Ten months ago Mendocino County floated the idea of dissolving the Mendocino Historical Review Board (MHRB) and incorporate its function into the Planning Commission as a cost saving measure. I joined a chorus of righteous indignation at the time. I now think it’s an idea worth considering, but maybe not for the reason it was proposed.
By way of background, I have written a near-monthly news article since the end of 2022 covering the MHRB meetings. For reasons I am about to explain, I will no longer be covering these meetings. I previously served on the Board for two terms, including as chair. Prior to that, I was a land use attorney and helped preserve a large historic district in Silicon Valley now occupied by Oracle. It is with this familiarity of preservation that I submit a stark reality: the MHRB has eviscerated its purpose and should be reformulated as a design review committee rather than perpetuate a mythical stamp of historical approval.
During my six-year tenure on the Board it was apparent that it suffered from two fundamental problems. One, the pool of eligible volunteer Board members is relatively limited. As a result, and to no one’s surprise, members of the MHRB generally have a limited understanding about historic preservation, myself included. Two, County enforcement of the rules governing preservation was, and continues to be, nearly nonexistent. Consequently, most people – at least those who are even aware that there are restrictions - understand that such rules are best considered a suggestion, except in the case of a new building or substantial changes to an existing one that is too obvious to not notice.
But the Board existed for decades with these two shortcomings, and the town was largely preserved in a manner that residents found a source of pride, and visitors came from far and wide to enjoy and adore. These shortcomings were involuntary, largely out of our control given the rules of Board eligibility and the priorities of the County.
Over the past few years, however, another fundamental problem has arisen, one which is entirely voluntary and reflects a profoundly new direction. In an effort to reform the Board into a “kinder, gentler” review body, the Board has largely become unhinged from the very guidelines it is responsible for following. These guidelines are now not only ignored, but are scoffed at by Board members, at least those who are even aware that the guidelines exist. Lively debate over how best to apply the guidelines to the facts of an application has been replaced with how outdated the historic guidelines are and how they are impeding the growth and maintenance of the town.
We now have uniquely modern aluminum clad doors on the uniquely historical hotel. We now have new homes that are beautifully designed, but would be more suitable in Modesto than Mendocino. We have Board members who openly decide the merits of applications on a “case by case” basis without any consideration of past decisions, leaving applicants wondering just how arbitrarily and capriciously the Board will decide their fate. We have Board members voting based on their self-proclaimed understanding of what the younger generation is looking for, as though that somehow is relevant to the limited role of a Board member to apply the guidelines to the applications. We have Board members who believes that modern construction materials, all of which existed when the guidelines were written, should now be considered appropriate because they “last longer.”
A basic ignorance of the guidelines is not limited to the Board members. At a recent meeting, staff was asked to clarify how the guidelines addressed sliding doors. The response was completely in error. However, to staff’s credit, they did ask for a moment to check their misunderstanding, and came back to the Board with the correct regulation. But just to highlight that staff misunderstanding of the guidelines is surpassed only by Board disinterest in the guidelines, the Board quickly approved the application anyway without a single comment about why it was making such an exception to the clear prohibition in the guidelines.
Now, you may say, why throw the baby out with the bath water? Why not work towards reconnecting the Board’s decisions with the guidelines upon which it’s supposed to be making decisions? And that gets us to the final and most distressing culprit. For a number of reasons – age, fading interest, diminished energy, relocation – the “old guard” has largely disappeared, leaving really no advocacy for maintaining the integrity and application of the historic guidelines. In this vacuum, decisions are now made based on Board members’ purely subjective feelings about the aesthetics of a design rather than its conformance to any principles of historic preservation.
So this is where we have come, and we should think very seriously of accepting it rather than pretending something else. This is not some isolated sentiment, but one shared by at least three former members with a combined 18 years of experience on the MHRB. For example, another former chair of the committee, John Simonich, concurred, “I thank you for putting this forward. I whole heartedly agree with it.….I wish it were possible for the MHRB to be the body that it once was, but sadly I agree with you that that seems unlikely. It seems like the town is now run by the business interests and the locals have little to say in what is done.” Recently termed-out Board member Holm Kappler shared similar agreement, lamenting “I appreciate your memo and I must say that I don’t disagree with anything you have said about the state of the Board or the county staff.”
People will say, oh my, we need MHRB to be sure we don’t end up with McDonalds or Holiday Inn. No, no we don’t; the Planning Commission can do that. Or wait, what if everyone wants to install weather-proof doors and windows? Apparently, they already can if it’s permitted on one of the most historic buildings in town.
The simple truth is that the MHRB now only serves as the very last line of defense against the most egregious violations of the letter and spirit of preservation guidelines. And as such, this last line of defense does not require the cost, uncertainty, or bureaucratic challenges of the Mendocino Historical Review Board. The County should take steps necessary to reauthorize it so its purpose honestly aligns with its new reality.
Don’t you dare! Not the hysterical review board!