch HCC meetings, I don't see guidelines referenced. I'm hoping that they are used and understood significantly because it was That was the answer to this issue back then. There's been a need for this, and we did solve that need, and perhaps if you haven't already, maybe that needs to be revisited and updated. But it was very thorough with materials and what materials were appropriate where and when.

it is i think it's um i think we did that right before there was that transition to fully online portal you know um applications where usually an applicant would have to go into the planning department and they would you could say here's the book of guidelines look through them get it and now it's sort of link that you can click on but a lot of people don't know it's there so that part of that falls on us to make sure that we are educating and advertising that to make sure that everybody knows about it but during meetings are they used during your your meetings are they referenced and it seemed to me that they just disappeared and they weren't being used at all every once in a while in our discussion will sort of say oh yeah this meets our guidelines or it doesn't but you know that would also be better practice for us to start really it is on the website it's on the website but it'd be better practice for us to actually bring it up

just to shoot my mouth off for a moment i think they're mostly used as the basis of arguments rather than the basis of leadership or decision process uh i don't think the way that they've been shoved online has really enhanced their opportunities to or people's opportunities to utilize those tools. I kind of consider myself a bit of a professional and I find it difficult to weed my way through it in the online world.

Yeah.

And so there's a reason why you don't see much of that being utilized during meetings.

Yeah, we all had the actual book printed out and given to us back when we produced it.

No one can push it through the interweb to people, though. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's another case of the information is all here, and it's just not. It's hard to access. We learn from this all the time in our meetings where people will ask about projects and so forth, and it's all here, so it's a matter of getting it in front of people.

Okay. Tori.

not to make this too corporate i kind of feel like we need some like overarching principles and i think especially the htc because now with everything being online a lot of the residents their only interaction with the city government is coming to the historic district commission And that can be a challenging experience, especially when they're just not given those guidelines. And so I think if we had an ethos of making lives easier for our residents, get through whatever process it is, the HDC, the ZBA, the planning board, that should be the overarching thing. Are we making it easier for our residents to go through this process? and um i think we could all if we had that i'm sure there's other guidelines we want to have you know are we are we impacting negative way the way the housing costs are you know i think we could we could have these things that we could filter every like opinion and idea that comes forward through that filter thing are we achieving these goals

our mission statement yes trying not to say that but yes a thought and listening to tony talk um it would be great if those guidelines were almost part of an asking tool i don't want to use the letters that everyone uses but if someone could say i'm trying to do this and it takes you right to where in those guidelines we just need somebody who's techie enough that could figure out how to it make those interactive and maybe that's you know a web page and say you before you put in your application ask this what you want to do and then maybe it does feed you all the right information

yeah that's actually in our discussion something that margo had brought up to even have like sort of a check box to say does this application meet our guidelines so it at least alerts the applicant that oh there are guidelines i need to check and and look at them right now when you go on the htc it's just a free form upload your documents if you go through the planning board there's actually many questions asked and so the capability is there but it needs to be

implemented on the platform which my understanding it's relatively we had a similar situation with the ADU issues when Beth and I were on that committee at the beginning we reached out to consultants and found out and I was horrified to find out that it was costing on the order of $30,000 for somebody to make an application for an ADU That was, well, we fixed that, I think.

The states really fixed it.

marco yeah i think um we've had a bunch of discussions about trying to make things easier both for the commission and for the applicant particularly with regard to materials instead of having you know cut sheets that are a zillion pages long or no cut sheets at all having people enter the data into simple spreadsheets it says okay what are your windows And if you list the window as being vinyl, it says, sorry, you can't have a vinyl window. Here are the windows you can have. And I think if we can eventually get that as part of the application, then as people start to fill out the application, you get that feedback that is not specific as in you can't buy this particular brand of window. You can go to a different brand, but the brand has to have aluminum clad or no vinyl or you know certain things that we can help people go through so that when someone says i'm uploading vinyl siding as one of my materials the system just says no you know you can't or you can try but you're going to run into you know issues so i think there's a lot of technology that we can use and it is an upfront investment but i think the savings over the time with savings of the commission as well as savings for the applicant would be more than worth the investment and then just to to joe's point of having more district or more of the city covered by the district and a question of whether we would have enough people who would volunteer to help with that i think if we have more districts in the city the people who live in those districts the people who are outside of the south end become involved because they are now invested it's their neighborhood or it's near their neighborhood or you know they have an affinity with their neighborhood as opposed to this singular focus of it just covers downtown and the south end and if you don't live there you don't care you know it's just it's It's out there. And so I think that limits sometimes the number of people who want to and can give their time. It just doesn't seem to be, doesn't affect me directly.

