Historic Lafayette Park, Tallahassee, Florida

Open Letter to Lafayette Park Neighborhood Residents: February 20, 2011

Lafayette Park HPO May Resume Soon:

This is a reminder that the city is beginning to rewrite the land development code for neighborhood HPO applications. This will immediately affect our Lafayette Park within the year.

This code-writing effort will be managed by Wayne Tedder of TLCPD, with advice from the Senior Assistant City Attorney Linda Hudson, Michael Wing of the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation, and Assistant city Attorney Hetal Desai. No group more inimical to our best interests in Lafayette Park could be selected.

Please Note:
On, Wednesday, March 2, on the second floor of the Renaissance Center in Frenchtown, from 6PM to 8PM, there is a public "Round Table" discussion. This will be your chance to be seen and heard. We must make it clear to the city that we will not tolerate any more shenanigans.

This will probably be our only chance, unless we have to get out the "pitchforks and torches" in front of City Hall in 2012 if we fail to make ourselves heard on March 2. Please...if you didn't want to be rezoned in 2008-2009, you really do not want to go through another two-year battle with a new, unbreakable land-development code.

The formal agenda item for the city can be found online:
http://www.talgov.com/planning/pdf/zoning/agenda_lrpti.pdf

This agenda is very narrowly written. Most of the problems with historic preservation will not be addressed unless we demand it.

The Senior Assistant City Attorney wrote the agenda around a handpicked committee. For the one or two members of the committee willing to stand up for our basic property rights, there will be 6-8 members who are there as rubber stamps for the City Attorney staff, including several members who actively supported or voted for the stripping of our property rights on the Lafayette Park HPO application now in "abeyance".

I believe the application for the Lafayette Park HPO will resume progress at the very point where it left off. It will qualify for grandfather status. Any attempt to stop it will be met with a well-planned act: The applicant and her attorney, along with the Senior Assistant City Attorney probably already have the script mutually understood, wherein one understands when and where to threaten "lawsuit!", and the other is already prepared to perform the various good-impression charades before folding.

We presently have a Planning Department (TLCPD) that bends to the will of the City Attorney at every opportunity. In 2008, after the ARB approved a nearly blank application with unlawful applicant substitutions, and unlawful Owner-Awareness-Form substitutions, the TLCPD unilaterally began the process for REZONING our homes and investments in Lafayette Park, with no legal instruction or code directive to do so. They had the staunch support of the City Attorney Office.

Prior to that, the application was solely about historic designation, with no mention of rezoning. The Planning Department operated without any directive from the Planning Commission or the City Commission or the property owners--the only three parties legally able to open the process for rezoning.

Please note: There is no criteria published on how the "Code Committee" will be selected, other than the Senior Assistant City Attorney's dream list.

We need a complete re-write of all historic preservation provisions within the Tallahassee Land Development Code; the agenda directive of re-visiting only the neighborhood designation process will leave us completely at the mercy of the ARB, the TLCPD and the City Attorney staff--all against our control of our own property.

A few of the items we desperately need as members of the public:

- The right to opt out of any historic designation or rezoning when it proves to be unbearable in our own opinion, even if we thought it was a good thing when we applied.

- The right to have our property rezoned for historic preservation purposes ONLY with our personal, express, written permission.

- The right to have an Architectural Review Board who is not "stuffed" with members of the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation.

- The right to have an Architectural Review Board who is not half composed, by definition, of people with no historic preservation credentials or training...they merely own historic property.

- The right to have an Architectural Review Board who is not either a recipient or an expected, hopeful recipient of a substantial $$ grant made by a committee which includes the director of the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation, who happens to also be part author of every application coming before the board, as his co-existent role as Staff Director for the ARB.

- The right for opinion balloting to be conducted in a lawful manner without votes being disregarded due to TLCPD Planning Director's opinions.

- The right for historic designation and historic preservation re-zoning (HPO) to be kept permanently separated as two discrete, individual functions of planning and property designation.

- The right to refuse participation in an historic preservation district nomination, just because we might not want to participate, without some so-called "supermajority" telling us we have to be rezoned for our own good.

- The right for people with properties built after 1950 to openly acknowledge their property is not historic and that the definition needs changing.

- The right to sue members of the Architectural Review Board for failing to properly exercise due care in their decision-making process. (Wouldn't THAT wake a few members of the ARB up..they might even read an application to see the pages were blank.)

- The right to appeal a decision of the ARB without having to have previously hired a court reporter to take down a verbatim transcript. (Ask Senior Assistant City Attorney Linda Hudson about this).

- The right to watch ARB meetings on the City video channel and to obtain video copies of the ARB meetings as well as transcripted minutes without having to proceed through Florida Statute Chapter 119. This would include the necessity of making the ARB visible to the whole public.

- Redefiniton of what criteria the ARB has a right to judge and evaluate: Currently, there are hundreds of regulated things you can do to a home that are easily removable or reversible, such as window grills or handicapped ramps that they control and delay for months). The current criteria were developed by the National Registry of Historic Places for such living museums as Williamsburg, Va, and not for ordinary, down-home living, neighborhoods...a ridiculous interference on such a scale as to put residents at war with the whole concept of historic preservation, when it is actually a good thing when properly encouraged. We need to make historic preservation reasonably attainable and reasonable to live with.

- The Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation needs to cease being a public contractor and operate independently as an historic preservation advocate without being also the city's enforcement agent. Their current position is no different than putting a wolf in charge of the henhouse: it is entirely one-sided.

- Revocation of the historic Preservation Overlay Rezoning (HPO) which has been wrongfully applied to numerous "non-contributing" properties throughout Tallahassee, and for which the ARB has no legal control, but for which they demand review processes that are onerous, punitive and harm ongoing maintenance, in spite of the code which says they are not to be adherred to, but merely advisory.

- We need an open, public investigation by a State-Appointed independent counsel of the actions taken by the ARB, the TLCPD, and the City Attorney staff during the Lafayette Park HPO application of 2008-2009, with identification of wrongdoing and prosecution/consequences of the perpetrators. Serious crimes were committed. We deserve justice.

- We need a definitive END to the Lafayette Park application now in "abeyance", with no possibility of re-submittal or reactivation.

- We need a pretty darn good reason for why a neighborhood can get drafted as an historic designation, when anyone who wants it on their own property within a neighborhood can freely apply and get it right now, with no new code.

I believe I could add a few more ideas to this list and I'm certain you could add quite a few from your own personal perspective. I hope you do.

Please show up at the Public Round Table discussion on March 2, and make a point to the city that we are not going to be railroaded into their private rezoning plan.

Your unique perspective and voice as a member of the neighborhood is really important. Your thoughtful consideration of the issues over the past two years should have an opportunity to bear fruit. Please come.

If you only say, "NO HPO," you will make a difference. We were nearly all silent in 2009 at the planning commission meeting when the TLCPD "official" vote showed we had won by a two-to-one landslide. Well, they tricked us! It's a crooked deck and a rigged game, and we know it now.

Remember: "fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us." We were fooled once. Please come and make sure they know they are going to face a large, angry majority if they try to fool us again. This is your chance to help yourself.

Yours Truly,
Mark S. Daniel
HistoricLafayettePark.com