Will County Gazette

Will County Board Historic Preservation Commission met Nov. 1.

Here are the minutes provided by the commission:

1. CALL TO ORDER 

Chairman Daniel Seggebruch called the meeting to order at 7:04 PM

Attendee Name	Title	Status	Arrived
Daniel Seggebruch	Chairman	Present
William McCollum	Vice-Chairman	Present
Michael Flanagan	Commissioner	Present
Christi Holston	Commissioner	Present
Andrew Partak	Commissioner	Present
Gerrianne Eck	Secretary	Present
Pamela Owens	Commissioner	Present
Gary Mullen	Commissioner	Present

Gary Mueller name is spelled wrong. It will be corrected on the next months roll call.

Present from The Will County Land Use Department were Marguerite Kenny, WCLU; and Kelli Kruczynski, WCLU.

Present from The State's Attorney Office was Cole Burton.

2. ROLL CALL - ESTABLISHMENT OF A QUORUM 

A quorum was present.

3. APPROVAL OF AGENDA 

Motion to Approve the Agenda 

The Will County Historic Preservation Commission approved by voice vote the agenda, unanimously, 8-0.

*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.

RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]  MOVER: Gerrianne Eck, Secretary SECONDER: Andrew Partak, Commissioner AYES: Seggebruch, McCollum, Flanagan, Holston, Partak, Eck, Owens, Mueller

4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES 

1. Historic Preservation Commission - Regular Meeting - Oct 4, 2023 7:00 PM Motion to Approve Minutes of October 4, 2023 with Amendments 

The Will County Historic Preservation Commission approved by voice vote, unanimously, 8-0.

RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]  MOVER: Gerrianne Eck, Secretary SECONDER: Gary Mueller, Commissioner AYES: Seggebruch, McCollum, Flanagan, Holston, Partak, Eck, Owens, Mueller

(October 4, 2023 held at 6:00PM) 

5. PUBLIC COMMENTS 

None.

6. CHAIR'S REPORT 

Dan Seggebruch: To recap, I know not everybody was there last month, we had the October meeting October 4th, that was an all day thing. We had two additional meetings, one in the morning Andy, Marguerite and I met in Manhattan with Nick Palmer, the Village Manager. Nick was a very captive audience because he's already familiar with what we do. He's been to some of our meetings in the past. I was really pleased with how excited he seemed to be meeting with us. We talked about a lot of things, plans there in the village and things that were for the most part preservation kind of issues. Just in general planning issues and that kind of thing. I think we have some potential there to do some landmarking in the future in the Village of Manhattan. We don't have anything landmarked there. And then he's also excited about us having our traveling meeting in Manhattan next year. I think it was probably about 2004, the last time we met there. So about 20 years ago. So we're kind of starting to repeat. I think we've had a traveling meeting in almost every town in the county, but you know, we may have missed one here or there. That was a very productive meeting.

And then in the afternoon we met in Crete with the President, Mike Einhorn, Christie was at that meeting with me and Marguerite. So, we had a really good meeting there. There was also one (1) Village Board Member in the meeting and then a couple of people from the Crete Historical Society. So we have a pretty nice sized group. We had to introduce ourselves, because we've never landmarked anything in Crete.

We had some handouts that we've used in the past talking about preservation about what we do. But then of course, specifically The Historical Society is interested in landmarking their new Museum Building that they're working on. It may not be open yet for a couple of years, but and they've only owned it about a year now, a little over a year. They've already done a lot of work on it. Again, that was very productive meeting and in fact the one (1) Board Member came to our meeting that night at the library and actually stood up and said in public that, the village supports The Historical Society and the fact that they want to see it landmarked. So we've already even got it on the record, which is great.

I just again wanted to thank Marguerite for all her work last month. It was kind of an all day marathon. A little more work than our normal meeting here.

Andy Partak: Nice. It's nice that the Village of Crete gets behind us.

Dan Seggebruch: It took a lot of work to get to that point. It paid off I think.

