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Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, City and country, creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

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to Sonoma County in the 90s with your host, Dana Trico. Hello, I'm dana D'Errico and welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties. Sonoma County is a beautiful community and we want to keep it that way. And with us today we have the landmarks commission. And third

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job is to make sure that Sonoma County remains a community that we want it to be. So let's join Kathy Jacobs, who is a comprehensive planner, Joanne Mitchell who is a commissioner on the landmarks commission and Dick Leap, who is also a commissioner. Welcome to the

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show Kathy, why don't you tell us first, a little bit about what the landmark commission is and what what you do on that commission. Okay. Um, and Joanne will probably add to the history on that. Uh, the landmarks commission is comprised of five members each appointed

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by one of the supervisors to represent his particular district. Um, I'm the staff person and not a voting member, but I do all the, all of the legwork and most of the secretarial work for the commission set up the meetings and the agendas. The commission is

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primarily charged with reviewing projects that um, on designated landmarks, um, have a number of other tasks. Um, basically reviewing any projects that come through where there may be historic um, resources on site, either a particular structure or that the site itself is a historic value? We

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do many other functions as well. Um from administering a grants program for historic preservation and we can talk about that more later. Um reviewing pretty much anything that comes our way. Um even including helping to give advice to people who are contemplating restoring a landmark historic

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structure. Um you think of other things between the two of you? Um we have funding for for um grants for preservation projects at this time. We meet once a month, usually Tuesday evening, although sometimes there are field trips involved. Um we have generally about a three

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hour meeting once once a month and I do a lot of other clerical type of work in association with that. We're exploring some new ideas all the time. For instance, there is a mills act program which is essentially an incentive for someone to restore their property.

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It it gives a break on taxes on property taxes in exchange for an agreement to preserve and restore historic property. So there are some projects such as that that we're constantly exploring and looking into that Joanne here represents the Sonoma Valley supervisor district one and I

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represent the Petaluma area supervisorial district two. She is one of the historians and also goes back to one of the founders of the commission. She's quite historic and I got on about 16 years ago and believe me, it's a very dedicated group and that's a very

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positive historic, she has all the history of the commission, what are you saying is that we're old enough to be considered landmarks ourselves, I guess The commission was established in 1976. And so it has been, it was during the bicentennial years when people were very concerned

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about historic preservation. And the Bicentennial Commission suggested to the board of supervisors that they established Landmarks Commission. And uh Tom Golden was, they set up a committee and I happened to be on the committee. Tom Golden was very much a mover and a shaker into getting

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this commission going. And we also had a staff person, Nina Liston bonus and she was very effective and brought in state people to talk with us and and to establish this commission and then it went to the board of supervisors and Helen Rudy and briancon were

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both on the commission at that time very supportive as all of, I mean on the board of supervisors as all of the board ended up being. And the first early commissioners did all of the work in establishing the criteria, setting up the following National Register guidelines,

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setting up the guidelines. And so they had a lot of work to do. Can you give me some criteria on what it takes to become a county landmark. Yes. Uh the to to become a county landmark, you have to have been associated the structure. If you're

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if we're talking about a structure, you have to have been associated with possibly an event or uh, someone important on that building. We don't have very many buildings where George George Washington slept, but we do have important buildings, possibly that building was designed by an important

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architect or an important builder in our county and anything associated with any of this particular um, events eras. Uh, we even meet bridges, we now have this thematic bridge as we were talking before. And so we have county landmarks that are now bridges. So it can

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hit many types of structures in areas. What about maybe I want a little elaboration on that. You can have perhaps the structure or building or something occurred to make it a historic landmark. Um, you could have bridges, Can you have locations, a site, archaeological, archaeological site,

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Anything else? Something else in the industrial business end is that the hop kilns and some of the old winery tasting rooms are historic. We'll use something else at one time and converted a lot of the homes of private homes. Our bed and breakfast type situations are

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developing into, but I'm not going to happen. The business community point of view of tourism in that and you get into the hop kilns and South county, we've been trying to say maybe some of the chicken house fabric of those sway back structures out west of

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Petaluma and we haven't really hit on one yet, but there's talk about them. There are some other, I have to tell you my little story. I went to the flea market this last weekend and I bought this little funny thing and everybody says, why are you

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buying that? It said Sonoma chicken capital of the world manufacturing in san Francisco. It was a little chicken feeder. So when you say the chicken barns and you want to get an example of one and save it because you know, this used to be really the

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capital for newcomers or people who aren't familiar. Well I was born and raised on a chicken ranch in Novato. So there's a lot of history in my family and um, we don't have a ranch in the Petaluma area that could be used in something like this.

