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Pinellas Realtors Association peeved at St. Pete City Council’s second vote on historical preservation

in The Bay and the 'Burg/Top Headlines by

After seven hours of discussion where they heard from approximately 90 members of the public, the St. Petersburg City Council voted in the wee hours of a Friday morning last month to 

It was a hard-fought victory for historic preservation supporters, who had worked for years to get the city to change the previous ordinance that required two-thirds of all neighborhood property owners to approve an application.

Like all such ordinances in the city, the measure had to come up for a second hearing, which took place on Thursday night, September 17. Instead of just approving it as passed in August, Councilwoman Darden Rice proposed an amendment that extended the time required for property owners to submit their ballots when a neighborhood has requested historic designation to go from the original 60 days listed to 120 days. After further discussion, the Council extended that timeline to 180 days, where it passed on a 5-2 vote (Karl Nurse was out of the room at the time).

That discussion took place late on a Thursday night, after six hours of previous discussion.

Joe Farrell, director of public affairs for the Pinellas Realtor Organization, which along with the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce was one of the biggest organizations who fought against changing the ordinance, was watching the discussion from home, and said he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“We feel that the trust and transparency that the City Council typically has with the public has been violated,” Farrell told SPB earlier this week.

So after consulting with his colleagues, Farrell fired off a letter to Rice last week (while copying every other member of the Council), where he wrote, “On Sept. 17, without public notice, without contact to any of the thousands concerned, you proposed an amendment that materially changed how the voting process will take place for Locally Designated Historic Districts by extending the voting period to 180 days.”

Farrell wrote that though the action itself was disappointing to his organization, the  process of how it occurred was particularly upsetting.

“To date, we have found no one from our community partners, or from our organization, that was made aware of the amendment you proposed,” he wrote. “Furthermore, you brought up the amendment during executive session when there is no public comment allowed, and not publicly noticed on the agenda.”

Farrell then got personal, mentioning how the Realtors Association had backed Rice financially and with “sweat equity” during her successful candidacy for council in 2013. In conclusion, his letter said that if it was her intention to extend the voting period, the fact that she didn’t disclose that over the past six months of discussions was “disturbing.”

When contacted Tuesday night, Rice was conciliatory, but also remarked that some of the rhetoric seemed a bit over the top.

“I respect them greatly, but there are going to be a few things that we’re not gong to see eye to eye on, and historical preservation was certainly an example of that,” she said.

Rice disputes there was anything secret about the discussion, since the ordinance was placed on the agenda for a second reading on September 17. “It’s not fair to say that anything was kept in secret — far from it.”

“I know they’re upset,” says Karl Nurse. “Frankly, I’m sympathetic to their fears in the sense that a historic district does put a series of exterior requirements on a person’s home.” But he said that whether it’s two months or now six months, he still believes it’s a high hurdle for neighborhoods to be able to change their historic designation.

A review of the September 17 meeting shows that when Rice proposed extending the time that ballots needed to be returned back to the city from 60 to 120 days, Council Chairman Charlie Gerdes was confused, thinking that when the ordinance was passed for the first time in August it included a staff recommendation that would have required 30 percent of property owners to sign a petition to start the application, what he label the “Tallahassee model.” However, that proposal was voted down at one point by the Council. Once he was informed that was not part of the ordinance, he enthusiastically endorsed Rice’s proposal.

“I empathize with and understand Joe’s surprise and frustration, because I didn’t think that was going to be a subject of discussion either until Darden brought it up, and then it became clear to me that we were not using that time line at all, we were going with something totally different, and I happen to support trying to keep the timeline with the Tallahassee model,” Gerdes says. “So I get that he’s surprised and frustrated,” adding that he didn’t think that there was anything that was meant to be “anything less than transparent.”

Nurse believes that some of that confusion that Gerdes referenced resulted from the original late-night vote, which left some parts of the proposal uncertain. (There were nine separate votes on the proposal that night.) The vote adding more time for a neighborhood to get in their votes took place after 10 p.m., more than six hours after the meeting began. That’s why he intends to introduce a proposal at this week’s meeting that requires that no agenda items will be started at Council meetings after 11 p.m. unless a super majority overrides the policy.

Farrell says the action by the Council was redolent of something that happens in Tallahassee or Washington, but “it’s not the way that St. Pete operates.”

For her part, Councilwoman Rice thinks the Realtors are playing a “heavy-handed card,” but says that if her colleagues wanted to revisit the issue again, “it’s not unreasonable.”

However, she added, “I think there’s a sense that we worked on it a long time.”

 

Mitch Perry has been a reporter with Extensive Enterprises since November of 2014. Previously, he served as five years as the political editor of the alternative newsweekly Creative Loafing. He also was the assistant news director with WMNF 88.5 FM in Tampa from 2000-2009, and currently hosts MidPoint, a weekly talk show, on WMNF on Thursday afternoons. He began his reporting career at KPFA radio in Berkeley. He's a San Francisco native who has now lived in Tampa for 15 years and can be reached at [email protected]

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