Ok, I wanted to mention a couple of other things and I after I'm done, maybe Bill would like say something too. But within the last month or so, one of our former members passed away. Mark Batson from New Lenox, he was on our Commission for quite a few years. Two (2) or three (3) terms and his sister was also at almost every one of the meetings that he was at. So, they were kind of a dynamic duo, brother and sister. I think it was primarily due to them that we get so many buildings landmarked in New Lenox. When he got on the Commission, they really started pushing. I think we've got about, what six (6) buildings, something like that close to six (6) in New Lenox. So, he passed away and I think Bill got a chance to go to the service for him. We've always done a pretty good job of recognizing former members that have passed on. Somehow in the last few years, I guess the information doesn't always, get passed on. I had not realized that our former chair, Virginia Ferry, is on Hospice. So, I would highly encourage that, especially because she was our first Chair of our Commission for many, many years. We want to really monitor because if in fact, she were to pass, we want to get that information in case people want to go to the services.

And then also our former Vice Chair John Lamb, who was professor at Lewis, and he passed away a couple of years ago now. I took over from him as Vice Chair. We want to really make sure we try to, be sensitive to that.

Kane County’s Historic Preservation Chair, Shauna Wiet recently retired after serving 35 years on their commission.

Ok, so the just a couple other quick things, again, just reminding everybody, we have Gary on here now. We're almost back to full membership. We just need that realtor position. So again, keep your ears open if you know any Realtors or you happen to be talking to Realtors. At some point, see if we can recruit somebody that might have some interest.

We will talk probably again about this later, but we need to talk about next month's meeting if we want to do some kind of a holiday meeting somewhere. We usually meet at a restaurant or something like that.

I'm sure staff will talk about reappointments, whose terms are up.

Other than that, I just wanted to also mention that I'm looking forward to some of these things on the agenda tonight. I feel like we're finally going to bring some old projects, those that we've been working on for a long time. Like adopting our updated bylaws, getting our logo revised so that we can get business cards for everybody.

Then brochures and I think then we're going to talk about the other news. Then I feel like looking at our goals again for this year. I feel like we met all our goals. A couple of them shifted during the year, but that's OK. They're not set in stone.

I'm hoping that this next year we're going to be able to move on to some new goals and new projects.

7. STAFF'S REPORT 

Marguerite Kenny: In regards to the agenda, I'll talk to those at that point in time with goals, objectives, landmarking logo, all that in terms of updates.

We did upload the preservation plan to the website.

So with our website, the county is shifting to a .gov platform. We'll get the business cards updated once we talk about the logo tonight. So that is something that yes, we can print cards, but you'll probably get new business cards when they actually change over the emails to .gov, but the website is .gov under Historic Preservation on the main page.

We are working on getting name plates for everybody in terms of updating your meeting nameplates.

We had some staff changeover, so you'll see sitting besides me is Kelly Kryczynski, she's our new planner and then Adrian will be actually departing us at the end of next week. He's actually leaving the county, he has taken a federal position.

8. OLD BUSINESS 

The state will send out when they need their annual reporting. It's been converted to a PDF and is a couple pages asking for how many demos, things like that, and then we complete it and I can bring it forward when we get it. That's the annual report we have because and that's because we're a CLG.

1. 14141 : 2023 Goals and Objectives 

2023 Goals & Objectives - reviewed accomplishments.

So in terms of getting back to the goals and objectives of the app, it could be something we work on in the future. I think there is some desire to potentially look at doing maybe a scavenger hunt and work with The County Executives Office, maybe include the Forest Preserve District see some of our landmarks and do something county wide. I think there's some interest there, but that's going to take a lot of background work to identify what properties we want to provide that information on. That's an idea for a future goal in terms of if we did a budget request.

We met with Crete and Manhattan, so we actually did a two for one goal for trying to meet with one of the established municipalities and it seems like we are working to complete a landmark nomination with them. And then in terms of partnering with the local CLG's to host a Camp training. The last time we contacted the Village of Plainfield regarding this was in June. So we'll kind of see where that stands and then I have yet to reach out.

I did not get a chance to check to see if Joliet got their grant, but we did pledge support if they did get their grant. So we're working on that.

Regarding the goals and objectives, start thinking of what we want to do next year. We can definitely revisit this next year to start drafting for 2024 and what you want to see the Commission do.

