A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Historic Preservation Committee was held on Oct 04, 2006 at the Mountain Lakes Borough Hall.  In attendance were Co-chairs Andy & Peggy Bulfer, John Grossmann, Margarethe Laurenzi, Joan Nix, Pat Rusak, Chris Sheasby, and Borough Council Liaison Richard Urankar.  Absent were Laura Fitzgerald, Maria Iacullo-Bird, and Brigid Walsh.

Opening Items

• Minutes Approval -- The minutes from last time were approved electronically prior to the meeting.
  
  
• Treasurer's Report -- Treasurer Chris Sheasby reported the following financial information for the period Sep 14 through Oct 04.
  
  

  Opening balance (9/14/2006)	$3783.93
  Revenue	$250.00
  Expenses	$475.00
  Closing balance (10/04/2006)	$3558.93

  
  The major sources of revenue during the period were the plaque program ($125) and sale of books at the Library ($125).
  
  

Old Business

• Status of the Archive Room -- Pat Rusak reported the archive room is essentially complete.  The humidity controls now appear to be operating properly and the DPW has put the appropriate lenses on the overhead lights.
  
  
• Status of the Picture Scanning -- There is still a large number of historic photos to be scanned.  Andy Bulfer and Joan Nix had planned last time to schedule time to do so but nothing happened.  Nix and Bulfer will try again this month.  Laura Fitzgerald has also volunteered.
  
  
• Status of Oral Histories -- Margarethe Laurenzi presented the following report.

  Updated Status: Laurenzi presented an updated summary table with indications of potential new interview subjects.  There was lengthy discussion and the Committee suggested quite a few additional names for her list.

  Interviewer Training: Laurenzi plans to conduct a training session, hopefully by late November.  She would like to advertise it in the H&S Bulletin.  The Committee agreed and Laurenzi will provide a 1-2 paragraph write-up to Andy Bulfer who will submit the HPC article to the Bulletin.

  Transcriptions: Laurenzi recently copied the transcriptions of oral histories that she had in the files and provided them to Andy Bulfer to scan them into the computer and put them up on the Web.  Some are quite long; there is a large volume of material.

  Tapes: Laurenzi had previously dropped off tapes of Bill Harrison and Duke Smith interviews for Andy Bulfer to dub so that copies can be sent to Tapescribe in Connecticut.  Andy Bulfer has them but has not dubbed them yet.

  Planned Interviews: David Higgins is scheduled to meet with John Grossmann to share some recollections.  Laurenzi plans to reconnect with Gordon Tasker to do another 'walking tour' with him through some special parts of town, this time with a working cassette recorder!

• Updating the Master Plan -- The Master Plan badly needs to be updated.  Last time, the Committee decided to engage preservation attorney Michele Donato to do a study of our Master Plan and ordinances and make recommendations.  Joan Nix reviewed a draft letter she had prepared to Donato, setting out the objectives and boundaries of the study.  A check for Donato's fee of $1000 which had been approved last time, was provided by Committee Treasurer Chris Sheasby.  The Committee emphasized that they were funding this study only.  There is no commitment to fund the expense of actually updating the Master Plan, which the Committee felt should be borne by the Borough.
  
  
• Walking Tour -- John Grossman hasn't been able to devote much time to the audio walking tour since last meeting but he had put some thought into it.  He plans to recruit an acquittance, Tom Dagger, to assist.  He reviewed his approach with which the Committee concurred.  He promised a fuller report next time.
  
  
• HPC Brochure -- Andy Bulfer contacted Emily Wolfe to request the draft logos in various sizes in both positive and negative versions.  He showed the results to the Committee which liked the work and approved it.
  
  
• Naming the New Development -- Richard Urankar reported that the Borough Council was pleased with the HPC's comments on a list of potential names for the Fusee property development, currently code-named 'Jubilee'.  the Borough Council took the Committee's recommendations and the development is now planned to be called "The Park at Mountain Lakes".
  
  
• Borough Hall Addition -- Andy Bulfer did not receive a satisfactory or convincing answer from the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) regarding whether their approval was done out-of-process without consultation with interested community groups.  SHPO's position appeared to be that the Borough Hall building is not contributing and however inappropriate or unattractive the plan for the addition is, it didn't rise to the level where they were concerned.  The Committee decided to not pursue the matter.
  
  
• Updating the HPC Pages on the Web Site -- At the last meeting, the Committee decided that several of the HPC pages on the Borough Web site needed work: the Background-Mission page and the Activities Page needed updating and pages on specific topics needed to be added.  Since then, Andy Bulfer reported, material from the proposed HPC brochure has been added to the Background-Mission Page as directed by the Committee and that page is now satisfactory.  However, the Activities Page is still too terse and incomplete and the specific topics pages need to be written.  Maria Iacullo-Bird had agreed to draft these pages working with other experts on the HPC, but unfortunately because of personal and professional pressures, she can not do so until after Christmas.  The Committee decided it would speed things up if several subject matter experts provided write-ups now on some of the subjects, to wit:
  .

  Subject	Author
  Oral History	Margarethe Laurenzi
  Archives	Pat Rusak
  Architectural Salvage	Joan Nix
  Historic District	Joan Nix
  Historic Photos and Plaques	Pat Rusak

  Each of these authors will forward their text to Bulfer for conversion to html and uploading to the Web site.  After Christmas, Iacullo-Bird will rewrite the Activities page and organize/edit the entire collection so that it provides a consistent, integrated story.

New Business

• Although not able to attend the meeting, Laura Fitzgerald sent a report on her research on preservation award programs.  She has found that the overwhelming majority of programs are larger in scope than the program the Committee envisioned for Mountain Lakes.  The good news is that some of the criteria used by other municipalities also apply to our community.  Some awards feature different categories such as: adaptive reuse, landscape preservation and restoration.  Use of these categories would enable Mountain Lakes to recognize a broader range of homes.  Fitzgerald said she would continue to research the material.
  
  
• Several members of the Committee could not attend the meeting because family or work commitments prevent their attendance at evening meetings.  The Committee discussed several alternative times including meeting in the morning.  However, several members of the Committee felt that morning meetings would be a hardship and Richard Urankar mentioned that the Borough's policy is to discourage morning committee meetings.  After further discussion, the Committee decided to continue with evening meetings but to poll members whether a better day of the month could be found than the current one (first Wednesday of the month).
  
  

Date for Next Meeting

For now, next regular meeting will be on Nov 01, 2006 at 7:30 pm in Borough Hall.

Andy Bulfer