 But again, I just want to welcome everybody to our conversation this evening. I'm happy to see so many faces in the audience. I appreciate you all taking time out of your evenings during the week to be with us. I know it's a busy time of year with school happening and holidays approaching like Halloween. So I know that everyone has a really busy schedule. We're going to honor your time tonight and we're going to stick to our agenda. And before we get started, I just wanted to introduce some of the city staff and other resources that are in the building or in the room with us this evening. My name is Kathy Rodriguez and I'm from the Office of Historic Preservation. I'm the Deputy Historic Preservation Officer. And over here to my left, Shannon Miller, she is the Director of Historic Preservation. Over here we have Adriana Ziga. She is a planner from our office as well. Sitting down in Lavender is Jimena Copa-Wiggins and she is our Public Relations Manager. Sitting next to him is Orlando Ramirez and he is from District 2 Office, Chief of Staff. And over here to my right I have Claudia. Claudia Aguera is our Cultural Historian. And Mimi Quintanilla is our Facilitator for the evening. And then next to her is Corey Edwards. He is a planner from our office as well. Did I miss anyone? And Catherine Hernandez, thank you for being here. She is from Development Services. She is a planning manager, a zoning manager. So she's going to be a resource for you all if you have questions related to zoning. I also need to mention that we are going to have Councilman Tony coming in here shortly. He's finishing up another meeting. And when he arrives, he may want to say a few remarks to the audience when he gets there. Just some housekeeping. The restrooms, when you came in through the front entrance, you may have seen a yellow wreath. That is the teacher's lounge. So there's some adult restrooms there. Also, if you exit the room here and go to your left, there are some signs that will lead you to the pint-sized restrooms. So there are restrooms back there too, but they're the smaller ones, so the kids' restrooms. So just wanted you to know that they were there. We're going to go ahead and kick off by talking about the meeting, the goals for the meeting and an overview. And I'm going to hand it over now to Mimi Quintanilla. Well, now let me know if this is too loud because I have a voice that manages to carry. So it's okay, can you hear me? I still can. All right. Well, pick it up. Close to your mouth. Well, I'm worried about the feedback. Okay, first thing I want to do is want to go over the meeting goals for tonight. To also remind you that this evening's program and this evening's discussion is not about any specific neighborhood. It is about historic designation in neighborhoods around the community. I think that we have a number of people that some I know one couple came in that has a vested interest in this particular neighborhood, but they live in Leon Valley. How many people are from the Maki Park area? Oh, goodness. OK, how many people are from another neighborhood? All right. Would you like to tell me what other neighborhoods are represented? Yes, just Coven Hill. All right. Any others almost Park Terrace did witty. Alta Vista missions. All right, great. Well, this meeting and the concerns and questions and answers and the things that we're going to be going over this evening are for historic potential historic neighborhoods and applied historic neighborhoods and historic districts throughout the community. So it's not specifically about one particular. We will be able to answer all your questions. The meeting goals tonight are to present an overview of what historic designation means to you as a property owner to provide an opportunity to hear and record your questions and concerns to improve communications. I think there's there's an opportunity for the Office of Historic Preservation and the community to communicate with each other more clearly and then to learn from each other about communication and how to better provide information on historic district designation as with any meeting or in any family situation. There are a few ground rules this evening. And so the rules for this evening and I will reiterate these when we have our discussion are that all comments are good and will help strengthen the process. Because what we're here tonight to do is to strengthen the process and to strengthen communication among ourselves as neighbors and ourselves as property owners in potentially historic district designated areas and also with the city and the Office of Historic Preservation. We're also going to focus on the topic of discussion, which is questions concerning comments about historic designation. And then we're going to be good listeners. We're going to listen for comprehension and it does not require agreement. When we listen to each other and we listen to what's going on, it doesn't mean that we have to agree. And we're just hearing other points of view or different ways of interpreting the same language. And we're going to avoid talking while others are speaking and we're going to respect agreements about time in my apologies because we've already started a bit late. So we are going to more than likely with your permission run a few minutes over at the end of the commentary questions and answers at the end of the meeting. Are there any ground rules that I have forgotten at this point? Yes, please, if you would put your cell phones on this island. Also, I know that this meeting runs till 8.30 at a breaking point probably towards the middle of the meeting. We'll have a stretch break and anyone who needs to leave because you have other commitments at family or other things then that will be a convenient time for you to be able to leave without having to step over people. So we'll have a stretch break, a short bathroom break and anyone who's now cast that is recording the meeting. So that will be available also. All right, I'll turn it over to Claudia. Can everyone hear