Let me give credit where credit is due. If I had been watching yesterday's Council meeting, I would have known that some city Council members also are skeptical of the new wave of historic landmark applications:
The Austin City Council on Thursday ordered a review of rules on granting historic landmark status to homes — and the tax breaks that come with that designation — amid concerns from some council members that a rush of new historic zoning cases could undermine the city's tax base.
On Thursday, the council heard 25 requests for historic status, most from the Pemberton Heights neighborhood, just northwest of downtown.
That amounted to more historic cases than the council usually considers in a year, Council Member Bill Spelman said.
The council gave preliminary approval to the requests but delayed a final vote until next week. The council also directed city staffers to look into possibly limiting the number of historic designations per neighborhood, or citywide.
"I think we have a major equity issue if all our cases are concentrated in a specific area" of West or Central Austin, Council Member Sheryl Cole said.
There are now about 440 buildings for which the city has granted historic status, city planning manager Jerry Rusthoven said. To qualify as historic, a home must be at least 50 years old and must have retained its historical appearance, among other requirements.
The city taxes on a historic home are either capped at $2,000 or are levied as if the home is worth 50 percent of its taxable value, whichever is higher, Rusthoven told the council.
In exchange, the owner of a historic house may make only minimal changes to it.
With the 25 pending cases, along with three more cases to be considered at next week's meeting and 20 cases already approved this year, the city would lose $115,300 from the tax rolls.
The school district, county and other jurisdictions would lose taxes as well, Rusthoven said.
The solution is not to limit the number of designations per neighborhood. If a neighborhood is chock full of historic homes, we might was to preserve more of the neighborhood rather than less. (There is actually a separate zoning district for this.)
No, the solution is to enforce the ordinance on the books; i.e., require the structure to have "architectural, historical, archaeological, or cultural significance." A house is not "significant" merely because the owners made no major changes to the house over the years. (Some of the houses on the list don't even pass this watered-down test because the owners have added garages or another wing.)
The article makes another important point. The city's decisions spill over to the county and school district. They, in fact, bear the brunt of an historic landmark designation. Designating Pemberton Heights' "Huron Mills House" as historic will cost the city $5,000 per year -- capped -- but the county and AISD $29,000 per year. (The Huron Mills House is historically significant because it was the home of the proprietor of Austin's first cash-only building materials business. Oh, and it is an excellent example of Colonial Revival residential architecture (as is every third house in Pemberton Heights).) The city naturally would designate fewer buildings "historic" if it had to bear the full cost of the designations.
