The debate over whether to make it easier for some St. Petersburg neighborhoods to designate themselves as historic comes to a head Thursday.
St. Pete City Council will weigh the ordinance, which has seen mounting opposition, including robocalls from the Pinellas Realtor Organization. The policy's proponents are calling such attempts to misinformation campaigns that deceive residents about what the ordinance actually does.
Some weeks back, CL sat down with historic preservation advocates to help dispel some of these myths, which include the notion that homeowners will not be able to make cosmetic changes to their homes' interior or exterior, including painting, which is patently false.
All the ordinance does is change the historic neighborhood designation process. So, instead of relying on two-thirds of all people who own property in a given neighborhood to say they support a common aesthetic among the area's homes, obtaining historic status would require more than half of all homeowners who voted to affirm their desire for such a designation.
Again, this is only about the process, so there's no guarantee that neighborhoods like Kenwood or Old Northeast would even have enough supporters for such a designation. Currently, there are only three neighborhoods with historic designation at the city level: Al Lang's Bungalow Court, Granada Terrace and Historic Roser Park.
Citing concerns over property rights, the ordinance's opponents say citizens are overwhelmingly against the proposed rules (note how SainPetersBlog's Janelle Irwin points out the misinformed or paranoid nature of some of the letters sent in opposition).
Fans of the rule changes say there's been a bit of a miscount.
"The notion of 'overwhelming opposition' simply isn't true," Kyle Parks, a spokesman for the group trying to block the ordinance, said in an email. "When you look at all the correspondence to the city (including to city staff and to the city's Community Planning and Preservation Commission), there have been just as many expressions of support as against."
Peter Belmont of St. Petersburg Preservation, wrote a letter to City Council last week that attempts to dispel some of what his group considers rumors about criticism of the new ordinance on the part of the public.
He said even though city council administrator Cindy Sheppard told City Council in an email that most members of the public who wrote the city urged the council to reject the proposal, not all correspondence was counted.
"Her tally fails to include hundreds of messages of 'support' sent to the city since the end of last year, when the CPPC was first considering final action on the proposed ordinance changes," he writes, adding that his organization has copies of hundreds of such messages.
Belmont offered a breakdown of the pro-preservation ordinance correspondence:
- 185 emails supporting changing the ordinance, as reported by (city urban planning and historic preservation manager Derek) Kilborn, that had been received by the CPPC prior to its Feb. 10 public hearing during which the CPPC voted to support the ordinance changes;
- 2 emails supporting changing the ordinance read into the record at the Feb. 10 CPPC hearing;
- 1 letter from the Chamber of Commerce read into the record at the Feb. 10 hearing opposed to some of the ordinance changes;
- 190+ emails supporting changing the ordinance sent between March 31, 2014 and April 2, 2015 to Council;
- Approximately 50 hand written post cards supporting preservation and/or changing the ordinance received by Council on or about April 1;
- Approximately 150 hand written post cards supporting preservation and/or changing the ordinance received by Council in early June.
He also points out that there wasn't any opposition to the proposal until the opposition ramped up its misinformation campaign.
"Also, it’s extremely important to know that there essentially was no adverse public comment until an active campaign of misinformation commenced in recent weeks," Belmont writes.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2015.