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But I look forward to the day when maybe some rancher wants to make a museum out of one or get some kind of retail sales going about code problems had to be brought up some codes, some of those. But although there are several homes in the

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county that were chicken coops that were brought up to turn into homes. I have seen some and of course they need a lot of work. But it can, it is a feasible thing if I could add to another type of historic landmark would be a district.

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We have several districts, historic districts in the county. Um, more in the west county I think than anywhere else. But the towns of bodega, freestone, occidental. Uh actually almost all of Valley Forge there actually designated entire district so that all of the sites within the district

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are subject to some restrictions as well. Now does does your commission cover just the unincorporated area of Cinema County or all of just the unincorporated area? And I might add that our county was the first county to have a rural historic district. Prior to that, it

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had always been within cities. And we can't, since we're a zoning power, we have a zoning power. We cannot go into, say, the city of pendulum or the city of santa rosa And rezone a building but of course we can in the county. And Freestone was

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one of was the very first historic district and then we had sweetwater springs. These are the rural historic districts. Now of course, 20 years later there obviously would be many up and down the state. Something that involved with that too is we do through our tenant

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occupancy tax money that's allocated to us 50-60,000 a year. We do fund rehabilitation of things within the cities. We've done some things here in santa rosa, the pedal Museum. So you do participate, we do participate aberration between city and in that area of helping fund rehabilitation

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and things of those buildings but the project has to be either a county landmark a state landmark or on National Register. I was going to ask you about that. Can you talk a little bit about National registrar and California landmark, like the alexander Valley Church that's

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on, is that the National I don't think so. It's a county landmark. I know that. Okay, can you talk a little bit about what the difference is between a county landmark versus being on the National registrar there? I'm not directly to familiar with the National Register

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process, but there is a a very lengthy application process, it's actually handled through the State Office of Historic Preservation, but um they take nominations for becoming a National Register and um it's it's quite a research project and there are many, many factors that they look at,

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partly how intact the building is, how much it's been modified but as a result of that, it it carries a very high classification and um, structures that are on the National Register are entitled to some tax credits and things like that um to give another incentive

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for being on it. There is not really local protection of those National Register sites but um I believe they're under restrictions due to that, that that would limit the types of restoration and additions that could be done to that, Joanne. Maybe you could we follow the

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same criteria as the National Register. In fact, that's where we got our basis for our criteria and uh it's true they have a very long application and usually it's more difficult to become a state landmark. It's rather difficult to become a state landmark. We do have

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a few in our county but we have quite a lot of national register properties in our county and of course more landmarks. Sonoma County landmarks. Actually we have 182 as of the last actually, yes, I was going to ask you how many landmarks are there. We

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have 182 historic districts. And then inventory of historic resource of. That's kind of interesting. What's, what's that breakdown about? Well, in addition to the actual designated landmarks and when a property is designated by the county, it actually changes the zoning on the property. It adds what's

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called an HD. For historic district. So it becomes part of the zoning classification and therefore if someone's getting a building permit then there you, you're alerted to the fact that that is is a landmark. In addition to that we have an an inventory. It's not an

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official inventory perhaps, but it's a listing of about 1000 other properties that, through various surveys that have done been done throughout the county. They're listed and there's our pictures and documents supplementing that listing. Can you give me some examples of our viewers examples of what's on

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the 1000 listings. What what types of things are they structures are they like homes, private homes that people own that. It's mostly private structures. I was just reviewing the list the other day and it's interesting that it includes things such as goat rock, goat rock is

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listed on the inventory sites perhaps of something that used to exist. But one of the bridges I believe that used to be there and is no longer it was destroyed. We need to take a break here, Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Welcome

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back to Sonoma County in the 90s. We're talking about the landmark commission today and let's rejoin Kathy, Jacobs and Kathy. We were talking about the things that one would find on the historic resource list in the county. Okay. Um I was mentioning there's some um scenic

