The chairman of the Historic Preservation Review Commission (HPRC) discussed the committee’s highlights from the previous year and goals for the future at Tuesday’s Benicia City Council meeting as councilmembers listened intently.

Tim Reynolds presented the HPRC’s annual report, which began with a list of highlights from 2016. The seven-member commission met 11 times, had seven design review projects and two new Mills Act projects, including making a recommendation to the City Council to expand the city’s Mills Act program, in which owners of historically significant homes get tax breaks by promising to maintain their homes in certain historically accurate ways.

Additionally, the commission added a contributing structure to the Downtown Historic District, made a recommendation to the council on downtown street signage, hosted a local government preservation workshop at the Benicia State Capitol Building with the help of the Office of Historic Preservation, formed a community outreach subcommittee and supported the transfer of the World War I memorial plaque to Veterans Memorial Hall.

Reynolds also discussed goals for the 2017-18 Work Plan. These included updating the Downtown Historic Conservation Plan guidelines and design review process as well as continuing to review the city’s Mills Act program.

“This is really about taking the current Mills Act program and improving it to be a more reflective and essential tool to incentivize preservation,” he said. “One of the essential recommendations we’ll need to make is to add additional contracts to that program. The city’s currently reached a cap of 42 available contracts.”

Specific Mills Act goals include creating more meaningful work plans within the program and improve management of the program.

Other Work Plan goals include a new historic preservation brochure to indicate how secretary of interior standards apply to the design review process, revising the Downtown Mixed Use Master Plan and performing an advisory review of the city’s un-reinforced masonry ordinance.

“The city currently has an unreinforced masonry ordinance,” Reynolds said. “It just doesn’t have management measures that require the owners of un-reinforced masonry buildings to perform subsequent upgrades to those buildings.”

The remaining goals consist of looking for research grants to assist homeowners in preserving historic homes and reviewing the city’s demolition ordinance to more effectively protect historic structures. Reynolds also highlighted two items on the Budget Implementation Plan Project Priority List that the HPRC was requesting additional funding for: amendments to the Downtown Mixed Use Master Plan, and the design and printing of the Conservation Plan Brochure.

Vice Mayor Steve Young asked if the city was applying for the grant. Reynolds said the city was in the process of applying.

Young said he was unaware Benicia had a masonry ordinance and expressed surprise that it was not brought up in the previous meeting, where the council voted 3-2 to uphold an appeal of a demolition permit for the Foundry and Office buildings on East H Street.

“This is a law that was passed in California in 1993, and it required all cities to provide un-reinforced masonry ordinances,” Reynolds said. “It did not require cities to adopt mandatory measures. Most of our neighboring cities adopted mandatory measures that required those seismic upgrades. The fact is we don’t have that.”

Young also brought up the Arts and Culture Commission’s proposal to incorporate more public art throughout the city in alleyways and on walls. Young asked Reynolds if he had been coordinating with Commissioner Terry Scott regarding public art on historic buildings. Reynolds said he was unaware of the project but noted that putting murals on historic buildings would fall within the purview of HPRC in most cases.

“I think the review would look at what the primary contributing historic features are and look at how the mural is visually affecting those features and if it’s not distracting from those features, then it would potentially be approved,” he said.

Councilmember Mark Hughes remarked that he thought that establishing mandatory measures for un-reinforced masonry buildings was a good idea.

“It could provide financial incentives to a business out there, but we have to recognize that many of the businesses in town, even on First Street, don’t own the buildings that they’re in,” he said. “We could establish the mandatory measures, and a property owner could say, ‘Well, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this.’”

“I just want to be sensitive to the fact that that could have unintended consequences of closing down business in our town,” Hughes added. “Again, safety is paramount but if you could, keep that in mind as you move forward.”

No vote was taken, but the council accepted the report, and Mayor Elizabeth Patterson noted that Reynolds would be involved in the budget discussions.

In other business, the council voted 4-0— Councilmember Tom Campbell recused himself— to adopt a resolution rejecting bids for the St. Augustine Storm Improvement Project due to the bids being higher than the budget for the project. The council also voted 3-2 to appoint Dan Masdeo, a civil engineer at Parsons Brinckerhoff, to the Planning Commission.

The council will next meet on Tuesday, April 18.