Heritage Commission Meeting Minutes
Mont Vernon Heritage Commission
Public Meeting Minutes March 10, 2022
Approved
In Attendance: Rebecca Schwarz, Tim Berry, Sarah Beth Ross, Bill McKinney, Zoe Fimbel, Anna Rorbacher-Szok
Absent: John Morrison, Randy Wilson, Brian Billow
Schwarz called the meeting to Order: 7:03pm
Architectural Study and Phased Plan
Schwarz: Everybody knows we received our grant funds, which was half the 7250 quote we got for the updated condition assessment, I reached out to Tracy Kozak and she is currently working on the background information and she is pulling info which won't have changed from the old condition assessment- which is why it is cheaper. She has been working on that. She started last week and she is working on it this week. She will be in touch with me soon to come in and begin the physical assessment of the building with her associates, Arcove LLC. We will meet with her and her consultants here. I told her I need two days' notice as she will need to get into the attic and I’ll need Maryjo to let me in there. We will get a report the NHPA wants for the grant application-within 3 weeks of when she starts. Her paperwork says 8 weeks, so..
Berry: Remember the last time we had to get into the attic? Why don't you call Laurie tomorrow.
Schwarz: She won't be here.
Berry: When will the folks show up?
Schwarz:They’ll let us know.
Berry: If you call me I can absolutely help, in fact I’d like you to call me so I can come babble about the building.
Schwarz: Okay I can do that.
LCHIP Update
Schwarz: Currently we have a lot to cover. At our last meeting we had received a letter from our original window contractor (Andy Roeper) stating he has requested we find someone else to do the job, he has some personal business which will preclude him from doing the job even a year from now. We asked another contractor (Arch Weathers) to come out last week and he looked through the building. He was going to send me a quote and has just found out he is having shoulder surgery so he will not be able to complete the work either. So, he has referred us to Olde Window Restorers, they are a larger team- 4 people. I did have a conversation with the owner Alden Bowers yesterday about this 4 man team.
Berry: Where are they from?
Schwarz: Warner. He said they did look at the windows about 4 years ago, I guess the town wasn't ready then. I explained the situation and asked if he wanted to come out and he said yes. He’ll call me back with a time, but we’re looking at next week.
Berry: Did you discuss the storm window situation with this gentleman?
Schwarz: I did. The other thing that had come up, originally we were discussing with our first window contractor Andy Roeper that he was going to do aluminum windows which are historically sound and Arch asked why we aren't doing custom wood windows as they’d be a hell of a lot cheaper.
Berry: Wrong. That is not true.
Schwarz: Well, he’s sending us a quote so we’ll have that. Because in all of this I have been in contact with LCHIP multiple times and when Andy Roeper left they gave us an extension to dec 2025. In regards to window material they said the wooden windows would indeed “be preferable as long as it's affordable” . When I asked Arch who I could get the wood storm windows from, that's how he hooked me up with Olde Window Restorers. They do make their own from accoya wood and the windows are functional.
Berry: I know people that have them and they are very expensive and very impractical.
Schwarz: The way he explained them was they were functional
Berry: They can come with a little screen and be functional but that's not historically appropriate
McKinney: They work as an awning so if you have the windows open and it rains it will keep the rain out
Berry: And they don't get really good airflow. Until such a time as we have hvac in this building the girls open the windows, all on this floor.
Fimbel: Have you ever thought about asking Bill Kokko from Milford? He does historical windows and he did them for us at Lamson.
Schwarz: I’ve never even heard of him.
McKinney: Oh yes, he is really very good.
Fimbel: When he talked to me at the farm he said he even saves old glass and uses it for restorations.
Schwarz: The one thing I will say is that Arch Weathers did say I had referred him to Greg Geisinger who is just getting started, he said this isn't my place but you should really go with someone with more experience.
Fimbel: Bill Kokko I know from a very long time ago, we grew up in the same town and he is an amazing historical craftsman.
McKinney: Keep in mind you have to deal with Bill Kokko’s pace.
Fimbel: He knows not to take a job if he doesn’t think he can meet the time requirements.
Schwarz: It’s taking a while for people to get back to us and people are already booked out a year. It’s taking a few days for people to get back and I don't want to muddle the pot and have 5 people calling me back either.
Berry: Did you tell the folks in Warner that if they're going to do the job we have to put storm windows on the building?
Schwarz: Absolutely.
Berry: Bill they're storms that go within the casing, they're a discreet thing. So anyways that's what Andy has always put on the restoration jobs he has done. I spoke to Arch last week about if he can install the windows himself and he was really put out that he would have to accurately measure from the outside and then put them in himself. These storms have to be measured very well. We have to run this by LCHIP. Seeing as how the Allied Storm Window people will make them for anybody, then I could maybe do it. I can at least make a quote if nobody else is.
Schwarz: That’s definitely something we’ll discuss.
Ross: You'd have to do it for free, we just sent in our new COE.
Berry: Ah, thanks for reminding me.
Schwarz: He’d just have to recuse himself from any financial discussion.
Berry: Suffice it to say we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but I’d like us to focus on getting the storm windows put in immediately and we have until 2025. Good work getting the extensions.
Schwarz: So, anyway that's where we stand. We have another contractor coming in next week. I took Tim's advice and looked the windows up and hunted down the sales rep that Andy Roeper had used to quote us. The guy told us “now I could sell them to you and you personally could put them in”. LCHIP said the wood is preferable, but that if it's too expensive not to do it.
