Lincoln Historic Preservation Commission elects new officers
Reviews current projects and upcoming events

[May 22, 2015]  LINCOLN - The Lincoln Historic Preservation Commission met for its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, May 19th at Lincoln City Hall. Members present for the evening were Chairman April Doolin, vice-chairman, Karen Sager; secretary, Bill Vinyard; Julie Cooper, Kay Dobson and Brian Messner. Julia Gerardeau was absent for the evening.

Among the tasks on the agenda for the evening was the election of new officers. The HPC is marking the beginning of their third year. Doolin said that in the first two years, the group had maintained the same officers, and she felt it was time for a change.

The group discussed the roles of the three officers of the Commission: chairman, vice-chairman and secretary.

Doolin said the role of the chair was to establish the agenda for meetings; oversee the meetings and keep things moving; to promote the organization and accept and present Certificate of Appropriateness requests. She told the group that the seat did not require a great deal of time, what it does require is someone who has an interest and a heart for historic preservation.

The vice-chair, Doolin said, would be the one to fill in in the absence of the chair.

The secretary she said handled creating a meeting schedule at the beginning of the year and some occasional correspondence.

Dobson suggested that Sager take the chair position, and Sager agreed to do so. A vote was taken and came back unanimously in favor of Sager for chair. Messner said he would be willing to take the position of vice-chair and was also approved by unanimous vote. Vinyard said he would be willing to continue as the secretary for a third year. No other members expressed an interest in filling the seat, so the vote was taken, and Vinyard was approved by unanimous vote.

In other business, the group discussed the timeline for the upcoming “All About Abstracts” workshop to be held on Saturday, May 30th at the Lincoln Public Library.

The guest speaker for the event will be Bonnie Young. Young, now retired, is the former manager of Logan County Title in Lincoln. She has a vast amount of experience in reading and understanding abstracts. An abstract for a property is a capsule history that can give homeowners insight to when their home was built and by whom, who the various homeowners may have been and more. Young will discuss how to read an abstract. She will also offer other information about homeowner documents she has experience with, and will open the floor for questions at the end of her presentation.

The LHPC members will be on hand to offer information about the Commission, talk about their HPC home registry, and will offer a preview of another project that is underway.

The new project is a house plaque program that the HPC will highlight in their fall workshop. Sager has been working on design and details of the project with a company in Colorado. The plaques will be oval in shape and can be mounted on an exterior wall of the home, stating the year the home was built. There will be two options on the date. For those who have a good idea of when the home was built, but no specific year, a plaque may be purchased that says, for example, “Circa 1880.” If the homeowner does know the exact year, the plaque can be ordered with the word “circa” removed. There will also be an additional plaque that is designed to fit nicely under the oval, and allow homeowners to write a brief comment about the home.

The plaques will be made of aluminum with black paint and raised lettering.

[Nila Smith]