HPC meets tonight at 7:00PM - NOT!

According to the Community Calendar posted on the City's website, the Woodstock Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) was scheduled to meet tonight at City Hall at 7:00PM. The meeting is still on the Calendar as I type.

Just after sending a long email to the HPC, asking the Commissioners to discuss tonight why its recommendation (on November 10, 2008) for Landmark status has never been forwarded to the City Council for approval, I re-checked the City's Community Calendar. SURPRISE! After the meeting was posted to the Calendar, a notice was placed on the Agenda webpage for the Commission that tonight's meeting has been canceled.

You have to go to the Agenda itself to learn that the meeting was postponed, not canceled. The meeting has been re-scheduled to Monday, March 9, 7:00PM. A more correct entry on the City's Community Calendar would be "Postponed", not Canceled.

Who decides whether a scheduled meeting should be held or canceled? The Chairman? The Commission as a whole cannot decide, because it would require a meeting, properly scheduled and announced to the public under the Illinois Open Meetings Act, to cancel a meeting.

Why is the HPC stalling on this? The Landmark recommendation should have gone to the City Council for consideration in December. It should have been placed on the City Council Agenda for the first Council meeting in December. Will delaying the March meeting until March 9 mean that it will be too late for the recommendation to be placed on the March 17 City Council meeting Agenda?

The HPC did not, at its November 10, meeting hold any vote on delaying the recommendation and, in fact, did not even have any discussion. The Minutes of that meeting reflect only that one member, now the Chairman of the HPC, stated that he would like the City Council to postpone making its final decision until April. And then the Commission voted to approve Landmark status - without any reference to delaying the recommendation.

Delaying the recommendation plays right into the hands of Woodstock Christian Life Services (WCLS), owner of Grace Hall. On April 20 WCLS will ask the City Council to issue a demolition permit. Its plan has always been, and still is, to demolish Grace Hall.

WCLS will threaten legal action if the City Council does not issue a demolition permit. Mark Gummerson, representing WCLS, has already thrown that flag down on the playing field.

If the City Council votes against Landmark status (or doesn't even consider it) and approves a demolition permit, the Petitioner for Landmark status should be ready with legal papers to request an injunction against WCLS and to prevent demolition. And these papers had better be ready for filing at 8:00AM on April 21.

And the Petitioner should be ready with her own lawsuit against the City for denying the Landmark status recommended by the HPC,, if that's the way it goes. So the City could end up getting sued either way.

If the wrecking ball is in place on April 20, ready to swing its first blow on April 21, then the Petitioner's lawyer had better plan to wake up a judge at midnight after the City Council meeting and get the injunction issued before the engine of destruction starts up on April 21.

No foolin', folks. This gracious building, which could be used as senior housing or wonderful office space, deserves to stay in place. It could be saved. The fact is the WCLS wants it gone.

A topic for another article will be the totally unfair ordinance passed by the City Council last fall that places onerous, and impossible-to-meet, conditions on the Petitioner personally to save Grace Hall. Watch for that article soon.