Will County Historic Preservation Commission met April 7.
Here is the minutes provided by the commission:
1. CALL TO ORDER
Chairwoman Sandy Vasko called the meeting to order at 7:08 PM
| Attendee Name | Title | Status | Arrived |
| Sandy Vasko | Chairwoman | Present | |
| Daniel Seggebruch | Vice-Chairman | Present | |
| Ann Marie Nagel | Secretary | Present | |
| Matt Galik | Present | ||
| Judy Panozzo | Present | ||
| William McCollum | Present | ||
| John Kiefner | Present |
2. ROLL CALL - ESTABLISHMENT OF A QUORUM
A quorum was established.
3. APPROVAL OF AGENDA
1. Motion To Approve Agenda
Roll Call Vote was taken. Motion approved unanimously, 7-0.
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Matt Galik SECONDER: John Kiefner AYES: Vasko, Seggebruch, Nagel, Galik, Panozzo, McCollum, Kiefner |
*For information about this agenda or if any ADA assistance is needed, please contact staff at the Will County Land Use Department at (815) 774-7902.
1. Historic Preservation Commission - Regular Meeting - Mar 3, 2021 7:00 PM
Roll Call Vote was taken. Motion approved unanimously, 7-0, with no corrections or additions.
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: William McCollum SECONDER: John Kiefner AYES: Vasko, Seggebruch, Nagel, Galik, Panozzo, McCollum, Kiefner |
None.
6. CHAIR'S REPORT
Vasko was contacted by Mark Nielsen, the owner of the Eagle Hotel in Wilmington. He is now wanting to become a Will County Landmark. The Eagle Hotel is already listed on the National Register. One of the reasons that this is important to Will County is it's an Underground Railroad site. It is the only Underground Railroad site that Vasko can prove still exists. The Eagle Hotel is located on the corner of Water and Baltimore in Wilmington. The Eagle Hotel was built by Cox, who was the founder of Wilmington in 1836. It possibly is the oldest building in Will County that is still being used. The manager of the Hotel, Franklin Mitchell, then purchased the Hotel from Cox. Franklin Mitchell was mentioned in many of the Underground Railroad texts as an abolitionist.
7. STAFF'S REPORT
Napoles indicated Staff has submitted 2 Demo Permit's for review since the last meeting and those were later released.
Farrell announced that after the meeting last month, Curt Paddock has resigned from the Commission.
8. OLD BUSINESS
1. 2021 Goals & Objectives April Status Update
Napoles said they are going to focus on the items where action is needed or where we have updates.
For #2, Complete an App for Designated Will County Landmarks. At the March meeting, Commissioners discussed potential updates to the website to coincide with the app. Staff discussed with leadership and no changes to the website are planned at this time. Staff will need the Commission's confirmation to proceed with the StoryMap project utilizing the County's existing GIS platform.
Napoles presented a few slides to the Commission to demonstrate how this would work.
This is not optimized for mobile use but that can be done as part of an update. This update would provide routes, potentially more photos, more extensive
narratives, and narrations. We were told in order to do this, we would only need a license, which is $500/year.
Farrell showed the Commission StoryMap that had been optimized and demonstrated a historic barn tour. There is a map with their driving route, which is something that can be put in.
Farrell also showed a second StoryMap that incorporates historic aerial imagery, which is already available in the GIS platform. These are just options available to us through the optimized website.
Discussion took place among the Commissioners.
Vasko said I feel it is a good start. It looks good to us. This map is great, it shows that we have landmarks all over the County. When we set up tours, we should omit the ones that do not want to be visited. Don't include them on the tour.
Farrell said the next goal regarding the budget was approved at the last meeting by a 5 to 1 vote. We did sense some ambivalence from the Commissioners on what projects that money would fund. We just wanted to confirm that with you. The one project the Commission didn't seem entirely certain about was the CLG Grant for the underrepresented communities with Joliet. I just want to make sure that is something that we want to go forward with.
Seggebruch had questions about getting the Grant.
Farrell said Joliet and Will County will apply for the Grant together. Discussion took place among the Commissioners.
Vasko said I think we do want to move forward with this.
Napoles said we do not have an update on #4 goal, regarding the CLG grant yet. We should be hearing if we were awarded that Grant anytime soon.
Napoles said for goal #5, this is the social and racial justice review of existing landmarks. Staff is looking for clearer direction on how you want to proceed with this goal. What are we looking to find out from this review? How do we plan to go about this review? What will we be looking for?
Vasko said this was brought up by Curt Paddock around the beginning of the year. I don't know what we would be looking for and I don't know who would be qualified to do this. If we did something in the past that was not right and had some kind of a problem with it, we didn't know it or we wouldn't have done it. I don't know if this should be stricken for the goals or just left as a reminder that we need to be mindful of this. I think your program with the underrepresented communities may go a long way toward improving the disparity of what we are landmarking.
