City's Unilateral Action

Unilaterally, the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea’s Community Planning & Building Department Staff has redefined and embellished the “reasons” cited in the City’s Local Coastal Program (LCP) for the removal of properties from the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources.

The relevant section of the LCP, General Plan/Coastal Land Use Plan Land Use & Community Character Element, Cultural Resources, Historic Preservation
states:

P1-91 Establish procedures for the Historic Preservation Board, based on
recommendations from qualified professionals, to remove historic resources from the Carmel Inventory based on substantial evidence (e.g. incorrect evidence, invalid analysis, or loss of integrity of the identified historic resource). An historic resource listed on the Carmel Inventory shall be presumed historically significant and shall not be removed unless substantial evidence demonstrates that
it is not an historic resource. (LUP)

Yet, in the City's 4 April 2006 Staff Report for the Doris M. Rayne Trust appeal of the Historic Resources Board’s unanimous decision to deny a request to remove the property from the City’s Inventory of Historic Resources located in the Central Commercial and Downtown Conservation Overlay Districts, the Staff Report states:

“Staff recognizes four possible reasons for removing a property from the Carmel Inventory: 1) There are gross, non-correctable errors in the historic documentation, 2) The property bears a poor or minimal relationship to the adopted Historic Context Statement, 3) There are a sufficient number of other, better preserved or more important resources of the same type elsewhere within the City, and 4)The resource has lost its historic integrity through past alterations.”

These changes/additions were created and implemented by the City without public hearings at the Historic Resources Board and City Council levels.

CONCLUSION: Without checks and balances, it appears that the staff in the City’s Community Planning & Building Department is implementing policy that is not articulated in the LCP and without public deliberation at the Historic Resources Board and City Council levels.