2. 2023 LandMark Monitoring 

2023 Landmark monitoring - Commissioners inquired about an online form to complete inspections.

Item 2, landmark monitor and I know we're coming to the end of the year and we're still not done. So that's not a good thing, but I've been working on a lot of other things. We make a list every year and we try to get them all done. If we don't get them done, we just roll those over the next year and then add more.

And something to keep in mind too if you want to create a new form that's a little bit easier to fill out, that's something the Commission can look into because monitoring is an important part of the Commission's tasks.

Of the agenda packet kind of shows this that Black Walnut School just because of we did not get a landmark nomination. This is something we can bring up maybe next month or in the next following months. How to develop a process of withdrawing zoning or landmark cases where we do not have a nomination. Or do we wait so many months that we don't get an application submitted once the current one either passes away or decides to rig or negate their?

So that could be something in the future, but that's basically what happened with this was the original nominator passed away, and then we did not get any new nominations. And then we in working with our legal counsel, decided it should be administratively withdrawn as we did not have a nomination essentially in terms of the application.

3. Discussion on existing HPC Handouts about Historic Preservation 

Discussion on existing HPC handouts - Commissioners discussed potential for upgrading the 4 brochures for online viewing purposes.

Marguerite talked about the app, we just need to rework that goal.

The brochures and continued improvements to the website should all be part of that same goal, should just be more general. It's all communication. Just how do we communicate with the public.

4. HPC Logo Update 

HPC logo update - Commissioners requested to see the logo with a yellow ring added to match county’s seal.

9. NEW BUSINESS 

1. Annual Meeting Agenda 

i. Fiscal Year End/IHPA report. Staff mentioned waiting on SHPO for form.

ii.Commissioner Appointments - Commissioners inquired as to why they are no longer staggered. Considered starting again with staggering to have commissioners reappointed each year.

Marguerite Kenny: Page 11 in the packet; In terms of the annual meeting, there are no Commissioners up for reappointments at this time. I know The County Executives Office was just checking on. Regulations at the state level, which said the Historic Preservation Commission, they get appointed for five (5) year terms now instead of three (3). The initial Commission, I think they were all staggered.

So I mean with that we can jump into the bylaws, review this time of the year, it's pretty much just going through it.

iii. Bylaws review - Working draft to be finalized before next month’s meeting.

In terms of the bylaws, if there's any ideas or discussions for changes, what usually happens is, you can make those proposed changes and then we would wait a month before we can actually vote to approve them. Then vote and approve, we'll get the secretary and the chair to sign them and we'll have signed bylaws again.

iv. Ordinance updates - Reviewed the Historic Preservation Ordinance.

And then #3 is just on our annual agenda is just the ordinance. So if you look through it, I was just looking in terms of terms and it looks like we have not touched it since 2004, but you're seeing like if it expires in December of 2004, she'll serve one year terms.

2. 2024 HPC Meeting Dates 

v. Setting 2024 Historic Preservation Commission Meeting Dates. Motion to change July 3rd 2023 meeting date to July 10th 2023 change made by Gerri Eck and seconded by Gary Mueller; unanimously approved.

2024 MEETING DATES: January 3, 2024, February 7, 2024, March 6, 2024, April 3, 2024, May 1, 2024, June 5, 2024, July 3, 2024, August 7, 2024, September 4, 2024, October 2, 2024, November 6, 2024, and December 4, 2024.

Change July 3, 2023 meeting to July 10, 2023.

Motion To Adopt 2024 Meeting Dates with one (1) Amended Date 

The Will County Historic Preservation Commission approved with amended July 10, 2023 by voice vote, unanimously, 8-0.

RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]  MOVER: Gary Mueller, Commissioner SECONDER: Pamela Owens, Commissioner AYES: Seggebruch, McCollum, Flanagan, Holston, Partak, Eck, Owens, Mueller

10. COMMISSIONER DISCUSSION 

Chair Seggebruch - Started discussion about location of Holiday meeting. Pam Owens volunteered hosting it at Public Landing at the Gaylord Building. Discussion ensued about moving the meeting time to 6:00pm. Motion to move the December meeting to 6:00pm at Public Landing made by Michael Flanagan, seconded by Andy Partak; unanimously approved.

