Solicitor Advises Against Historic District Task Force Recommendations

Needed reforms to the city's Historic District Commission have been a long time in the making.

NEWPORT, R.I. – Citing concerns over compatibility with state law, the City Solicitor’s office is recommending that the Historic District Commission, and not the City Council, adopt several proposed amendments to the city’s Historic District Ordinance that were compiled during a more than year long process  by the members of the Planning Commission and ad-hoc HDC Ordinance Review Task Force.

In a letter dated Nov. 13, Assistant Solicitor Christopher J. Behan wrote that after reviewing the recommendations and pertinent state law, “This office and staff believe that the better approach to take is to not adopt the Task Force’s recommendations as revisions to the ordinance, but rather use them as standards, guidelines, rules or regulations to be adopted by the Historic District Commission. This way, most of the recommendations can be put in to practice and we will alleviate many conflicts with the enabling legislation that exist if they are adopted as part of the ordinance.”

Essentially, with little room given by the state for cities and towns to make changes to the operations of historic districts, Behan is suggesting that the HDC be granted the authority to adopt the changes rather than the City Council.

According to Behan, the state enabling legislation which pertains to Historic Districts “confers authority to the HDC to enact standards for the granting of Certificates of Appropriateness along with the authority to amend the same from time to time. The Task Force’s version has the council adopting the standards in the form of the Newport Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. The enabling legislation does not specifically provide the council with the authority to adopt standards but it looks like the council may desire to do just this.”

“We attempted to harmonize these competing interests,” Behan wrote.

Paige Bronk, director of planning, zoning and development for the city, said on Tuesday that overall, he’s pleased with the direction that the administration and council have been heading. But he also expressed a bit of dismay over one recommendation by the solicitor’s office; namely that a proposal to grant the administration the ability to approve certain applications without going before the HDC be scuttled in favor of maintaining the current system, which requires homeowners to go before the commission for any and all repairs – no matter how minor.

Asked if he thought the solicitor’s recommendation undermines the Task Force’s intended reform efforts, Bronk said that to the contrary, “everyone – the administration and the council – seem to all be heading in the same direction.”

“I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water,” Bronk said. Many of the Task Force’s recommendations might still be applicable under the solicitor’s advice.

The provision has been seen as a central component to the Task Force’s ultimate goal: making the HDC approval process more user-friendly.

For over a year, Task Force members logged countless hours and met more than 50 times, demystifying the Historic District Commission process. During that time, input was solicited from city staff as well as local and statewide planning and preservation experts.

Last fall, a preliminary report was presented to the council, who then passed it off to the Planning Board for their comments. By June, even more input had been received from city staff, prompting the Planning Board to pass the recommendations back to the task force for further tweaking.

The City Solicitor’s review was the last step in what councilors have acknowledged has been a rather drawn out process.

With more than 50 percent of all buildings in Newport falling in a historic district, few entities in the city so closely affect homeowners as the HDC does. But over the years, the process has been frustrating for many homeowners, who have to seek approval from the HDC for everything from window replacements to new additions.

Most of the recommendations included in the report are designed to make the HDC review process more fluid for homeowners. Others sought to establish clear and consistent standards for the HDC and city staff.

They included increased fees for approved construction, modifications to the public hearing process, better training for commissioners, stronger consideration for environmental concerns, and a clearly defined job description for the city’s preservation planner.

According to Bronk, he is currently investigating the possibility of applying for outside funding to conduct a full historic inventory of the city, thereby providing the city with a full list of contributing and non-contributing historic structures.

That, he says, would go a long way to smoothing the process for homeowners as well as the volunteers on the HDC and the paid department staff charged with enforcing the ordinance.