What I'm hearing is that a lot of these things should be defined before it even gets to a meeting and to a board so I think it's a matter of what you find when you walk through the door over here and go to the planning department and what you're presented with of course a lot of it is you you have to ask the right questions but i think before you get assigned to a night of coming before this board a lot of that stuff should be solved no one should be coming to the board with final siding do you guys have a pre-application process that you use

Yeah, it's like it's like it works there's in the planning board process there's something called a pre-application So I want to do whatever I want to build a building. I want to do a subdivision whatever I've got some ideas, but I need some feedback from this group so before filing an application you have a non-binding conversation with the planning board and where it's literally you know somebody can say your building's ugly or you know we don't like where you put your parking lot and the applicant can either listen or not and then come back with a formal application. But it gives the opportunity for feedback in a conversational way. So you can say, vinyl windows? No, no, I can't do that. Things like that. That's something that might work and for larger applications, and I thought of this when I watched at least part of your McIntyre conversation that went into the wee hours. an application like that and maybe some other applications i think it would make sense to have that conversation but also pre-application discussion with the planning board members because there's so much overlap on a big project like that i think it's just be more fair to the applicant and to the city as a whole to have more

so we don't have a pre-application process we do have work sessions that for big projects act like that opportunity where we have a more informal discussion we can give feedback before they actually come and make a formal public hearing application but i do think in just so you know we've had this conversation before with big projects it would make sense to start i don't know of any project that's going to be bigger than the mcintyre looming on the horizon it would make sense for our two boards at least to start talking having a joint meeting or at least have them the ability for the applicants to work with you at the same time as working with us whereas in the past it's usually one road and then the other and so i think that having more conversations between the two of us and the zba if necessary but you know the land use boards should be more um in conversation with one another

I agree and I think from what I've seen some applicants have almost used the HTC process as a weapon To say you can't we can't do any changes.

We've been with them for nine months You know, so that's that's an issue As far as the McIntyre project that applicant I think is pretty savvy and brought in some local guns that really know their way through the system. And they won't be taken by surprise by anything that goes on. But you're right, we don't have that luxury always with all applicants. But I don't think that making a particular rule to take care of the McIntyre project is going to be important because they they've been working on their plans to talk about money invested to make something happen they've been on eight months they've been working on plans with a cadre of individuals working as best they can hand in hand they're going to be fine but it is i'm not saying that there's no problem but we don't have to manage them they're going to be fine

we have to be careful about specific applications so it's not talking about the specificity on that project but just in the general sense especially on larger projects but I've seen it on smaller projects I think there's more communication with our two boards and the applicant would be beneficial for the whole process did you have something else I always had the same concerns we shouldn't be talking about an applicant before any of the boards yeah

Yes, Andrew. As it relates to Dave's comments about technology, I think that technology only works when people can find it, use it, and execute it properly. And while I'm always for that, I think I've used the example before, a lot of our processes could follow the same execution as ordering a people from dominoes online like it should just be a selection like what do you want here what am i doing here and then at the end of it you just click submit so it can look like that alternatively speaking because counselor cook had mentioned timing and how some people are hung up in this timing snafu um and administrative approvals could there be a process that exists where an applicant like say it's a one-off homeowner some siding renovations could come into City Hall you know on a scheduled week or scheduled day almost like office hours for a professor and come in and have that conversation very informally and then walk away with a lot more answers than questions and then come back either for the actual administrative approval or with a full-on application and so in those office hours of sorts it could exist where one of these members or several of these members on both boards could sit there or you know be scheduled to sit there or city staff could sit there and answer those questions proactively so that the property owners are not like hey i have to go through all these processes only to find out if i'm right or wrong excuse me right or wrong and then they then have again like a better runway to actually execute that plan meetings with board members would be difficult problematic i think meeting with staff fine yeah but um and occasionally board members could sit in as a less than a quorum level for conversation but you know i i do it to peter stith all the time and whether he likes it or not like i call him and i say hey can i do this and then he gives me an answer but i'm not sure that every property owner would know how to do that or know who to call for that and so if there is some better mechanism to advertise to these people hey if you are considering redoing siding under your historic home here's the resource and then

that prompts a really good conversation that they then eliminate a million questions and walk away with great answers and we i mean we meet all the time with homeowners and we can't make them change their applications we can advise them that that might not get approved but

on the first topic that I brought up not gas for a vote because that's not appropriate or workshop but is there a consensus up or down that we should proceed with the modification to the historic district boundaries soon yes well certainly the ones we've spoken about already if there's others that we haven't spoken about we'd have to but Middle Street obviously is something that shouldn't require us to spend any time beyond tonight

