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Anniversary Date: Application to Take Our Property Rights Away: August 6, 2008 updated May 20, 2011
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the minutes of the ARB, spanning three monthly meetings, while they
deliberate the approval of a roof shingle...An exciting, inside look at
the reality. Click Here to view... |
| Special Issue:
The ARB |
In Focus: The Architectural Review Board | ||
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Page: Historic Lafayette Park
See: "Beyond The Pale", below.. for story on member re-appointments....
===== ARB Membership Violates City & County Code RE: TTHP Representation -------- Every Decision of the ARB since their appointment is a defective decision and must be re-visited once a new board is appointed. The
Architectural Review Board membership is very specifically defined by
code, and includes TWO members of the Tallahassee Trust for Historic
Preservation. Improper City Grants?Open, flagrant violation of this code has taken place, and the Architectural Review Board has been packed with unlawful members--there are currently FOUR members of this city contractor directing historic affairs from the ARB.
Ms. Valerie Jeanne Conner (http://www.taltrust.org/meet-the-board ) is a current board member of the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation, a private contractor of the City of Tallahassee for historic services. She is former Chairman of the Board of that contractor. She is also on the Architectural Review Board, NOT as a member of the TTHP, but as a so-called member from "Property zoned HPO". Her membership on the ARB violates the code. She cannot simply put on different colored socks and become a different person. This member also has been named the Chair of the ARB, where the unlawful control of all ARB functions can be exercised. Ms. Conner needs to resign, immediately. Mr. Randy Lewis, who is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation (TTHP) is listed on the ARB membership as one of the Architect-members (AIA). Mr. Lewis' membership on the Architectural Review Board is another violation of the Land Development Code which limits the TTHP membership to only two persons. Mr. Lewis needs to resign, immediately. This illegal membership packing by the city's contractor makes every decision of the Architectural Review Board a defective decision. This is wrong! It is a morally-corrupt, ethically-defective, city-damaging act perpetrated to unlawfully control the historic preservation process in the City of Tallahassee and Leon County. It is an act solely to benefit a radical advocate of Historic Preservation that dismisses private property rights as unimportant to their own goals. The negative consequences of this deliberate violation of the code for the Architectural Review Board harms every part of our city and specifically hurts the genuine historic preservation efforts of everyone else in the city. The
Decisions of the Architectural Review Board are used to justify grants
from the City's Historic Property Grant and Loan Fund. We
recommend an immediate investigation into every single grant and loan
made since the membership of the ARB went rogue and began to violate
the Land Development Code. When our tax dollars are used for free
handouts, it needs to be a fair process. This is not a fair
process, anymore. It stinks like rotten fish. City of Tallahassee Response...Further Reading and Review City of Tallahassee Land Development Code, Ch. 2, Article III DIVISION 4. ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW BOARD: Sec. 2-181....:"The membership shall be composed of: Two members from the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation..." The number of members is described exactly and specifically as "Two." (compare the wording to the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 3 on the number of senators for each state.) In
a formal email of complaint on this matter to City Commissioners Mark
Mustian and Nancy Miller, the response was an email from a staff member
of City Attorney James English which stated: "The code does not limit the ARB to only 2 TTHP members." Well, duh....why do we only have two senators in Congress? It's the exact same language as the Constitution! Lets elect a few more and improve our representation in Washington! The real problem here is the City Attorney: His obvious incompetence, inability to control a runaway staff and lack of impartiality under the law renders Mr. James English unfit for continued public service in the city of Tallahassee.  "Beyond The Pale" Two members re-appointed with glaring deficiencies in their qualifications: RE: BILLION-DOLLAR THEFT Wednesday, July 6, 2011: Lafayette Park Doomed. The Final Pressing Question Going into the City Commission meeting Wednesday night, there remained one very important, immediate question on this issue: Are the City Commissioners part of this or ignorant? The perfect test was presented with agenda item #9, a re-appointment of two of the most egregious violators of the supposed impartiality of the Architectural Review Board: One, Geraldine Seay, received the $100,000 grant and loan gift, which would certainly appear to compromise her votes, ethically, and the other, Randy Lewis is an "extra" TTHP board member, in violation of the code. Both members voted On September 10, 2008 for the sham applications for Lafayette Park in which all the historic property forms were nearly blank or 25 years out of date. Both accepted counterfeit owner permission forms with non-owner signatures, for the same Lafayette Park applications Commissioner Mark Mustian volunteered that as long as their actions were not "beyond the pale" he was going to vote for their re-appointment. Commissioner Nancy Miller chimed in with support and Mayor Marks, likewise. Apparently, for our current City Commission, no wrongful action, however much in violation of the codes or ethics or "right" is "beyond the pale." Check it out online...watch the video for consent Item #9: Quotes from City Website text minutes: Item 9 - Reappointed Mr. Randolph G. "Randy" Lewis and Dr. Geraldine H. Seay, Ph.D., to the Tallahassee-Leon County Architectural Review Board (ARB); terms to expire June, 2014. Mr. Lewis is an architect and Dr. Seay is the owner of a historically-zoned property. (Recommended by Mayor Marks) Commissioner Mustian noted recent criticism of the composition of the Architectural Review Board (ARB). After brief discussion, the Commission's consensus was that the Board's makeup was satisfactory. |
