Letter: Several Procedural Errors in Historical Commission’s Public Hearings Notice

The following letter was sent to Town Manager Paul Bockelman and the Amherst Historical Commission on July 29, 2024.

As a member of the public concerned with adverse effects to the historic Jones Library resulting from the proposed demolition-renovation-expansion project, I request that the August 1 Public Hearing before the Amherst Historical Commission be postponed until adequate notice can be given to the public.  I have several concerns:

1. The first notice that a Section 106 Public Hearing would be conducted on August 1 was issued on July 26 at 1:26pm, only 6 days before the hearing.
   
   
   The Town of Amherst Historic-Preservation-Bylaws-April-2024 state that a 14-day notice is required for a public hearing:
   
   Public Hearing Procedure For the purposes of a Public Hearing:
   a. Notice of the Public Hearing shall be sent by Commission staff to the Applicant and property owners within 300 feet at least fourteen (14) days prior to the Public Hearing.
   b. Posting on the Town website and publication within local news media shall take place fourteen (14) days prior to the Public Hearing.
   
   Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 40A, Section 11 also mandate a 14-day notice for all public hearings.

2. The public is an important stakeholder in a Section 106 review and needs sufficient time to understand Amherst’s review process, analyze the design being proposed, assess the impacts to the historic character of the library building, and formulate comments.  6 days’ notice does not suffice. 
   
3. No updated Project Notification Form describing the project’s most recent design changes has, to the public’s knowledge, been submitted to the Massachusetts Historical Commission.  This important step allows the State Historic Preservation Officer to comment on whether the latest design changes, which include replacing slate shingles with asphalt, and changing curtain wall windows to aluminum windows, represent adverse effects to a property listed on the state and national registers of historic places.

4. The Town of Amherst has not yet identified a point of contact for the Section 106 review to whom the public can address questions and a group can request becoming a consulting party to the review.  The Amherst Historic Preservation Coalition (AHPC), of which I am a member, seeks consulting party status.
   
5. The Town of Amherst calendar has five different listings for the public hearing, all beginning at 6:30 p.m. This leads the pubic to be confused about which hearing agenda to prepare for.
   

6. The meeting postings imply that the August 1 hearing will consist of a demolition application review, a review of compliance with the Town-Jones Library Historic Preservation Restriction Agreement, and the Section 106 Review.  Two hours (6:30 – 8:30 p.m.) does not allow adequate time for the public to weigh in on these three significant decisions.

I remind the Town of Amherst and the Amherst Historical Commission of this excerpt from the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation’s Citizens Guide which has been included in the public hearing packet:

“In addition to seeking the views of the public, federal agencies must actively consult with certain organizations and individuals during review. This interactive consultation is at the heart of Section 106 review.”

The conditions described above seriously impede the public in assessing and articulating adverse effects to the historic Jones Library and render the August 1 hearing incapable of fulfilling the goals of a demolition application, Preservation Restriction Agreement and Section 106 review.  I respectfully ask the Town Manager to cancel the August 1 hearing and reschedule it for after the Massachusetts Historical Commission has commented on adverse effects resulting from the most recent design changes.  I further request that the historic preservation public hearings be scheduled with fourteen days’ public notice, provide a thorough and instructive agenda, and allocate sufficient time to the three separate hearings meant to protect the historic value of the Jones Library.

Jeff Lee

Jeff Lee is a career computer programmer and regular observer of local government. He has lived in Amherst since 1994 and in the Pioneer Valley since 1973 when he began grad work in mathematics at UMass. He formerly served on the Amherst Redevelopment Authority and as a member of Town Meeting. He is a frequent contributor to the Amherst Indy.