me? I'm like my colleagues. I do sing on the weekend and I do like a microphone. So I'll try to keep it from squeaking. You know that really squealing noise. So let me know if that happens. Someone back there can't hear me. All right, how's that? Got it. OK, so the hard part of this is that I can't hold my notes and the microphone at the same time. And I kind of like being in the driver's seat for a little bit. So if you don't mind, I'm going to take the clicker and I'm going to wing this a little bit. I'm happy to see such a large turnout. It means that everybody really cares about their neighborhoods. And I hope that we deliver information to you that you find useful. Part of what I want to get across are three main points because you're going to hear a lot tonight, but if you can leave with three main points that I think will clarify. And I'm starting to categorize them in easy ways to remember. Two numbers, 30%. I think that would be a big clarification that we'd like to address tonight. I'd like to introduce another number that doesn't get spoken about very much. That's 99%. And that has to do with the design review process. And then the last one is not a number, but it's a letter. And it stands for you because we want to hear from you tonight. That's the entire point of tonight's meeting. And we also want to clarify how you are the keystone for the historic designation process in your neighborhood. So let's get right to the 30%. I know that this is a big question. And I think maybe the easiest way for me to talk about this is to say what it is not. It is not a vote. It is not leaving the decision up to 30% of a neighborhood. What it is is just a signal that 30% of the neighborhood has heard about an application to make a neighborhood historically designated. And it shows that 30% had decided that, yeah, I kind of want to hear about this a little bit more. It doesn't mean you're committed to becoming a district. It doesn't mean it's going to be designated. It simply means we want to open up a discussion and we want more information. Kathy? The next number I'm going to turn over to Kathy to talk about some more. But first I just want to lay out the groundwork by saying 99%. That's the number of applications to modify your home, anyone's home that gets approved. 99% of modifications to homes in historic districts are approved. And I'll pass this over to Kathy to explain further how we arrive at that in a minute. And just real quick, just to kind of put this number into perspective, if you think about the number of historic districts and the number of individual landmarks and the number of river improvement overlay properties that come to our office for requests when you're making changes to their properties, there's tens of thousands. And so we actually receive annually this last year, we've received about 1,400 applications. I'll move to the next slide, about 1,450 applications. And of those applications, I would say about 950 of those are applications that we review on the spot. You walk in, you show us the application, we approve it, you get your permit, you go home and begin work. And then about 500 of those are applications that go to the commission to review, which doesn't really delay your process very much because if you're doing a project that has some significant changes, you're gonna be going through the permit process anyway. And so this process, the review is just concurrent with that. So the same things you would turn in for your permit, the same drawings are the same ones you would provide us so we can get you approval through the commission. So that 99% means out of that 1,450 applications, 99% of those are approved. Claudia. I'm trying to rush through this because we know you have a lot of questions and we've made this intentionally short so that we can get to some of the part of the discussion with you. But I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about what historic designation does not do. What it does not do is require you to retrofit your home. You do not have to bring your home up to some standard that the house existed in previously. You simply have to maintain the house. We also do not have any purview over the interior of your house. Whatever you wanna do inside your house does not come to OHP or the HDRC commission. Also, we do not have any say over how you use that property. It's simply an overlay to the house. An overlay meaning an added piece of information and protection for your house being historic. That's where Kat Hernandez in the back who you met earlier is our zoning guru. And so when we talk about the use of property, we're talking about whether you use your house or as in the picture, a cooperative, an art cooperative. It doesn't have to necessarily change how you use your property. It also doesn't mean your property cannot change over time. We know that families grow. We know that situations change. So you're allowed to change your house to accommodate those needs. And this is an example of, let me go back. This is what this house looked like and this is what this house looks like now with a new rear addition. And now this is about you. And I'm gonna give it to Kathy but just I really wanna quickly say you are the keystone for what happens in your neighborhood. You do get to decide. You are the ones who drive the designation process. OHP is a resource. We're here to give you information. We're here to give you tools. But ultimately you decide. Really, I just wanted to add to that that one of the things I have a little bit of a background in community development and people always ask me, what is community development? I don't know what that means. Well, what it actually means, the definition of that is just helping residents use the tools that are available to them to achieve the results in their community that they want. And those tools are the ordinances, local ordinances, review process, boards and commissions and city council. So that we are a part of those tools. We are a resource to a community who has concerns