Tuolumne Veterans Memorial Hall update

I attended a meeting of the Tuolumne County Veterans Committee last week where members of Tuolumne’s VFW post 4748 asked the Committee to eliminate other groups’ use of the vet’s traditional meeting room in the Tuolumne Veterans Memorial Hall. Not only have the vets lost items and relics they cherish due to public access to the room, but they felt not all users demonstrate respect for them or honor the room and its importance to the vets.

Ultimately, the Committee decided to give it 6 months to see if some changes will alleviate the vets’ concerns and encourage careful and respectful usage of the room. At the end of 6 months, the Committee will hear how things have gone and make the final decision. In the meantime:

• Tuolumne Parks and Recreation District (TPRD) will continue to schedule public use of the room. They will, however, adhere to a policy of zero tolerance for groups and individuals that abuse the privilege.
• Tuolumne County Facilities Management will replace the entry doors with ones that can be locked to prohibit unauthorized access and will make sure storage areas can be securely locked. The county will also update its facilities usage policy during the first part of 2009 to address a lack of clarity and confusion and to officially establish usage and rental terms.
• A VFW Post 4748 member will go through the storage areas and remove items that don’t belong to them and TPRD will remove items stored in a closet in the room. If you have items stored there, please contact Rusty Jones to arrange for their removal.
• Post members will give TPRD a schedule of times they want the room and will have a key and on-demand access to the room at all times (except when it is scheduled by TPRD in advance).

I am thankful that many vets showed up to voice their concerns and support for Post 4748 and that the Committee honored them. We’ll see how it goes. I am pleased that the vets will receive the honor they are due!

USDA Rural Housing Program to  help homeowners and potential homeowners

Thanks to an alert friend, I recently learned that the Rural Housing Program is helping low income and the elderly make necessary repairs to their homes. For more info, contact:

Tonja K. Galentine
Area Technician
3800 Cornucopia Way, Ste. E
Modesto, CA  95258
Phone: (209) 491-9320 ext. 101
Fax:   (209) 491-9331
e-mail tonja.galentine

www.rurdev.usda.gov/

Vandals strike Red Church… again

Vandals have struck the Red Church in Sonora for a second time, according to Laurie Sylwester. Laurie writes:

“A second stained glass window was vandalized this week. The window is the “Virgin & Child” window – a photograph of this is in my current rotunda exhibition. I have donated three framed photos of the window and am holding a fundraiser to repair it.

The window has historical and cultural significance in our county, and it is for that reason that I will encourage the community to help pay for the repair. You might not be religious and you might be. It doesn’t matter how you think - your donation will be used directly for the repair. The last window cost $1800 to repair.

I hope to raise enough so that the current protection can be reinforced. If you are interested in donating $5 or more, your name will be entered in a drawing for one of the three photos. The drawing will be held before Christmas (one entry per each $5contribution).

If you can help, make your check payable to: “St. James Anglican Church” and on the memo line write “for stained glass repair.”

Donations are tax deductible and should be mailed directly to: St. James Anglican Church; P.O. Box 1145; Sonora, Ca. 95370. They will make sure your name is entered into the drawing.

The repair artist is the famed Peter DeMartini. He needed an archival photo for the restoration which I have provided. This is one of the reasons that I wanted to inventory the windows of the county – when there is a problem, there are photographic records and the collective will to help with repairs and protection of our cultural resources.”

This is a very worthy cause. For more info, contact Laurie at 928-3423.

Thank you for all you do and for your support. And have a great Thanksgiving with friends and family!

Not so, according to legal research conducted by Tuolumne County’s Deputy County Counsel Carlyn Drivdahl.

A group of citizens in Tuolumne has been working hard to improve their town over the last few years. Once a thriving community, Tuolumne fell on hard times after the closing of the West Side mill and most residents are anxious to see their community brought back to life while it retains the special and unique qualities they cherish.

They envision a revitalized downtown that will attract new businesses to help them rebuild. They are concerned about a handful of buildings (all over 50 years old) that would be difficult (and expensive) to rehabilitate, that contribute to the appearance of blight in their community, and that are safety hazards due to their rundown condition.

Tuolumne County is blessed with significant historic resources and the Board of Supervisors has provided for their potential preservation through its Cultural Resources Ordinance. If a building was built before 1958, this ordinance mandates that it can’t be torn down without a permit issued by the county, and then only after review by the three-member Demolition Review Committee (all members of the Historic Preservation Review Commission).

The ordinance has no provision to prohibit a building’s demolition, but the Committee can require certain conditions in exchange for a permit to demolish.

When the Committee considered and then approved the application for a demolition permit, they required some conditions of the property owners – among them photo documentation of Speaker’s Garage, a plan to be drawn up of its footprint, ongoing maintenance of the lot so it isn’t an eyesore, and others.

At least one condition was unacceptable to the property owner – a requirement to conduct a highly technical survey to National Park Service Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) standards. This condition was in addition to photo and other documentation and would have cost $5,000- $10,000, depending on the level of documentation required.

Further, the property owners felt several of the conditions were ambiguous and they were concerned about possible onerous interpretations so they appealed the Committee’s conditions to the Board of Supervisors.

