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Another reason the initial November vote was pushed back, Anderson said, was an oversight by the town that failed to inform the homeowners of a public meeting about the amendment in December.
“We were going to have a vote and I found out that we had not mailed out letters or postcards to the affected community members,” Anderson said. “I thought it was not fair for people not to have known about this.”
Recently elected council member Krisha Chachra said that now that the issue has been resolved with Taylor’s particular building, she believes “we, as a council, don’t need to pass this (ordinance) quickly to protect one property.”
“I am confident of the plans to preserve the Taylor house,” Chachra said. “Now I think we can take a little more time and find a greater consensus from those (the ordinance) would directly affect.”
Chachra and others proposed changes that would involve more members of the community in the re-drafting of a new amendment to Ordinance 1222.
“I believe that maybe there’s a way we can find options we haven’t thought of yet,” Chachra said. “There is a way, I believe, to relatively and effectively address this issue. This is important.”
Chachra also said she wants to find a way to avoid discussions of demolition with property owners.
“I really do think one of the things we should consider is how we encourage people to upkeep their buildings,” she said.
Town council member Leslie Hager-Smith concurred with Chachra, mentioning the need for homeowners to be held accountable for the state of their buildings, so that buildings do not fall into a state of disrepair warranting demolition and presenting conflict between property owners and the Historic Design Review board in the first place.
“How come this town just lets buildings sit and rot?” Hager-Smith said. “Our community suffers when individuals decide to exercise their rights in this way.”
Rordam hopes for a productive resolution to the question of Ordinance 1546 to be found in the future, and plans to discuss revisions for the ordinance next week.
“From what I hear tonight,” he said, “we will go ahead and put this on the work session agenda for next week to continue this discussion.”
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A version of this article appeared in the Feb 10 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Great article. Well written, well researched. A good source of information on a topic which would not have otherwise been made available to the public.
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I agree that the article is very good. It did leave out one important detail, mainly because the Town is reluctant to discuss it. There is a second historic district, only one block away from the one that faces the imposition of mandatory controls. That second district is exempt from any oversight by the Historic or Design Review Board what so ever. There is no equality under the law in historic Blacksburg!
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Is the neighborhood Tom mentions suffering from property neglect? No, it is not. Several, not one, not two, but several of our downtown property owners are neglecting their properties, waiting for a buyer so they can demolish. Don't we want replacement buildings to maintain the integrity of the town? The majority of people I have spoken to do. That is what this ordinance is to me, not an effort to force elaborate detail and expensive extra's on a building, but a means to make recommendations as to how the proposed new structures can blend into the fabric of our town, loosely paraphrasing a comment from our mayor.
One other point, several people who are fortunate to own properties in our commercial downtown but live out of the town limits live in neighborhoods with restrictions. That seems strange to me, you build a house in a neighborhood with protective restrictions but instead of working with the town to help formulate similar protection for your commercial properties, you cite your individual property rights.
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A. Your comment about what I wrote does not address the basic question of equality under the law. Nor do you take into account the fact that the historic neighborhood which is exempt from regulation is the one in town which has the greatest concentration of Town Council and Historic or Design Review Board members living in it.
B. The reason given for this increase in arbitrary powers being granted to a non elective board is to protect a historic neighborhood from buildings which are inconsistent with their existing fabric. Don't both historic neighborhoods deserve such protection?
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Towns staff is now labeling the residential neighborhoods included in the historic overlay district as being eclectic.
Greater empowerment of the HDRB is supposedly to insure that no replacement buildings are placed in those eclectic neighborhoods that are inconsistent with what is already there. Humm
My thesaurus gives the following synonyms for eclectic: assorted, diverse, free and miscellaneous.
Can someone please tell me how any proposed building could possibly be inconsistent with assorted, diverse, free and/or miscellaneous?
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