AgdaPkt 2018-07-23 Joint SA PFA - Laserfiche WebLink

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On Mon, Jul 23, 2018 at 4:32 PM, Jon Pedley vrote: Dear Council, Let me start by thanking you for your service of our community; as one who has served on various boards that have dealt with many difficult issues over the years, it is remarkable how rarely anyone stops to thank you before pursuing their agenda. So, thank you! I am disappointed to be out of town during your council meeting this evening and hope that this note will reach you in time to be read, although I'm sure you are being flooded with opinions on both sides of the issue. I hope you will decide that the idea of a historic district should be rejected. I love Mount Carmel for the sense that it is still, despite rising prices, a place where families live, and for its tree lined, characterful streets. This character does not come, in my mind, solely from its shrinking selection aging bungalows with cracked driveways leading to garages in the back yard, nor from the small number of amazing well preserved or restored older homes that can be found on a veryfew blocks within the proposed area. It certainly does not come either from the number of old and new larger homes that have been springing up in the area for years (my own home built in the late SOs could be considered one such). I would also urge you to consider that it does not come from a particular architectural style, especially as none of the older homes appear to come from any style unique to Mount Carmel (English Tudor, Spanish Ranch, Craftsman, Cape Cod and the like). I do think that the character comes from a range of different, evolving architectural styles - modern homes built with concrete and horizontal wood siding can be lovely if well designed, for example. Bad homes of any style should be resisted. So, I would urge you to allow Mt Carmel to continue to evolve and not to try and preserve it in aspic or make it very difficult to remove an old, poorly preserved and badly designed home. Much of the argument for a historic district seems to come from those who have elected to renovate an older, smaller home and now wish to press other homeowners to adopt their tastes. This does not seem fair. It also seems to come from the feeling that it is sad that the only way in today's climate to justify paying more than a million dollars for a small home on a small lot is to try to enlarge it. While I share their regret, it doesn't change the economics of the Peninsula in the current era. A third issue is to object to the rash of homes that seem to max out the coverage, height and setback requirements in order to build the biggest home possible (and that these homes may be being built by speculators, not future fellow community residents). The size problem, honestly, may be the crux of the matter (I think there is little a democratic institution can do about speculators) and for that the only reasonable answer seems to be to modify the architectural standards of the community to enlarge setbacks a little, perhaps,or to limit square footage; to enable some form of aesthetic review/standard (which should hopefully allow for evolution in architecture and not preserve us in the tastes of the past) to be lived up to. This is a really hard problem to wrestle with and I would urge you not to deal with other issues with an inappropriate tool. If there are truly parts of the neighborhood that should be preserved (perhaps specific blocks on Grand or Fulton, perhaps three or four other truly special homes), I hope that these smaller areas and homes could be given a specific designation and preserved, rather than including the whole neighborhood in a designation it doesn't deserve (I defy anyone to walk the length of my street, Iris, and look me in the eye and claim it is worthy of historic designation). Please use reasonable changes to the planning guidelines to prevent the rise of the McMansion and let the neighborhood evolve in the future as it has in the past: one home at a time. Respectfully and gratefully, Jon Pedley