And I think if there's a way, so we had kind of come up with an idea for the redrawing, but it hadn't, guess it had had a chance to go to the public and so we got a lot of public feedback saying hey why didn't we get a chance to weigh in on this um and so i think that we i don't think we're far off from the original sort of draft that we gave you to consider but i think that we need a little bit of we need an opportunity for the public to weigh in and maybe we still kind of rejigger some of the boundaries a little bit i want to make sure that We, both of our groups, are happy with and agree on whatever methodology we use to redraw those boundaries. We obviously want to capture property lines rather than go through property lines, but which things are left out or left in, I want to make sure that we have a good written description of what our decision is.

Just quickly to pick up on that and then I'll get to you folks Because we're on this topic and I'd like to have this be an action item The other best practice after going following property lines and doing the process that I mentioned earlier the recommendation is to consider a buffer and outside it because of the impact that a property adjacent to a historic district could have on the historic district now i'm not advocating it i'm saying what i've read so something to think about and that does specifically one of the recommendations is to include vacant properties especially because they can have odd things put on them Now, in that regard and what Reagan just said, I don't know if you guys want to jigger it a little bit more or if we should proceed with getting into public input and then make modifications, which may result from that public input.

I also, because you also have to, you're the final approval of this. Council's final. Well, Council's final, but it has to go through you after us. you know does it make sense to have a small working group of maybe two hdc and two planning board members to kind of get it ready for the meetings with the public yeah i don't know how these i don't know how this we can do that okay i don't think we need to do that for the middle We could just we could just proceed with that and get the public input and make the modifications and recommendation to council that can happen fairly quickly I think So what happened so the original historic district It was downtown and South End and then over time it kind of grew and was modified and at one point they decided the city decided to extend the historic district along middle street and so what they did at that time and i think this was in the 90s is they just said which again good intentions but not best practices they were just like okay on 300 feet or whatever on either side of middle street this is going to capture all of the historic resources that abut that are around middle street the thought was what you could see how far you could see it was a view shed type thing the corridor yes right as a quarter um only uh what was it 20 10 2009 is when islington street was then added islington street then they they the city said we're going to capture all of the parcels that abut islington street that is better practice um but it wasn't it was just not the same it was done at different times with different people um

kind of leading the the charge so what we're trying to do now is go back and clarify the middle street boundaries because it has made over time way too much confusion and for general zoning practice it wasn't out of line to say a certain distance from middle street that's that's not unusual zoning practice but it's not best practice for historic districts so there's a difference if i may just it's it's worth pointing out like

That Islington Street was really well thought out, well planned. There was, I mean, back in that period of time, there was a study of like, how do we make, because it was such a dramatic end to the downtown once you got to Maplewood Ave. It felt like completely different, and it's been remarkable over the last 15 years, 18 years, how much that has blended together. This place is a part of it, so there is, we should relish our successes of people that came before us, but

that's been hugely improving okay we'll proceed with that so to clarify I mean the only rejiggering that I could see that we could do after what we had originally submitted was to potentially add a few more of the parcels that are fully captured now by the historic district this sort of corridor this visual that don't necessarily front on Middle Street What we had done is said we're just going to capture all of the parcels that hit Middle Street, but. You know it. Maybe there are some side properties that are highly visible from Middle Street that also need to be captured. But again, we could do either. We could go straight to the public and say, you know, get feedback or. And then maybe take a second look at this or. Go the other way.

