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| NO RESPONSE FROM CITY TO A REQUEST FOR PUBLIC INVESTIGATION Following is my email to the LRTI commission members, Assistant City Attorney Jay Townsend, and Planning Director Wayne Tedder: October 14, 2010: Mr. Jay Townsend, Mr. Wayne Tedder, LRTI Commissions Mark Mustian and Mayor John Marks..... I understand that an LRTI agenda item is being proposed for the discussion of procedure for designating Historic Preservation Districts. I would like to make a few pertinent comments, if I might, regarding this issue: 1. The Lafayette Park HPO process of 2008-2009 exploded into a neighborhood war of words, with the Tallahassee City officials right in the middle of it. Until the City of Tallahassee makes a formal effort to review this application's defects and the process defects and discover what went wrong with it, there will be an underlying hostility towards historic preservation in the community that will be insurmountable. Quite simply, there are process defects that must be publicly acknowledged and corrected prior to any new effort being made. Otherwise that effort will meet such overwhelming resistance, it will be doomed from the start. Consider the following items regarding the Lafayette Park HPO: A.. The application contained four-page "historical structure forms" (developed by the State of Florida) for each property in the 500+/- properties in the proposed Lafayette Park Historic District. Of all the forms which were prepared specifically for the application, virtually every one was a sham--virtually blank (nearly a thousand blank forms). Entry after entry, required in order for the form to be valid, was left blank or was filled in with one or two word responses where a studied historical analysis was required. Most of the forms which were included that were not prepared specifically for the application were pulled from archived files and were approximately a quarter century old and simply no longer relevant in light of the consequences of the forced HPO process contemplated. See this web page for a careful review of these findings: http://historiclafayettepark.com/tthp-failure-examples.html B. The original application was prepared by the Tallahassee Trust for Historical Preservation. It included a certification by Mr. Jim Pfost that he was the legal representative of each and every property owner in the district. The complicity between the TTHP and Mr. Pfost to make such an overwhelming false claim in a public document is outrageous. There is no one who read that legal representation statement and realized what it meant who could believe it to be true. Yet, because it contained Mr. Pfost's legal signature, they proceeded with it. The harm it precipitated upon hundreds of families in the Lafayette Park Neighborhood for more than a year is incalculable. The repercussions of that harm continue today. No one is ready to forget. C. The application was subsequently changed and substituted, with entirely new applicants with no due process or legal notification. This change was fully accepted without question by the Architectural Review Board, The Tallahassee-Leon Planning Department, and The Tallahassee-Leon Planning Commission. D. A member of the Architectural Review Board had dual membership and got to review their own decisions as a member of the Tallahassee-Leon Planning Commission. That particular member subsequently made a public proposal that the application be accepted without any review and with no time for other members of the commission to even finish receiving their full copies. An extreme ethical lapse. E. A member of the Architectural Review Board was also a key staff reviewer of the application in the Tallahassee-Leon planning department, and was a recipient of a very substantial monetary grant from the City of Tallahassee. A member of the committee making this historical grant also served as executive director of the Architectural Review Board and provided guidance to the ARB members on upcoming votes, including the Lafayette Park HPO application (versions 1 & 2). Quid Pro Quo exists and is a basis for ethics charges. F. The Tallahassee-Leon Planning Department utterly failed to do any kind of review upon the application. If they had even opened it up for a cursory look, they would have seen that hundreds upon hundreds of the required forms with information identified on the form as being required was not provided. Why was the planning department so remiss in their duty to the public? Why was a form processed forward to the planning commission which had such overwhelming legal and substantive insufficiency as to be a laughable joke of an application? This failure by the planning department requires a separate, in-depth investigation into the roles and responsibilities of every single staff member. If an application of this nature could proceed forward without rejection, no part of our city is safe from any development. We have no defense whatsoever from unbridled, unconstrained destruction of our community if our planning department can approve a document/application which is so blatantly illegal and improper. G. The Tallahassee City
Attorney's office got involved in this application right from the
beginning, exceeding their authority and role, and helped force this
insufficient application through the process by bullying key public
staff personnel. We need an investigation into why they would
foster illegal substitutions of the applicants and certification in the
application. Why would they copy key members of the neighborhood (who favored the application) with their emails on discussion of strategy and procedures and continually work with one side of this faction at the expense of the opponents? Why would they refuse to provide emails as required by Florida Chapter 119, until confronted by the City Auditor after I alerted him to the situation? We need to find out before we try to move forward with anything else, especially as it seems to be the City Attorney's office that is suddenly promoting this new move forward on the HPO process. 2. Setting aside the local issue history, there are other factors which profoundly affect the legal framework of any Historical Preservation process at this time. A. The basic, essential wording of our current code is identical in nearly all respects to the wording of the historic zoning code in Chicago, Illinois. The Illinois Supreme Court has found this wording to be unreasonably vague and has thrown the law out. The arguments against it were so simple and basic, founded upon constitutional rights, that it is a certainty that the law will not stand in any jurisdiction where it is challenged throughout the entire country. For a detailed review of this law and decision with links to original sources, please see this webpage: http://www.historiclafayettepark.com/archive-june7-09.htm B. Why on earth would the City of Tallahassee attempt to tackle the rewriting of a law that is undoubtedly being rewritten in Washington's National offices of Historic Preservation and elsewhere? The(washington bureaucracies) have unlimited funds and unlimited expertise in the subject. They are undoubtedly proceeding with a model legislative code which will be made available when it is ready. It won't be soon. However, in light of the Illinois Supreme Court action, others have been put to work on this matter, and it has to be re-written. If we have a legal department in the City and a Planning Department in the City, both of which cannot tell a blank application submitted with a lying signature of certification from a valid, publicly-supported application, how on earth are they going to stumble through the intricacies of a legal framework that will withstand Florida Court review? They can't! Quite simply, our city attorney staff and our Tallahassee-Leon Planning department are clearly second rate, and there is no amount of tough projects you can assign them that will improve their departments at this point in time. Let them spend their time on projects that come across their desk every day and keep the city going. And, then, lets look at the big picture of what it may take to improve these two city departments. But write a new national code? Forget it. Lets save our taxpayer dollars for something relevant.
And speaking of taxpayer dollars....why are we in a contract with the
Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation when their staff prepares
the biggest application in the history of the City, and it's nearly all
blank? And when their staff has these ethically-questionable ties
to the ARB members who have received funds from the City grant program? In summary, I believe we need to look backward at this time, and publicly identify the failures of the City of Tallahassee in the Lafayette Park HPO process. We need an investigative commission. Until this is done, Historic Preservation in Tallahassee is permanently tainted. It continues today. The crimes and failures of this shameful episode will fester until publicly aired. I fully realize I step on some toes in this letter. They deserve stepping on. Get over it and move on with doing the right thing. Very truly yours, Mark S. Daniel |