[MassHistPres] Compliance Self-Reporting

[Patricia Kelleher]

Hi Andrew,

The Salem Historical Commission has been experiencing the same challenge with ensuring that work completed in the City’s historic districts complies with the approved certificate. This is particularly difficult to monitor since many property owners do not start work immediately after receiving approval from the Commission and may wait until up to one year to complete the work. In several recent cases, the Commission discovered after the fact that the work completed was in violation of the approved design.  I contacted other historic district commission staff to learn more about their local processes and can send you this information.  Based on this research, the Salem Historical Commission has now added the following language to Certificates of Appropriateness:

“Upon completion of work, please notify Historical Commission staff for final review and sign-off of Certificate.”

We are also working with the Building Inspector and IT to develop a notification system on our ViewPermit software to alert SHC staff when an owner in an historic district applies for a building permit so that we are aware when work starts. We are also working to develop a departmental process that requires final review and approval by SHC staff before a building permit can be signed-off by the Building Inspector.

Please feel free to give me a call if you would like more information.

Best,

Patti

-----------------------------
Patti Kelleher
Preservation Planner, City of Salem
Department of Planning & Community Development
120 Washington Street, 3rd Floor
Salem, MA 01970
Phone: 978-619-5685/ Fax: 978-740-0404
pkelleher at salem.com<mailto:pkelleher at salem.com>
www.salem.com<http://www.salem.com/>





From: masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu [mailto:masshistpres-bounces at cs.umb.edu] On Behalf Of Andrew Shveda
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 8:54 AM
To: masshistpres at cs.umb.edu
Subject: [MassHistPres] Compliance Self-Reporting

The Worcester Historical Commission is currently working on revising and updating the rules and regulations pertaining to the three Local Historic Districts found in the city, Massachusetts Avenue, Montvale and Crown Hill.
One item we have been struggling with is how to ascertain compliance with issued Certificates of Appropriateness. We currently have one dedicated Historic Preservationist on staff, and that is a new development which we are very grateful for. But asking this person to be responsible for compliance checks and fulfill all the other duties of the role is not possible. Especially since we will hopefully soon be reevaluating our Demolition Delay Bylaws and making some changes with regards to compliance as well.

The question is, how to other communities' HC's and LHC's  handle compliance checks as well as penalties for failure to comply with the issued certificates?

One idea that was passed around was to ask the applicant to submit a self-report form with a detailed narrative supported with photographic evidence describing how the specific points of the Certificate of Appropriateness was adhered to. We could then sign off on them either administratively or as a commission and then close out he application.

If this where to be successful we would think about applying this to Demo-Delay applications as well since we see many more of those than Certificates of Appropriateness applications in LHD's.


I would be grateful for any input on what your community does to enforce compliance and thoughts on this particular idea in general.

Best Regards,


Andrew Shveda, AIA NCARB
Chairman
Worcester Historical Commission

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.cs.umb.edu/mailman/private/masshistpres/attachments/20170831/681194b2/attachment-0001.htm>