Discussion and a resolution were both tabled by the city’s housing committee and public safety committee regarding the local preservation ordinance until the next meeting. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

A proposed city Local Preservation Ordinance won’t be moving forward this month.

Discussion regarding the potential of establishing a local preservation ordinance in the city dominated much of the conversation during both the City Council’s Housing and Public Safety committees this week. Both committees decided to continue to look over the potential ordinance and talk more again at the next meeting.

The entirety of the local preservation ordinance covers a 42 page document, and Councilman Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5 and chair of the Housing Committee, said it would behoove the committee to be able to spend more time dissecting and looking it over for longer than a single weekend.

“After about 10 pages I thought we need to spend a little bit more time dissecting this document and going through the minutiae of what it in fact entails,” Reynolds said. “So I think it would behoove us as the Housing Committee to table any action on it this evening and move the discussion and any action to next week’s meeting.”

Some of the concerns for Reynolds and the Housing Committee include the city already having things like the Planning Commission, where the ordinance would call for the establishment of a Jamestown Preservation Board and what that would mean. Committee members were also concerned about creating an ordinance while the city is in the midst of a Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Code update, some of the language and other details included in the ordinance itself. The committee also discussed some of the questions and concerns addressed at the December meeting of the Planning Commission, which includes councilman Joe Paterniti, R-Ward 4.

Corporation Counsel Elliot Raimondo wrote the current draft of the ordinance, and addressed the concern about having a preservation board alongside the Planning Commission.

“I did write into the ordinance that if we have problems filling these positions that the Planning Commission become congruent with the preservation board,” Raimondo said. “If we had a city of a much bigger population I’m sure we’d have a preservation board, but it’s a lot of the time hard on people’s families and schedules to get quoroms.”

Other concerns addressed by the Housing Committee included property owner rights, funding, enforcement questions, and having multiple unanswered questions.

Similar concerns and questions were brought up at the Public Safety Committee, and their resolution to approve the establishment of the ordinance was also tabled until next week. There is also potential for Ellen Shadle, planner of the project to present the ordinance in more detail to the council at a later meeting.