DEPARTMENT: Office of Historic Preservation
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Shanon Shea Miller
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: All
SUBJECT:
The Texas Historical Commission Certified Local Government Grant Acceptance
SUMMARY:
This ordinance ratifies the submission of a grant application and authorizes acceptance of funds upon award, not to exceed $30,000.00, from the Texas Historical Commission for the development of a strategic plan for cultural context statements and one completed cultural context statement.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The Texas Historical Commission (THC) offers grants to Certified Local Governments (CLG) to develop and sustain effective local preservation programs critical to preserving historic resources.
The Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) is committed to developing innovative processes and methods that allow citizens to tell their own stories and act as the experts in communicating which historic resources matter to them. Cultural mapping and oral history collections are integrated into the OHP’s survey methodology to identify, document, and designate tangible resources as well as to identify and honor intangible and culturally significant resources. OHP seeks to expand this work by developing a strategic plan for the development of cultural context statements utilizing participatory methods.
The strategy will focus on underrepresented communities and present community engagement methodologies sensitive to community identities by integrating the cultural norms and traditional knowledge of individual communities. The strategic plan will develop best practices for collaborative, inclusive, and equitable processes. A robust public engagement process to develop the strategic plan will include multigenerational stakeholders, community workshops, focus groups, and public review. The strategy will include a gap analysis to identify omissions in representation. It will also establish significant themes in the City’s history and development to include a broad range of architectural, social, ethnic, and cultural topics-including tangible and intangible elements. The plan will provide guidance on prioritizing cultural context statements that specifically address underrepresented communities and under told stories and will create the first cultural context statement produced based on this methodology.
The City has preliminarily been awarded a cost reimbursement grant of $30,000.00. The match requirement will be met with in-kind services. The estimated completion date for the project is September 30, 2022.
ISSUE:
Cultural context statements are critical tools for understanding, identifying, evaluating, and protecting resources which give each community its social fabric and sense of place. Cultural context statements will increase staff's ability to equitably identify historic resources and improve staff's capacity and timeliness in making demolition and designation decisions, increase transparency in those decisions, and promote the potential use of historic property tax incentives for property owners.
ALTERNATIVES:
Non-acceptance of the grant would limit the ability of staff to comprehensively evaluate the cultural and social significance of potential historic resources.
FISCAL IMPACT:
This ordinance ratifies the submission of a grant application and authorizes acceptance of funds upon award, not to exceed $30,000.00, from the Texas Historical Commission for the development of a strategic plan for cultural context statements and one completed cultural context statement. There is a required match to include in-kind services or cash of the lesser of $30,000 or 50% of eligible costs. The match requirement will be met with in-kind services.
RECOMMENDATION:
Staff recommends that the City Council ratify the grant proposal and authorize the acceptance of the cost reimbursement grant.