At the initial appeal hearing, supervisors did not take action, instead telling both parties to sit down together, clarify ambiguous conditions, and come to agreement on new reasonable conditions (minus the HABS survey). The Board did not want to over-rule the Committee – we wanted the Committee to be reasonable and we wanted both parties to agree.

When the appeal came back to the Board several weeks later, we were told that the property owners and the Committee had agreed upon reasonable terms and the HABS survey had been eliminated from the conditions. But there was just one small problem…

Between the time of agreement and our Board meeting, the Fifth District Court of Appeal held in Valley Advocates v. City of Fresno that Fresno had not reviewed a demolition permit properly in light of California Environmental Quality Act’s (CEQA) requirements to make a finding of the building’s historic significance.

The Court opined the demolition should have been evaluated under one of three types of historical resources:

• Mandatory: A lead agency must find a resource is a significant historical resource if it has been listed on or determined eligible for listing on the California Register of Historical Resources. The court explained that it is only an official determination by the State Historical Resources Commission that triggers this mandatory determination. Speaker’s Garage is neither listed on, nor eligible for listing.

• Presumptive: A lead agency must presume a resource is a significant historical resource if it has been listed on a local register or included in a local survey that meets specified criteria, unless the preponderance of evidence demonstrates otherwise. Several experts testified that Speaker’s Garage qualified under this category, however, County Counsel’s research determined that the local survey had to have been conducted or updated within the last five years. The Tuolumne survey was conducted over five years ago and had not been updated so Counsel advised that Speaker’s Garage did not fall under this category.

• Discretionary: A lead agency may determine that a resource is a significant historical resource if it does not fit within the mandatory or presumptive categories, as long as the determination is supported by substantial evidence in the record. When such a determination is made the criteria to be applied include the criteria for listing on the California Register of Historical Resources.

The discussion turned to whether Speaker’s Garage is historically significant to qualify as a discretionary historical resource. In order to be historically significant, the Board would need to make a finding that:

1. It is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of local or regional history, or the cultural heritage of California or the United States; or

2. It is associated with the lives of persons important to local, California, or National history; or

3. It embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, region, or method of construction, or represents the work of a master or possesses high artistic values; or

4. It has yielded, or has the potential to yield, information important to prehistory or history of the local area, California, or the nation.

A number of Tuolumne residents testified that Speaker’s Garage was an important part of their lives growing up, but that it no longer resembles the building they knew and they wanted it torn down.

But now I saw a problem. I couldn’t get past #2. I asked the daughter of the man who ran Speaker’s Garage for years if she thought it applied – she didn’t think it did. She asked the Board to go ahead and uphold the appeal… let the building be torn down.

I felt the right thing to do for the building, property owners, and the community was to uphold the appeal so the property owners could proceed, but I was concerned that #2 did apply.

It seemed punitive to require the property owners to go through a time-consuming and expensive CEQA process when the building would be torn down anyway, but I felt Speaker’s Garage was associated with someone who was important to residents of Tuolumne.

So I acknowledged the difficulty of my position and regrettably made a motion that the building was historically significant under #2 and that staff should proceed through CEQA review. Only Supervisor Thornton agreed with me. We were out-voted 3 to 2 and my original motion died.

At that point, both County Counsel and I thought the Board’s failure to pass the motion was a finding that CEQA did not apply. Since I thought the Board had ruled that Speaker’s Garage wasn’t historically significant, I quickly and happily made the next motion to uphold the property owners’ appeal. My second motion passed four to one (Thornton dissenting).

The Guest Editorial writer was correct – my first failed, second successful motion, and subsequent vote – took just about one minute.

Several days after that meeting, Supervisor Thornton and others insisted that the Board, in fact, had not made a finding and the item needed to be reconsidered.

Over the next week, I talked to many Tuolumne residents and asked them to poll others. Out of many responses I received from long time residents of Tuolumne, only two people wanted to save Speaker’s Garage. Overwhelmingly, residents said they wanted the blighted building torn down.

When the item came back before us, County Counsel had done additional research. When I asked her if in her legal opinion Speaker’s Garage met the conditions for a presumptive historical resource, she stated it did not.

Next, based on additional questions on typical court interpretations of historical significance, four of five supervisors found for the property owners that Speaker’s Garage did not qualify as a discretionary historical resource and did not require a CEQA review (again, Thornton dissenting).

What does this mean?

The Guest Editorial writer and Historic Preservation Review Commission members are seriously concerned that the Board has established a worrisome precedent. With additional buildings on the list for review for demolition, they fear what happened with Speaker’s Garage will embolden others to eradicate important historic and cultural resources by influencing the Board of Supervisors to ignore requirements for CEQA review.

Many Tuolumne residents are upset, as well. They are upset that others are trying to control their community and that they may be prohibited from removing blighted buildings that property owners can’t afford to rehabilitate.

The reality is that no communities are without any constraints on what they can and can’t do and the Board will uphold existing federal, state, and local laws, including CEQA. Where it is appropriate according to County Counsel, CEQA review will be required but where it is not, it won’t. And the Demolition Committee will continue to review applications for demolition of historic buildings and will continue to condition their approval. The focus should be on balance and what is reasonable.

Our past is an important part of our present and future that should be preserved. But not at any cost. Individuals shouldn’t be forced to bear the entire burden. If a building is too expensive to rehabilitate, but is important enough to save, advocates should be at the front of the pack helping raise funds to do so.