perhaps about demolition and other things that we'll talk about. The historic reservation and our office in particular are here to help you manage those changes in your neighborhood and those types of changes that come about. So I want everyone to keep in mind that whether you're historic or not, we are a resource to help you with either historic information about your property or your neighborhood or to help you with some development related questions, to help you engage with your community. We do a lot of education and outreach. So we are ultimately a resource for you all. And so that's why this meeting is so important to us because we get an opportunity to hear what you're saying to look and listen. And that's what we're here to do this evening. Many people will ask why preserve? And like I just mentioned, preservation, historic preservation really is a tool for communities who are concerned about maintaining the character. Usually you buy into a neighborhood because you just love the way it looks and feels. And so the historic preservation is a tool you can use to hold on to that. We all know that change is inevitable. It's about managing that change. And that's what this can be a resource for. Things in your neighborhood that you like, the streetscape, the landscape, the curves, the pattern of the driveways, those types of things. If you're interested in preserving those, this is a way that you can do that. Here for example, this is an example of a typical ranch dial sprawling house in the neighborhood of San Antonio. Notice it is of an era that maybe we think of being more modern, but it is historically eligible now. Also take a note of the trees. These are mature heritage type of trees, oak trees. And this is not currently in a district, a historic district. It's eligible, but it's not in the district. So I wanna show you what's going on in the neighborhood and why some of the people in this neighborhood are wondering whether they want to go to the store. This is not on that same lot, but it is down the street from this lot. It's a completely new home. I think the first thing I notice when we look at this is how all the trees were destroyed. The second thing that architects especially will notice is how the house does not fit the historic character either in size or massing. And then those are terms that architects will talk about and we will talk about as we start to discuss what historic designation means in terms of how property looks. The other thing historic designation really strives to do is to prevent demolitions, empty lots. And to us, an empty lot, the way we think of this, it's like a beautiful smile that's lost a tooth that leaves a significant gap. At this point, we wanna bring it back to you. I'm gonna turn this over to Ms. Kintania who will explain how we're going to work for the next sessions where we start to hear from you, Mimi. I'm really gonna try to listen to all of your concerns and all of your comments. And there are three main questions that keep coming to the forefront in the commentary discussion that's come through so far. And those three questions are, what are your questions about historic designation? What are your concerns about historic designation? And are there other questions that could be related to historic designation that you want answered? Maybe you're not sure. We have decided to handle the evening because there are so many of you, thankfully. It was looking a little legal house. As we planned a two-part information and listening session that we're going to be gathering. The Aama table, each of the tables and these elementary school tables have been divided up for us. So there's about six people to a table. I think there's 15 tables. There's about 15 tables. On that table, there are markers. There are what you might recognize if anyone has been in the school system recently, sentence strips. And we are going to ask that each of the tables discuss the three questions. And if there are other things that are not related to these questions that you want brought to the forefront, that you please record those. We are going to put all of those together at the end. We're going to give you about 20 minutes to discuss your concerns and answer these questions and any other questions. And then we will share those main concerns with the participants at the end, but we'll record everything. We're going to also put those up for everyone to take a look at. The second part of the session will have a short break and then we'll have questions and answers when we can address the entire public. We'll do a report out session for each table. We'll take about three minutes to do that report out based on your discussion. And then we will have everyone hearing everything, but we want to make sure to record what you're discussing. And so that's why we're asking you to please put that together on one of those long strips of paper so that we've got that accurately recorded. And those concerns and those questions will be put together in a compendium. There is obviously, since there's so much interest, there's a lot of communication that needs to be sure. The now cast is available. It's online at Google. They're recording to now cast website, of HP website. And again, we're recording what's happening in each of the table discussions. We have 20 minutes for that and each table will have three minutes to report out. We'll take a short break and then anything that has not been discussed or that you think needs to have some more time or some more illumination, some more discussion or a question that you wanna make sure gets recorded, then we'll have the questions and answers for the entire group at the end. And we're gonna be putting all of the sentence strips up so we can take a look at those before you leave this evening to make sure that we haven't left anything out. Again, the goal, one of the goals of this evening is to improve communication and to answer the questions, address your concerns and listen to your comments about historic designation.