 Grant/Loan Committee Includes Executive Director of Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation! Impartiality and Fairness of ARB Questioned... Dan Donovan--$8,400.00 Grant (07-07-04) Geraldine Seay--$39,678.46 Grant (05-10-05) Geraldine Seay--$54,314.54 Loan (05-10-05) Joni Ellis--$10,000 Grant (06-13-05) Jason Hight--$4,200 Grant (06-13-05) John Rawling--$13,225.00 Grant (10-24-07) John Rawling--$3,225.00 Loan (10-24-07) John Rawling--$5,677.50 Grant ((3-12-08) John Rawling--$5,677.50 Loan (3-12-08) John Rawling--$2,550.00 Grant (2-5-09) John Rawling--$$2,550.00 Loan (2-5-09) TOTAL: $149,498.00  Click to enlarge photoGeraldine Seay's B Sharp Cafe in Frenchtown (Click here to see grant & loan chart, highlighted) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (updated list of Historic Property Grant and Loan Finance Committee (Dec 2010): click here Where is the fairness in this? Is there anyone who could presume that those ARB members were acting in complete fairness in their review of the application when their primary contact for staff support was also a member of the committee which had authorized their free money gift from the city, and this selfsame staff member was also the author of the application on behalf of the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation? Think about it: If a man who helped authorize a gift to you of $10,000 (or up to nearly $100,000) was also your secretary who provided and organized all the materials for you to review an application which he wrote himself, would you have a fair chance at giving it an unbiased review? When all the materials and support came from the same source? When that same man was also the representative of an organization which publicly promoted only one outcome in the review? Unbiased fairness could no more exist in this situation than the proverbial snowball in hell. "Technically Legal" doesn't mean it's right: One of the benefits of being in an HPO zoned neighborhood is the availability of money from the City of Tallahassee Grant & Loan Program. It's perfectly legal and (one can presume) highly satisfactory to obtain free money for enhancing and improving one's own historic property, as long as it's not self-dealing by a public employee. (Two of the current ARB members who received grants are employees of government) However, there exists the appearance of a grave conflict of interest, when a recipient of the free money subsequently joins a board where his decisions affect the public, and the staff providing the information for those decisions is also one of the committee members who authorized the grant in previous years. Are we such a small community in Tallahassee/Leon County that we cannot escape these inbred and cross connected memberships and authorities? I don't think so. We're a community with a quarter of a million citizens. That's an opportunity for a lot of public participation. There is no need for these overlapping roles which compromise the integrity of our governing bodies. Resignations are due
Each of these Architectural Review Board members should resign immediately and/or return the money they have received. Not because it's illegal--it's apparently not--but because the implication of impropriety is so great, it's harming our community and especially the Historic Preservation Community in Tallahassee. We deserve clean, open-air government. No one deserves decisions from people who very obviously and publicly owe a debt of gratitude to the man who becomes your opposite number in a sometimes contentious approval process...it's not a fair process when it is rigged or appears to be rigged. And this sure appears to be rigged--see next story on the Sins of the ARB, right. Further, the Executive Director of the TTHP should resign his position on the City of Tallahassee Historic Property Grant and Loan Finance Committee. He knew who was being nominated to the ARB, and knew they had received loans in which he had a hand as a member of the loan and grant committee. Any observer of these facts would presume that this director would logically have every expectation of the old quid pro quo...or at the least, the expectation of a reasonable predeliction from the members of the ARB for following his lead in any vote or action that he favored or promoted during ARB meetings. This would be the result of simple gratitude that comes from receiving thousands of dollars of free money. Consequences and Changes in City
Hall and County Courthouse are Due
Additionally, The City of Tallahassee Mayor and Commissioners and the Leon County Commissioners need to step forward and put an immediate stop to this situation. If they don't, every person and voter in this community will know the ARB stands for Architectural Rubberstamp Board and that we all live in a community with crooked government that's proud of their crookedness, like Chicago. We don't need to have a shameful situation like this hung around our collective necks. We need, as a community, to recognize that the relationship with TTHP is an unhealthy relationship that does not deserve any more public support or participation. Click here for Additional item: City Commission Agenda Sheet for Historic Loan Program  |