Chair Seggebruch and Christi Holston - working on programming for the 170th anniversary of the Seggebruch Family farm; passed around framed Centennial Farm Certificate.

Andy Partak - inquired about the Wallingford Demolition permit, the status of the Will County Courthouse monuments in relation to courthouse demolition, and summarized his attendance of the Illinois History Conference.

Christi Holston - Mentioned that 2024 will be the 150 year anniversary of Monee’s founding and recent acceptance into the French Heritage Corridor.

Motion to Move the December Meeting to 6:00 PM at Public Landing 

The Will County Historic Preservation Commission approved by voice vote, unanimously, 8-0.

RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]  MOVER: Michael Flanagan, Commissioner SECONDER: Andrew Partak, Commissioner AYES: Seggebruch, McCollum, Flanagan, Holston, Partak, Eck, Owens, Mueller

11. ANNOUNCEMENTS 

Marguerite Kenny: I have one, the 2023 Canal Alliance Congress is going to be held November 8th. It's going to be at the four Rivers Educational Center in Channahon. This is one (1) that sometimes information just comes out last minute, but registration probably will be about $39.00 which is under that $100 threshold where we don't need County Executive approval. I would just need a list of Commissioners, if you're interested, we can get you registered. Basically, at 10:30 am. There's an optional tour, 11:30 am the doors open. They'll provide lunch and then highlight the year and then working sessions, and then there's a happy hour afterwards. They're going to be working on this like half day planning for the second-half of the 175th anniversary of the canal. So it's potentially a good event to attend if you're interested, just shoot me an E-mail and we'll get you registered.

Dan Seggebruch: We traditionally have had some kind of a holiday meeting. I mean, in years past when we used to meet at the Forest Reserve headquarters we used to usually do the do it right then we'd have our meeting and then everybody would bring food and we had to do the thing there. After we came here, it's been more. We go to a restaurant. It is open for discussion.

Pam Ownes: I could lend us a spot. We also have a restaurant there. There's a small banquet room off the restaurant that I could reserve for us. There's not a lot of technology in there.

Dan Seggebruch: You think you pretty sure we can get the room then?

Pam Owens: I got a little bit of pull there. We'll e-mail you to confirm that.

Marguerite Kenny: In terms of that, we just have to turn it in to get the publication notice of the location change. Do we still want to do 7:00? Do we want to do 6:00?

Pam Owens: Six o'clock will be better.

Dan Seggebruch: Ok, so back to announcements. I'm going to keep this real short because Christie and I've been working on a few things recently, just from more from a historical perspective standpoint. Next Wednesday, November 8th and I'm going to pass this around because this will be something we're going to talk about in the future. And I mentioned earlier, the Kane County Preservation Commission. So I mean, they've been around five years longer than Will County and I think, they don't even have 50 landmarks or still I think over the years they've been much more restrictive or discerning. In other words, we haven't often been in the position where we've turned down a landmark nomination. It's happened, but it's very seldom. I think going forward because again, I think we're at 59. From here on out I think we want to make sure we really vet a landmark nomination. Part of that is having good historical research and documentation.

Next Wednesday will actually be the actual 170th anniversary of my ancestors, my great, great grandparents arriving from Germany and buying 80 acres in Crete Township for $400. $5.00 an acre. And when I pass this around, this is the original one of the mortgage documents. There, the attorney's name on it. Who drew It up and sold them the land and then this other letter is From 1970.

That was when Richard Ogilvie was Governor. That was when Illinois started the Centennial Farm program for farms. In over 100 years so, so I'll pass these and these were in a display at the Will County Historical Society. Years ago I worked with Sandi and so they mounted all this stuff for me.

And I want to thank Christine for putting out that beautiful little flyer thing that you guys did. That's very nice. And then I sent the press release out yesterday for you. We're actually going to have the press there to cover. This and I'm hopefully my brother's coming over from Ohio and hopefully going to have a few other relatives there. We're going to make a presentation to both the groups.

Now in Crete's case they're not going to be ready, we're going to present it and then I have to take it all back home. So they're not done with their building yet, so it might be a few years. There are things we can do for our personal lives that sometimes intermix with what we do here, and that's ok, because you know it's all historical. It's all about county history and what we can do to support each other.

