Historic Preservation Commission Minutes 2021 01 25

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Historic Preservation Commission Meeting Minutes 25 January 2021 Page 8of9 could provide substantive information on those items. He noted that commissioners could meet in pairs and have individual meetings and paired meetings with staff. Dunlap added that he really appreciated staff's work but he thought that we could do better. Zuccaro thanked Commissioner Dunlap in response and highlighted Planner Ritchie's work on preservation projects. Klemme suggested creating a Work Plan Committee to go back through minutes and pick up the dropped items and questions. That committee could suggest additional meetings as necessary. Ritchie shared that February would be a tight month. The Commission discussed their 2020 experience. Zuccaro asked for clarification on the proposal to discuss having contractors involved in HSAs. Klemme replied that sometimes numbers came back in HSAs that were not realistic and so the Commission had thought about requiring someone on the process who was current on pricing. Zuccaro suggested discussing what's included in an HSA more broadly. He noted that often architects or engineers were leading the assessments and had good ideas of pricing. He noted that that was a lot to ask of a contractor to be involved with an assessment without bidding on a project. He suggested paying contractors as consultants in that case. He noted that sometimes homeowners would have an assessment and then nothing would happen with the house for several years, making the cost estimates stale. Zuccaro noted issues with grant amounts, as often those numbers from architects were not representative of bid amounts, which contributed to artificial inflation. He noted that the extraordinary circumstances piece could involve the City requesting competitive bids in those situations. He cautioned that it was a burden and a barrier to add stuff like this so the Commission could consider whether that was necessary for the standard grant amounts. He observed that some language had been changed about three years ago and now was maybe a good time to revisit some of the language. Haley stated that the assessment conversation was for a structural engineer to be added to the assessment process. Zuccaro replied that they had increased the amount for the assessment to allow for a structural engineer, but that having one work on the assessment was not required. Dunlap asked if it would be possible to forward what the commissioners knew of these potential work items to someone on staff. Zuccaro replied that staff could share their list and then the commissioners could reply directly to staff if they missed anything. Then staff could bring it to the full commission in February. He noted that the public outreach was ongoing, which included a coloring book and direct mailings, in addition to the standard outreach programs. He had added to the list conservation easements, grants and soliciting bids, HSA standards, and increasing the residential grant amounts a la Resolution 30. 8