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areas, there's a road in Bennett Valley that is is listed as a scenic historic resources just simply the stretch of road Grange road I believe. Yeah. I mean there are no structures there but it it I believe was the site of an old wagon road at

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one point. Another couple of other interesting things that I've found are some of the old one room schoolhouses for instance. And while there are many around Coleman Valley Road um Jenner um I went out on the road some of these have been converted to simply residential

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buildings. Valley School Road. Yeah there are quite a few um unfortunately they haven't been designated as historic landmarks so they don't have the protection but they are listed in the resource inventory and the primary purpose for this inventory is as development projects come through the county.

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Um They're referred to the landmarks commission and through the state um agency actually, which is located at Sonoma State. Um they refer them and were able to look up any of the historic information that we have on the sites and either bring it to the attention

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of the plan or to the planning commission and attempt to protect the resources that are there similar to the old school houses we have I think three or four railroad depots in the county. They're landmarks that I know of railroad men would and and Sonoma is

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on the National Register and I think that we could relate back to when we first had our funding. Sonoma depot burned down. And so the people in Sonoma went to their supervisor and said is there any way we could get some funds through the county. So

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since there was already a landmark set up landmarks commission, he said yes let's try it through the landmarks commission. So the first money that we were able to give are actually the board of supervisors give it, we recommend and was to the Sonoma Valley Depot and

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they built it back to the National Register standards. So and back to the original. So it didn't, it wasn't removed. They worked with the National Register so it wouldn't be removed and that was the beginning of our funding. Very good. Um I want to ask this

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question. Perhaps there's people out there who have something on their property. We still have a lot of rural acreage here and things that people aren't aware of that exist on these old ranches and things that are in Sonoma County. What if you want your property to

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be an historic district or a landmark? What kind of restrictions then occur? Um maybe I start with that just initially. Just the maybe the application process if they want to have it considered, we should mention that generally something needs to be at least 45-50 years old

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to qualify initially and um we don't have absolutely strict guidelines as far as becoming a landmark but basically the person needs to submit historic information, old photos, pretty much anything they can find out about the property. Um Also importantly to know if it's been something's been

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added to the building, you know how much of the original building is still there intact and um if it's approved by the landmarks commission and then the board of supervisors with the H. D. District. Um There are restrictions placed on that property on the property or

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the structure. Well most specifically on the structure but generally when the zoning is changed, it does apply to the whole site so that it also has some degree of review if if other structures are going to be added on that same property to be sure they're

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compatible. The main point of the HD is that for a designated structure, if they're going to do additions or any exterior remodel, it needs to come before the landmarks commission commission and they function as a design review committee looking to make sure that the design and

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the materials and the color that it is appropriate to that structure so that it doesn't ruin the historic character. That that's really the primary restriction. Um, it does. There's a an advantage however, Also there is a state historic building code that gives a little more flexibility

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in remodeling historic structures that they don't have to meet all the current codes that the particular county might have in effect. So there's an advantage to that too. I have read, I have read that code and it states that that you have to meet the intent

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of the code, but a less restrictive of less restrictive would be allowed. So you do have to meet certain criteria technical and there is leeway given on some seismic situations. Um, also the handicapped disabled upgrade their interpretations, their, their lessened because some of these things would

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kind of destroy the fabric and look at the, of the structures from the outside. Um, also may say that they had to bring in some professionally prepared plans. And sometimes if the site is heavily involved some landscape plans. Um, I think the whole intent here is

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in fact it generalizes that what we're trying to do is preserve the fabric of our county. The history of it so forth through structures and sites and whether it's a trail or a railroad depot or house so that the, we here will always preserve it more

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and the visitors and and so forth. And it has to do with property values. Some people may think, oh, they got to go through this red tape. But I sort of feel that in the end the property values are much better because we've kept the county

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preserved situation. The cultural fabric of the county is preserved and that's why many visitors come to see us. Of course. You know, I'm also very important. I'm all for the landmarks commission and I've been involved in some of the things that have gone on and have

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been adopted district. So I'm very much a preservationist. I guess you would say you did ask about restrictions and I think we might mention the demolition if anyone wants to demolish either an historic structure of any kind. Even if it's on the survey, it would come