 The Sins of the Architectural Review Board RE: Lafayette Park 1. The ARB accepted for review, via their professional staff director, an application which was illegal for at least these several reasons: --The two applicants were the Lafayette Park Neighborhood Association (LPNA) and the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation (TTHP). The LPNA is a private corporation which is not a permissible entity for initiating an application. The TTHP is identified in the code as being permitted to initiate applications, but only with the advice and consent of the property owners. The application contained no consent from any property owner, although until this time, the consent form available from the TTHP website was crystal clear that each owner had to fill one out and it had to be made a part of the application. Instead, the TTHP (which maintains the application forms on their website) apparently concocted a unique, new, revised consent form (Owner Awareness Statement) for this application to allow one person to claim the right to submit an application without the consent of the property owners and thereby evade the code requirement for property owner consent. (Click to see letter with attached original forms and "new" form) 2. Prior to this review, and knowing full well the application was for the largest historic district ever contemplated in the history of Tallahassee/Leon County, none of the ARB members, (with the exception of the city planning department) even bothered to pick up the application in a timely manner (500+ pages) and make an attempt to become familiar with it. One can only presume they already knew which way they were going to vote, and the application was redundant as far as they were concerned. They had their Executive Staff summary, prepared by the Executive Director of the TTHP. (Click here to see attached email)  3. Rather than rejecting the application for an illegal applicant (which was the only code-allowed action they were permitted), the ARB arranged for the application to be taken over by completely new persons, and move forward. This was a deliberate action solely to evade the legal requirement of new public notification and advertising. This took advantage of the newly fabricated Owner Awareness Statement mentioned above, allowing the bypass of the property owners' awareness or consent. (See August 6, 2008 minutes of the ARB) Lack of Verification of Education Process. & Failure to Verify Authority of Self-proclaimed "Representative" 5. At the August 6, 2008 meeting of the ARB, during public presentation by the application's promoters, the ARB accepted, without any confirmation, proof or evidence, the public statement from the president of the LPNA that he was the representative of all the property owners in the neighborhood--an inconceivably broad declaration of power of attorney--when in fact several members of the neighborhood for whom he supposedly had powers of representation were actually present and voicing opinions opposite to that of their supposed "representative". Not one member of the ARB questioned or challenged the self-proclaimed authority of this man. (See minutes of August 6, 2008 ARB meeting) Obvious Failure to Read the Actual Application ==Where the addresses of the properties were required to be provided on the first page, the application merely stated all the property bounded by this street and such and such a street, and failed to identify a single property using any legal convention for addresses. The ARB accepted this as an accurate document. ==Where the owners of the properties were required to be identified, the application showed how just much respect the owners were going to receive from the ARB: They were identified as, "various owners within the district." Names were left entirely out of the application--not even included on most of the individual property data sheets. When names were included on data sheets, it's only a stroke of luck that the names are accurate, for many of the data sheets are from 20+ years ago. Yet the ARB accepted this data as a "current survey". ==The bulk of the application consisted of data forms on each individual property. These forms were a mixed-up jumble of various formats gathered from various sources, spanning 25 years, with no uniformity of content or competence in their composition. Many were older than 20 years. And, those old forms were the best of the lot. The newest were word-processor-generated forms by a creative-writing undergraduate at the university with some descriptions for an entire property consisting of single words, such as "brick"...as if that was all it took for the "feeling" of history to forever encumber someone's lifelong investment. (See detailed analysis of forms with samples: ==Further reading of the application directs the ARB to consider the district to be historic because of its "feeling", among other equally nebulous, arbitrary, vague and un-measureable descriptive terms--terms that no two persons could intelligently discuss and arrive at a shared consensus as to relevance or meaning. (link here for archived unconstitutionality story/issue on similar language) Fairness? Not likely! And one final question--Is there any fairness in having, once again, this same individual in charge of so much, affecting such a huge portion of the lifelong investment of so many people, when he doesn't even know what the Historic Preservation Overlay (HPO) process involves, and communicates the same to the Administrator of Tallahassee-Leon County Land Use Planning Division, who also concedes he doesn't know what it is either? The really sad part of this is they both admit it after the end of nearly a nine-months' battle fought by so many injured people to save their property. (See email link). |
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