Seggebruch said I still feel strongly about what I said a month ago. It doesn't take a consultant or any expert if we all really stand back and think about it, I think we can all probably agree that the European settlement of Will County was probably the original act of racism in history. That is a controversial thing to say, but if that's true, you then have to question everything that we've ever done. Now, that is one extreme. Personally, I don't think we're ready to tackle this. I would like to make a Motion tonight to remove this and look at putting it onto next year's goals. I don't think its right to question everything that we've done for the last 30 years.
McCollum said I am just curious if there was a way we could keep that and maybe change the way it is written. We could just be mindful as we look at future designated landmarks. I am very proud of the fact that you can visualize all of the landmarks that we have in Will County. For #5, if we were just mindful of the issue surrounding this and maybe not completely strike it as a goal.
Seggebruch said I don't think we will forget about it. I think we're all mindful. Panozzo asked, can we tie it to the underrepresented communities?
Farrell said I think everyone is talking about the same thing. It just depends on how we word it and how we want to approach it. Staff has thought that we would include this goal update document every month where you could read over and see what the status of everything is. We will only talk about ones that need action from you. That's what we intended to do because as you can see on tonight's Agenda, we don't have any new business.
Vasko talked about the outreach program for the schools. An outreach program that just sends books to the school is not very useful. Somebody would have to talk about it. To me it means that we need somebody to go to the school and talk about preservation. Maybe we just talk to the teachers. I don't know how to implement that program.
Discussion took place with the Commissioners.
2. Motion To Remove Goal #5 from the 2021 Goals and Objectives
Roll Call Vote was taken. Motion passed unanimously, 7-0.
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Daniel Seggebruch, Vice-Chairman SECONDER: John Kiefner AYES: Vasko, Seggebruch, Nagel, Galik, Panozzo, McCollum, Kiefner |
None.
10. COMMISSIONER DISCUSSION
Galik talked about the McGovney-Yunker Farm, which is on the National Register. The Park District is alluding to demolishing the farmhouse on the property.
Discussion took place.
Panozzo suggested a petition.
Nagel said in regards to #1 on the sheet, I have a call into Marianne for tomorrow and hopefully I will have some kind of news for you next month.
Seggebruch said last Friday, my Aunt, Marie Lorenz from Peotone passed away. My dad and my two aunts went to the Deutsche School. I think my Aunt's finished in 1947, which means they were some of the last students to finish in that Grade 1-8 school. It closed in 1949, 2 years later. My guess is there's very few students alive at this point that went to that school. After my aunt's funeral on Saturday, I'm going to go to the Peotone Library and do some research on it. I have a theory that I sent to Lisa a while ago. I should have a bunch of pictures that should help to start filling in the gaps. I would really like to help Ann finish this up. It means a lot to me personally.
Nagel said it sounds good. Maybe we can go together to meet with Marianne.
Seggebruch said this is goal #1 on our Goal List. We've been working on it for 2-3 years. We just have to get it done. In honor of my dad and both of my aunts, it's just something that I really want to get done.
Kiefner asked, has anyone seen the Barns of Will County photo book? I saw it on Facebook. Someone is advertising that they traveled Will County and took 350 photos of barns. They put together a book of 140 of them and they were selling them.
Nagel suggested checking the Peotone Historical Facebook page. There is a new person that is handling the website.
Kiefner said it was a private enterprise that has taken a lot of pictures in Will County and put them into book form.
Vasko said she would like to find out because they have a gift shop at the Museum. This is the kind of stuff that we sell. I do want to put in a little brag point for that Museum. Most of us know what an Arcadia book is. It's the history books that have a lot of photographs and a little bit of text. They're for history people who don't want to dive in too deep and just want to look at pictures. We have that book from every town in Will County that has an Arcadia book about it. We have Matt's book on the murder mystery. We have Cubs books, Bears books and White Sox books. If you're a member, we send out a quarterly, every 3 months, and those are also for sale in our gift shop. Mother's Day and Father's Day is coming up. If they have everything and you don't know what to get them, a book about local Will County history might be just the thing. They are all for sale right in our shop. You don't have to call Amazon and have them delivered. Call me up and I will deliver them myself. There's a book about Will County that has 80 different photos of Will County including the farms. If you can find out about this guy, I'd like to see it and see if we can sell it. It seems to be a huge undertaking and did he get the ok of anybody who's farms he took pictures of? I know that's a problem when you do take photos, even our Rural Structure Survey has to get permission.
11. ANNOUNCEMENTS
12. ADJOURNMENT
1. Motion To Adjourn The Meeting
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