sounds like you have some things in mind and i know you have expertise in this field so we're probably looking at july at the earliest for this meeting why don't you see what you can do to give us something that makes sense three weeks how does the conversation go when you tell somebody their home is going to be added to the historic district It's part of the education process and the other thing I didn't mention about a Heritage Commission one of the things that it's specifically requested to do by statute is education and That's something that to me has been missing in the city is an understanding of what it is that the historic district means what it does What are the benefits and you know, that's completely missing from what I can tell and it's missing on many levels including governmental levels so Understand that definitely unfortunately education does not trump the

expense or responsibility or constraint that goes into being in the historic district for property owners there's also added value and i know you're the broker and i'm not but from the research i've been doing there's there's a lot of added value to historic district properties i would agree with that certainly and i'm not going to sit here and say like don't do it but i think that people certainly do or do not buy in those areas because of that reason and so if I got a letter in the mail saying that I was going to historic district, that would be a whirlwind of confusion. And like, what do I do next? And so part of my consideration, more on the business side than that, than not, but would be, do I have a timeline as to when I will be entered into historic district? What aspects of my home are grandfathered? What are not? And, and who can I talk to about this? Because that like homeowners sit there and they, you know, prioritize their level of renovations or repairs or what have you. And to get that letter in the mail would be, you know, shock to the system. And so it would just be very sensitive how that is played out or when.

well rather than have a standard just public hearing i think it would make sense in this case to have notice to the people in the district and any changes that are happening with this what we're talking about so we make sure that the folks are informed we did get as you may recall when we started this process based on what the htc sent to us we did get a couple of pretty hot comments so both ways yeah don't take me out don't put me in

So I owned a property on Islington Street when that process happened and we were added and there was a lot of public discussion the public had opportunities to come to the HTC to the council to weigh in you know pro and con I remember that that there was a time frame that it took for that discussion to happen I don't remember if there was a lag between the decision and the implementation that would allow people to say oh my god i've got to sell and get the hell out before i'm in the district and i was not aware along in my immediate neighborhood i was not aware of anybody who freaked out and and felt that they had to either exit quickly or were gobbling up properties because suddenly the property values were going to go up it was a pretty neutral thing i think a few people were against but i think most people were for

What is the rationale of having a couple of the islands in the Piscataqua fall in the district Pest Island, Goose Island So they're not in our regulated district they're not in our local district they are in the National Register district which is different and is not regulated it's just It's got your boundaries It's a lovely designation

would come into play if someone um was developing with federal funding there is some things that would come into play it's not something that the city regulates you had your hand up earlier ryan too and i i guess um as a new member of the board but as someone who actually went to school for historic preservation i'm still confused on what the historic district is attempting to protect what period in history what was that designation process and what was it based on because obviously if you're gonna look at a different neighborhood you're gonna look at different attributes you know over by like the Don Darrow school those were 1940s and 50 post-war so that would be a completely different materials list than what you're talking about the south end so I guess I'm trying to figure out if we're looking at properties and saying oh now you're in the district does their property even is their property what we're trying to preserve i guess i'm trying to figure out so that's a really big question yeah that has a lot of history behind it um like i said our district was added over time it was started in the mid-1970s when

the idea of what is historic is different from what we consider historic um the just to clarify for everybody to put everybody at ease the modifications and the clarifications of the boundaries along the middle street are not intended to add really any properties I think maybe one was going to be...

There was one, and he sent a letter, and then so the planning board took it out.

And then we realized that, no, that wasn't supposed to be added. So nobody's, at this point, which should make it a pretty easy process, is no one is actually going to be added right now. if we have a when we have a more robust discussion of the boundaries of the whole district these are topics that will be discussed is what areas represent you know the parts of Portsmouth's history that we want to continue to protect so um just to put that out so the middle street thing should be pretty quick and easy we will definitely we will be removing more properties and not adding any but it's just it's more of a clarification as pieces of property exactly not even a whole property right it's that corner or that garage right it's pieces of the property that might be considered being in the historic district but really should not be so we are taking those out

To your question though, as I understand it, it's very context sensitive. So you have the different historic areas of the city and that, which is going to be really appropriate in the south end. Maybe it's going to be very different out by new Franklin or whatever.

which is why our our guidelines are so subjective because every property is different and every property is historically significant in different ways and different materials are appropriate for different types of properties so it's it's complicated bill can i go in a little different direction for a moment

Beyond the regulatory specific district. Is there any way to have some advisory guidance? outside, you know citywide The concern is building a bunch of stuff that all looks like Containers that could be somewhere anywhere.

That would be a Heritage Commission

Well, it's also something that the planning board is going to be, the master plan consultants are aware of that concern. It is authorized and it is something we're going to be talking about as a planning board.

So it would be some advisory guidance to, it's going to be more than advisory as a conversation.

