Landmark - Not until April???

The Northwest Herald reports this morning that the Woodstock City Council will not decide on the Grace Hall Landmark designation until April 2009. Tim Kane wrote a good article, but he's kidding; right? Is this an early April Fool's Day joke?

First step is to learn whether the Historic Preservation Committee held a valid Public Hearing on Monday, November 10. If it did, then the recommendation to grant Landmark status should go immediately to the City Council and be considered at the next City Council meeting.

If Monday's Public Hearing did not qualify as a valid Hearing, then the continuation of the October 6 Public Hearing should be scheduled immediately.

Reporter Tim Kane was kind enough not to name the "city officials" who gave him the April information.

What would an April consideration mean? For starters, it would mean that WCLS would not have to cancel any reservation already made for the wrecking ball.

Further, if the City runs rough-shod over those who wish to preserve the historic Grace Hall, approves an unconscionable Ordinance placing insurmountable requirements on two individuals personally, and holds off on Landmark status to April, demolition is assured.

This is why a strong Committee to Save Grace Hall is needed and why such a Committee needs a lot of money to hire an expert, experienced, preservationist attorney of its own - NOT legal representation from the City.

The City has shown its true colors by abandoning the Historic Preservation Committee (HPC). The Plan Commission isn't treated as a step-child. It gets a lawyer at its Public Hearings. But the HPC?

First, it gets a junior attorney (a very nice young man, probably fresh out of law school) from the City Attorney's office who wasn't even told where to sit in Council chambers when he showed up at the first meeting! Then, during that meeting, counsel for WCLS freely gave legal opinions to the HPC that should have come from its own legal advisor. Worst of all, he showed up with "marching orders" from Rich Flood not to contest a WCLS Motion to continue the hearing until November 10. That November 10th date, of course, was well beyond the following night's City Council meeting that had the Grace Hall issue already on the agenda.

Mark Gummerson is a great attorney; perhaps the best in Woodstock. And his client and he had to have a loud and long laugh later in the evening (in private, I'm sure) at the ineptitude of the HPC.

That was excellent lawyering by the counsel for WCLS, and Chairman Tim Art refused to allow me to speak that night to argue for holding the hearing. Was it all set up at the front of the room before the October 6 meeting was called to order. The HPC members held a stand-up meeting at the front of the room. Looking back, I should have walked up to listen it. Even at the time, I wondered whether it constituted a legal meeting under the Open Meetings Act. While the members were in the meeting room, they seemed to be holding a hushed discussion.

What were they really talking about? Where to go for pizza after the meeting? NOT!