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to the landmarks commission and its, we can actually impose a six month stay of demolition in hopes that there can be alternatives found. It doesn't happen often, but maybe they can move it to a different site or some preservation? We've been noticing in the newspaper on

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and off the hog house in santa rosa and it just seems to sit there. Are there any plans for that. Are you familiar at all with that? I know it doesn't come under the jurisdiction of the landmarks commission. It's under the city. So we leave that

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to them. I think we have any solutions for it right now. It seems like finances seem to be the issue. What about apparently you have control over exterior changes. You want to keep it the same. You have changes in the use, such as if it was

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a residence and on the historic district and then say suddenly you want to have a business or a bed and breakfast. Is that a feasible? We usually encourage adaptive reuse if the zoning, if the zoning allows because if you don't keep old buildings vital and have

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something they're going to fall down and people can have businesses in them all the better. Really. Yes. So what about recent actions that the commission has acted on? Can you tell our viewers a little bit about some of the projects you've been involved in? I think

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one of the more important ones is the bridges in the county that Kathy talked about because of seismic problems. Kathy was talking about that before the show. So maybe we could talk about it a little bit issues over this situation. Neighborhood issues over some of the

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Gurney ville Bridge and Granville sometime back was quite an issue for me, but that was such a successful outcome. Yes, but it might not have been. I think we have to give Dennis Harris credit for this because he brought it to our attention and he brought

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forth. He had, I think some of his students work on this and said, why don't you do this as a thematic district? And it took quite a while for us to get this through. We worked with public works and they were willing and able to get

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quite a few. You helped. I took every picture every picture, put the report together. Well, we, our first effort, actually, we're more than halfway. We submitted 10 new bridges. In addition, we actually had two already designated as county landmarks, but a list of 10, there are

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still nine more on what referring to as a secondary list. There may be, they were less important to public works at least put it that way. And um, we hope to submit that pretty soon as a another section or another, um, round of historic bridges. So

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we have, it's referred to as a thematic district because they're all in different locations obviously, but it carries the same level of protection or at least attempt to protect them. And it is a big concern because there are a lot of seismic upgrades, railings, things like

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that that are being required. That's kind of the problem. Right. When it's a functioning vital structure such as a bridge, you have the safety issues, but it seems that there can be alternative solutions. Were battling with that quite a bit. I think um, there's been some

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evidence is not so good perhaps, of railings and seismic upgrades that it's still an issue, There doesn't seem to be a really good solution between the engineering needs and the aesthetic and historic. So, but I think with the HD designation it makes the case a lot

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stronger. So we hope to get public works was added a bridge even beyond the studies, which I thought was we have wonderful bridge engineers over there. I've talked to many of them and there's a lot that know a lot about the history and they're very supportive

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is what I found. Could I add one more you'd asked about recent activities? Probably the most recent other thing that we've done is have a survey done for the Russian River area very briefly includes the towns of Yountville, Montevideo and Rio Nido. We hope to come

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up with some new landmark designations out of that. But that's one of the probably the only recent survey we really had done for a long time. No, but surveys are so important in our last study was the Pen Grove situation I think before that and Pen

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Grove now is a historic district and prior to that we had Petaluma and Sonoma Valley. I mean the surveys are vital to our work and to the preservation of historic structures. I think overall though, I think it's more of a positive feedback from the community. Would

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you not interest people are very interested in the number of little historic societies in these little communities, Kazuhiro even and Monterrubio. We don't work directly with them perhaps, but they have a lot of information and a lot of concern and interest on their part. So do

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these little micro organizations. Do they also participate with the landmarks commission in the local historical society? Yes, I really was kind of wondering is there any horticultural being county where Luther Burbank was from? There, is there historical horticultural groups in the county or maybe I should

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start one. Okay. I think the Burbank situation in sebastopol and really in the gardens of santa rosa, that's a very horticultural related group. We're we're running out of time, so if you can keep it. But part of what they do is trying to preserve the orchards

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over there and there's a lot of horticultural people so they have a lot of input and there's a Sonoma County network which is made a very historical societies in Sonoma County and they're very effective. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for being with me today. I'm dana

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D'Errico and this is Sonoma County in the nineties and I hope to see you again next time. Thank you. Is it off your last name is Devito