Now, whether it ends up advisory only, but, uh, from what I've heard, it needs to be more than advisory, not to the level that HTC does, but different.

also on the subject of kind of different topics is is it possible i'm i'm ignorant to this is a honest question for homeowner all they want to do is a window replacement inside the historic district did not have to come before the commission can they just get staff approval if it's a like-kind exchange sometimes can we get there can we be more you know to me if i'm a resident i want the level of thing i want to do to my home to be commiserate with the the actions i have to take for the city door replacement window replacement fence replacement you know those things to me are should not have to go to the if they can do certain things they wouldn't have to go to we have a list of exemptions that are either you don't have to go to a meeting at all or but there are a few things that we have discussed that are admin approval

it's it's so complicated to figure out you know what window window replacements on one house might be fine for that house but would be totally inappropriate for a different type of house which is why there's We always have that discussion.

Admin approval is different. We don't have admin approval.

Okay. So, yes, there is an admin approval where Isaac will essentially look at an application. If it's simple, usually it's addition of compressors for HVAC and stuff like that, little things like that.

Fencing. Maybe if it's one window replacement, kind of smaller scope item.

and isaac will basically say yeah okay that fits you don't have to come in for a full public hearing but we look at all of his approvals and then we'll vote on them and say yes just so that we have a final approval to say yes this is fine you don't need to come to us like a consent agenda yes kate

I actually think that this is a very valid question and a very important one and the reason I say that is I live on a very historic street and I have one neighbor that was told they had to have windows with full screens one that was told over time they could have no screens another that was told they could have half screens all told they could have different kinds of windows over time the HTC's guidelines have evolved some and the practice of the board has evolved to be certain certain items would be more appropriate and certain requests would be approved but the members of the HCC change over time and preferences change and as a result i think individuals don't know what's going to be approved or not approved you may have a house that sits next to another house it's the exact same period time style and you're given two different opinions and that's why i'm asking for a little more specificity guidelines because it would also make it a lot easier to have administrative approvals for things like windows so if you knew that you lived in a Georgian home of a certain size and and style in a certain neighborhood this is generally what would be approvable by administrative approval before the hdc and you wouldn't have to put in a full have a full hearing so i think i think it's important for us to be talking about some of the things we we can approve we have to be consistent we can't have situations like you're describing that's that's inviting litigation that we will lose

just this may not be the situation that that caused what happened on your street but we have had situations where we approve one thing and the homeowner puts in something different and then they come back and because of the cost of what they've already put in we we say okay you know you've just recited the entire house you didn't do it the way we said but to make that person take it all off and start over again there's a reluctance to do that even though the person didn't follow the approval and so you can end up with someone who has full screens even though it was half screens that was approved and that creates a perception that different things were approved and that's not necessarily what happened.

just to elaborate a little bit more on what margo has said i this this was a number one complaint and has been the number one complaint for the hgc for decades windows windows windows windows and what has been proven is we cannot simply allow it's not simple and we just can't simply allow people to switch windows out and we talk about windows doors fences those are the most important architectural elements in historic properties typically they're very important And I rarely have this forum together to speak. I can't disagree more that we don't have enough detail. It's all here in the guidelines. It should have nothing to do, I'm looking right at them here, there's so much information about windows, types of windows, ways to replace them, materials, methods, screens are addressed. It's all here. It should have nothing to do with members coming and going. The guidelines should always... should always be practiced.

Do you think they need to be updated at all, Joe?

I don't think the window section needs to be updated at all. We spend a lot of time on this. The variable is when an applicant comes in, have they taken the time to educate themselves and do they value What we're trying to do because we've been mocked and when we catch ourselves in groups like this talking about screens We look silly half screens full screens, but those are important things But we've already defined what we expect from people in this in this guideline. I Don't know. I don't know why We can't just, it's right here, it's all right here. I don't know why we'd question it. We have to enforce it, that's all. That's easy to say, but it's hard to do.

Before we wrap, I'd like to ask, especially the HTC members, to read our existing master plan, the section on historic resources, and give us suggestions, if you have any, for things that are missing, or perhaps don't need to be there as we're working on the master plan update. I can get to staff, there's some communities, Moultonboro of all places is one that is touted as having a good example of at least the chapters. Obviously Moultonboro is a very different municipality than ours, but the things that they considered, that would be extremely helpful given your expertise to give us that input. Thank you. And we're just about ready to start a regular meeting. So unless anybody has any questions, want to thank you very much for taking the time to join us.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for having us.