Berry: We can find anybody that we have knowledge of, who has the proper equipment to do the storms, we want to have someone we can trust for the measurements. If they're wrong there's no refund.
Land Trust Standards and Practices
Schwarz: Did everybody receive and review them? Numbers 7-12 apply to us and needed to be done.
Group affirms
Schwarz: I need to call for a motion, we do have to submit by 3/15/22, which is five days from now, proof in the form of minutes that we did adopt these standards..
Berry makes motion adopting specifically the formal standards and practices 7-12, Ross seconds, no further discussion. All in favor. Motion passed
Historic Resources Subcommittee
Szok- We haven’t met.
Schwarz: I met with a woman, and connected her with Anna and Zoe.
Fimbel: Oh yeah we have that meeting coming up, don't we.
Szok: She's going to get back to us, she went away for winter break.
Fimbel: We said some time after the town meeting.
Schwarz: If we haven't already let's get a date for that, I'm happy to help.
Szok: She would like to be registered on the state historic site and I’ve had a gander at that site and they want a history of the land deeds and boundaries.
Berry: To get that building on that registry costs $600.
Schwarz: I told her as this is our first time helping to do this we will do this for free, and I think we don't need to be charging the necessary fees until we know what we’re doing but she is required to pay all incurred fees herself.
Berry: You’ve been generous and that’s good, but Anna has shown me the process and I think that when you meet with this person the formal work could be done by us, but all the footwork and research should be done by her.
Schwarz: She has been made aware. This may actually be the best person to be our first. I know she wants to be involved in the process
McKinney: Bring her in as the applicant manager.
Schwarz: We’re not planning on registering all the historic resources in our town, correctamundo? Anna was making a template that was adequate for the HRSC requirements, but is nowhere near as rigorous as the states’. I don't have a final answer from Certified Local Government yet, but they gave me 3 limited number accesses to Emmit- state register- and I had to go online and submit all of the things- a very exhaustive list- which is all the houses. That's the survey. So, I love the form you came up with, but I think that's what they want- the survey. Filling out the form on the houses in the historic district , Lamson pops up on Emmit and a few dams out this way, there were 4 properties total, lamson, 2 dams, and the town hall. I will find it before I make you change your template.
Szok: What is Emmit?
Schwarz:Iit is the State Enhanced Mapping and Management Information Tool, a state based inventory of historical resources. As far as I understand it, I haven't received notification if we are a certified local government yet.
Fimbel: Our template has to be their survey.
Schwarz: Right, I am 93% sure that we have to use their form and that's why they have their grant program which hires professionals to help fill out that form. I think if we have to hire a professional there are grants to help us. If we do have to do that, how great is it that we have somebody that wants to try and knows we will be fumbling around. I said to the homeowner that I would like to be involved and I told Anna I would be her feet on the ground. I know Zoe already has a great amount of information on this home already, and if she doesn't she knows where to find it. I also really like her because she’s patient and thorough.
Szok: Have we seen one of these surveys?
Schwarz: I have a copy of the one from when they did the town hall that I can print out and show you.
Fimbel: I would like to read that.
Szok: I’ll forward it.
Schwarz: We’ll get that on the schedule and see what the three of us can do, seriously though let me know what you need. There are grants to individuals, quote on quote, that want to give money to people for preservation, there aren’t millions of dollars out there but we can try.
Fundraising Subcommittee
Schwarz: We are trying to meet and we are going to be talking about the Spring Gala. Even though it is Spring Gala fun and games we wanted to stick to our heritage roots. We had talked about doing whirligigs and rag dolls, but moved those to lamson farm day. Brian and I were talking about it and maybe it's a good idea and maybe it's not and I said maybe we do like a cracker barrel checkers tournament maybe an entry fee maybe no entry fee.
Fimbel: We just have to make sure we have standard rules. We did that one spring gala, we actually had a guy come and do that. For a couple years my son came and played chess against people to fundraise as well.
Fimbel: We have a couple tables
Schwarz: Brian at one point had said reclaimed wood signs might be a thing we could do. Ray Lyons came over this weekend and said he could give us a bunch of wood for signs.
Berry: Anna does wood burning, she could do them for the signs.
Szok: Just writing would be faster and easier.
Berry: Is it really that slow?
Szok & Schwarz: Yes.
Berry: What do you think about this idea? Anne Dodd threw out on Chatter the other day the idea about the booth and selling say windows?
Schwarz: This is something that has been discussed before right when I came out of school for the grant writing thing. We will do that, the sponsorship opportunities.
Berry: Maybe this isn't a thing for the spring gala, maybe we should have the material right there to take donations.
Schwarz: We are going to sell off basically parts of the building, but we don't do that until we know exactly how much money we need. You can buy a stair and there are 14, we break it down into a dollar amount and we need to wait until we have at least 50% of the funds.
Berry: You took the fundraising courses I defer to your judgment.
Schwarz: It will come, it's just down the pike. I have no mail. Let's go over the minutes.
8:12 Berry makes a motion to accept minutes as written, Ross seconds. No further discussion, all in favor, motion passed.
Schwarz: Unless there's anything else to discuss, we are looking for new members. Let’s keep an eye out for interested individuals!
Ross makes a motion to adjourn, Berry seconds, all in favor, motion passed.
Meeting adjourned at 8:20pm
Next meeting: April 14, 2022
Respectfully Submitted,
Sarah Beth Ross
Secretary