Andy Partak: I have a couple of things. Yeah, I wasn't at the last meeting, but I noticed that there was some discussion in the meeting minutes regarding that barn on Wallingford Rd. I'm just wondering, it was demolished and apparently they did not go for demolition permit. Is that? Was that the case?

Marguerite Kenny: Correct. So I did look into that permit. Typically we do inspections, I think six months from the date it was issued. So I did put a note for the inspectors to take a look at that barn to make sure that it is down. I have reached out to the property owner, to confirm that they did take it down because that is outside the scope of the permit. Then going forward it's just a matter of them probably changing it in terms of their scope within the building department, but I don't believe the Commission has much say if it down.

Andy Partak: Well, that's I've tried to explain to that friend of mine. In fact, there are a few people that were really upset. Immediately, they said, your on the Commission, you know, how come you couldn't stop this from happening. What are we doing? And I was hard press it, but I told him there really is no teeth unfortunately.

Marguerite Kenny: Yeah. I think in terms of preservation, the most we could potentially do and we address it in our preservation plan is consider, maybe an easements program, but we cannot accept it because we're not that type of organization but partner with a Historic Preservation Agency, or something that could accept easements. Then that could protect sites and stuff like that from demo or demolition.

Andy Partak: Maybe in the final analysis, the owner has every right to demolish something unless there is a problem with the demolition permit, correct? So yeah, the other thing is I'm really delighted to hear that finally, officially, there's a statement made about saving those monuments associated with the courthouse. It was actually put in print. I know you apparently brought it up at the last. That was my main concern with the Civil War Monument and a few others.

Gerrianne Eck: There is two (2) of them.

Andy Partak: But there was a statement about what they're going to do with them, they're going to protect it. The courthouse is coming down, but then it was those monuments that are very historically important.

Gerrianne Eck: But are they going to move them or are they going to keep them where they're at.

Andy Partak: What they're doing is they're going to preserve them, but from what I've read in Farmers Weekly. OK, the article there, it's just that they're going to preserve them and not sure what the what, what they're going to do with them at this point and time.

And then finally, I did go to the conference on Illinois history, I'm not going to go into any kind of detail. A few of the things that I found there first is that very not very little but maybe 1/3 or 1/4, but really involved in preservation itself. So if you're going down there, based on your activities here in this Commission, there's just a lot of general history that went on. There was one (1) where they presented preservation criteria. We have 12 points and a lot of that was covered but it was very interesting to hear.

Dan Seggebrunch: Did they go over to like the Secretary of the Interior standards or federal.

Andy Partak: Yeah, there was federal standards, was a big one. It was with the National Park Service that they have that listing. Then they had one (1) that was very interesting. It's writing and presenting historical information. I'm kind of like a research historian, you know, as a hobbyist and stuff and that was very important.

For me, it goes beyond preservation actually goes beyond preserving historic data and things like that.

Another one that was very good was researching a historic site and that was actually involved with the field work. The different research criteria they use Lidar overlay mapping with historic maps and modern things and things like that. That was very interesting. What was really what I found really surprising is that I do a lot of independent historic research with a few colleagues and we developed like our own criteria, and surprisingly enough, the criteria we developed independently is actually what they presented as being a lot of the good tools that they use. So that was kind of kind of interesting from that stand point.

I think it's two days. You have to get a room down there unless you want to drive, back and forth. It's in Springfield. It's well worth it to the general historian. As the preservationist now, maybe 1/3 of what's presented might be appropriate to what your interest would be.

Christi Holston - Mentioned that 2024 will be the 150 year anniversary of Monee’s founding and recent acceptance into the French Heritage Corridor.

12. ADJOURNMENT 

Meeting was adjourned at 8:55 PM.

Motion to Adjourn 

The Will County Historic Preservation Commission approved by voice vote the agenda, unanimously, 8-0.

RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]  MOVER: Michael Flanagan, Commissioner SECONDER: Gary Mueller, Commissioner AYES: Seggebruch, McCollum, Flanagan, Holston, Partak, Eck, Owens, Mueller

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