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LdCAL HISTORIC DISTRICT
<br />fiTfPRi.iNRC
<br />OOKLETS
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<br />RE,vfIALIZED
<br />As some of you may know, the Historic Preservation Commission
<br />last year had run completely out of the District Guideline Booklets
<br />for most local historic districts. This was a considerable problem
<br />especially when a home in the district changed ownership.
<br />We could, and did, run photocopies of our last remaining booklets,
<br />but this was expensive, and made the building photographs and
<br />explanatory diagrams very hard to read and interpret. Also, some of the
<br />data were no longer correct. On the page listing contact information
<br />for staff and commission members, for instance, David Duvall and
<br />Rhonda are no longer here, the HPC membership is different, our
<br />office has moved, and our area code changed. Furthermore, over the
<br />years attention had been called to errors in spelling, grammar, punctu-
<br />ation, and even a couple of street numbers.
<br />The commission's previous director, Rhonda Saunders, initiated
<br />the project at a time when the technology and equipment available to
<br />the office was not capable of producing or storing all the contents of
<br />n one fully intact guidelines booklet. Therefore, the text was stored
<br />=egments, diagrams and explanatory drawings were inserted or past-
<br />ed onto pages as photocopies, and photographs were scanned in just
<br />before printing, and not saved electronically.
<br />Neighborhood associations, according to their bylaws and our
<br />Ordinance, may meet every five years to reauthorize or to redraft their
<br />guidelines altogether, in substance as well as in form. Therefore, our
<br />office should ideally be capable of reproducing new versions that period-
<br />ically incorporate changes deemed necessary by Local District neighbor-
<br />hood associations without having to re -input entire district inventories
<br />and histories from scratch with each new publication. n, 4e -
<br />HPC, therefore, made arrangements last year to lig our district
<br />guideline publication system more up-to-date and user-friendly, by hir-
<br />ing a professional editor/publisher to re -construct all our guideline
<br />booklets into electronic media so that we can (a) print new editions of
<br />the current guidelines, with typos corrected and HPC names and
<br />addresses up -dated; (b) load all our guideline booklets onto our web-
<br />site, so that interested citizens, can download information (or even
<br />entire booklets) from their home computers; and, (c) proceed with the
<br />substantive revisions, if and as needed by neighborhood associations,
<br />with relative speed and economy.
<br />We have not made any substantive changes in any booklet, as
<br />these must be made by neighborhood associations and the HPC, acting
<br />together, at legally noticed public meetings.
<br />We think you will all be happy with the technical corrections and
<br />amendments to the contents. The amendments encompass small details
<br />— including HPC's address and telephone number in the booklet, listing
<br />Ukent members and employees, and so forth.
<br />By the end of September, we will have reprints of the district
<br />guideline booklets available for East Wayne Street, Edgewater Place,
<br />North Saint Joseph Street, River Bend, Riverside Drive, and West North
<br />Shore Drive. Booklets for the remaining districts should follow over the
<br />course of the next few months.
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