Good evening and welcome to the historic commission meeting Tuesday, June 16th.

It's 5 p.m.

Call the meeting to order.

Roll call, please.

Quaro?

Here.

Here.

Kremers.

Goth?

Here.

Griffha?

Here.

Terrell.

Here.

Conrad?

Here.

Six present.

You have a quorum.

Thank you.

Item number three on our agenda is comments from the public.

Did we receive any comments today?

We did not.

Thank you.

Item number four, approval of the minutes of the May 19th, 2026 regular meeting.

Is there a motion to accept the minutes as presented?

I will motion to accept the minutes as presented.

Is there a second?

Oh second.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

So moved.

New business.

I think I will turn it over to you.

Thank you.

Yes.

I think our last session's meeting on the property on 618 East Milwaukee.

Kind of brought to surface a couple of key points that I would kind of like to explore further.

And this has to do with, of course, properties in the Courthouse Hill overlook district.

And just to briefly summarize, uh, that property on 618.

Uh I understand it through the state, they identified the house as containing an excessively high level of lead, which required some mitigation, which involved the homeowner, the property owner, the a nonprofit, and contractors.

And that process played out without any visibility or oversight of the historic commission.

And during that last meeting, the homeowner came and they everyone all the parties came and they kind of explained how it happened.

And I know there was a bit of consternation as far as it would have been nice to have more heads up on this on the front end.

So if you start to pull that string, I think the weak link in this oversight capacity that we exercise has to do with trying to get some type of homeowner property owner recognition that in the case of the courthouse overlook district, they do have requirements that they have to abide by.

And I think we have um uh a couple of ways to go about this I don't um having this become part of the city right now is not feasible time wise they just do not have the capacity to be able to take on another committee and um I like the idea of potentially inviting community members to be a part of the process and um we have ways in which we can reach out to them I think we would probably need some official language though first um to be able to put that out for example on the Facebook group um for the Courthouse Hill which is the only one that has an overly um just you has an overlay to it um and finding out if there are individuals who might a be interested in wanting to be a part of this committee um but also I think this could also turn into a way of which we could recruit new commissioners for um for the historic commission and um so any thoughts that you want to share can you I wonder if the administration has a way to s uh stuff a flyer or something in the property tax bill uh one or both of the notices if they're paying it in half uh broken down by uh the nine digit zip code but that would cover or whatever it would take to to do a stuffing I think great example of a formal process um but we would essentially just throw a wide net and you know brainstorm identify as many as possible and then go through the uh process of narrowing it down to maybe a handful of with the most effective and efficient and and uh cost efficient uh processes but I mean that one right there is pretty straightforward you know and it well in and actually the the neighborhood isn't that big we could walk it with door tags yeah just go knocking on doors knocking on doors and see you know that you are and there there's certain requirements and there are opportunities for tax credits for renovation and just to know that this property is and you have these you know it June's not doing anything hire his son to do it.

Touched on a good point that I hadn't considered maybe this could be part of that larger effort to do the things you just mentioned to let people know hey you are a part of this and these are some of the um perhaps potential uh opportunities they could have through different mechanisms or they involve funding or resources yeah um and in that way and oh by the way we're also looking for volunteers not only potentially for the commission down the road uh but also to serve on this committee to try and and identify ways to formate knowledge it would take somebody not even two hours to walk the entire district yeah and thought no um is there any other things that you've considered with like technology like um any ways to to reach out to people in the district with um you know any like I think that's the most effective way in terms of you know um currently to to get the message out is has there been any have there been any like thoughts on sort of what that would look like so I I think technology is a piece of the solution and one of the things I found in working in a couple other committees or and and and volunteer organizations there are a lot of people who do not even have emails so uh let alone there's even a few that I know that don't even have internet access.

So it's an important piece of the solution because that would be your center of mass and get 60 to 70, 80 percent but then we'd have to do something I think like door to door would help or a formal mailing I think the building a database of emails through that effort in in addition to it because then you can just broadcast it once you've got the database.

And we would need to find out how many of the properties are potentially rental properties so the people that are living there really don't have any connection with how the property is handled.

And so we would need you know that that information of who actually owns the property and I think going through the the assessment I think that's probably readily available.

Here are the property which ones are multifamily here's the listing of the owners well the owner doesn't match the property and then we you know if you're going door to door just skip those ones and and we will move on to the the single family you know owner occupied property.

So how feasible is some of this McKenzie?

I think these are really good ideas and outreach has it is one of the items that I was going to talk about tonight to just share what the committee or the commission has done and um kind of open the floor for additional ideas.

As far as creating a separate committee, um the issue with that is that if there were more than two people from the commission present, then it becomes we have to do a media notice, it becomes a public meeting, and the logistics of that um it's kind of like creating uh another historic, you know, uh entity.

So I believe, you know, if possible that some of these outreach efforts could be done just you know, as as you acting as the historic commission and doing additional outreach like we have done um in the past and where there have been other ideas that I think you know are new and can be really beneficial.

Um I will say I do think a mailer has gone out in the past and I can confirm kind of when that happened and kind of what that looked like um as far as getting the entire district um information at the same time.

Um we are you know providing when new owners purchase a historic property, we are providing them with information every quarter.

We're kind of polling those and then mailing them.

Um I actually have it here if anyone was interested.