Renovating the HDC from the inside out

For many years now, the City of Newport's Historic District Commission has been the bane of the existence of those who own property in the neighborhoods within the Commission's jurisdiction. The absence of any real qualifying professional standards for Commission members, the utter lack of clear guidelines, an arbitrary, capricious, and nepotistic approach to enforcement, application & fee structures without rhyme or reason, and of course, the hell of having to sit through interminable Commission meetings, waiting for your name to be called in order that you might present your "case" for replacing that old window in your garage or rebuild your front steps - these are to name just a few of the procedural inequities that have turned this initially laudable effort at architectural preservation into a mind-blowingly hateful experience that smacks of Big Brother. Untold hundreds of Newport property owners have suffered untold annoyances at the hands of these fools. The received wisdom around town was that if your interior decorator or your contractor or your next door neighbor didn't sit on the HDC, you were pretty much out of luck.

But hopefully, all that is about to change. Late last spring the City Council empaneled a task force whose purpose is to review and REVISE the historic district ordinance. This task force - which has been meeting regularly several times a month - is comprised of a group of selected residents with professional backgrounds in the fields of architecture, building, history, preservation, and law. That group subsequently split into several sub-committees, which have been meeting once a week. All of the meetings are posted and open to the public. Save for the committee members themselves, the meetings are invariably poorly attended. Come on, folks! For all of you who've been complaining about the workings of the HDC - or have ever complained in the past - this is your big chance to help these hard-working volunteers set things right, finally and once and for all.