It seems as if the controversy surrounding the city’s historic zoning program had stretched on so long, it was due to collect some tax abatements of its own any minute. But no longer: At their meeting last week, City Council finally adopted belt-tightening changes to tax waivers for the properties and settled a related lawsuit.
Changes to the program, pored over by council for months, finally came in the form of unanimous council action, which put in place a $2,500 cap in place on the tax abatements owners of historic properties can receive. Some of the biggest wrangling on the dais involved who would be effected by the cap – only new applicants, or those that applied over a year ago when a deluge of requests drew attention to the program.
Mayor Lee Leffingwell offered an unsuccessful motion retroactively applying the cap to properties that applied for historic designation at the beginning of 2010, “when properties… who had applied for historic designation were advised that this could be changed at any time and likely would be changed at any time.” (According to Historic Preservation Officer Steve Sadowsky, that designation only applied to 20 properties out of approximately 260 owner-occupied historic homes.) Leffingwell then voted with the majority in applying the cap only to new applicants.
Council also settled the related lawsuit from Mike Levy, Dominic Chavez, and Alfred Stanley alleging the program ran contra to state law as it didn’t require applicants to demonstrate an ongoing need; from here on, applicants are required to describe the reason they require the tax abatement.
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This article appears in August 5 • 2011.