Historic Preservation Committee

Meeting Minutes – October 20, 2016

A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Historic Preservation Committee (“HPC” or the “Committee”) was held on Thursday October 20, 2016, in the in the Mountain Lakes Library reading room. In attendance were Chair Lesley Karczewski, Vice Chair Tom Dagger, Margaret DeWitt, Rob Infante, Alex Gotthelf, Sima Chowdhury, Katy Roberts, and Borough Council Liaison Bill Albergo. Absent were Ginny Cassidy and Mike DeWitt.

Approval of Prior Meeting’s Minutes

The minutes of the June 23, 2016 meeting were approved in the form in which they were distributed to the Committee.

Treasurer’s Report

Lesley Karczewski presented the report:


Opening Balance as of June 21, 2016: $31,706.91


Debits:
$17.97 Margaret DeWitt for shipping centennial book

$63.52 Lesley Karczewski for photo reproductions

Total Debits: $81.49

Credits:
$25.00 poster

$116.00 Historic Photos

$300.00 for 1 plaque and 2 posters

Total Credits: $441.00


Closing Balance as of October 18, 2016: $32,066.42


Archivist’s Report

Review of professional archivist’s proposal for services

Lesley Karczewski reported on the current state of the archive. The room is packed full of materials and not well organized. She reported that she couldn’t find the thumb drive containing digitized images, created by IDI. She believes that IDI has a copy.

Lesley has concluded that the archive requires a professional to assess the condition and contents of the archive as well as make recommendations for best practices to get it organized, indexed and maintained. She presented a proposal to the committee prepared by Debra Schiff dated August 9th, 2016. Ms. Schiff is a professional archivist and comes very highly recommended by Lesley who knows her work first hand.

The project deliverables are a Preservation Needs Assessment, a Collections Survey and an Archivist half-day Workshop. The total cost is $2,500. Sima and Rob have offered to take the lead with the archive going forward. Lesley is encouraging 100% participation from the Committee.

The committee voted unanimously to approve the proposal.

Digitizing photos

Lesley reported that the photographs are kept in binders with general labeling and no indexing.

Rob reported that he uploaded approximately 18 disks containing high resolution photos onto Google Drive. He estimated that so far he has used approximately 1-2 gb but this project will most likely require an upgrade in capacity from the 18 gb that come free. Bill advised that there may be large amounts of data storage available through the Borough.

The committee agreed that all photographs should be watermarked as belonging to the Mountain Lakes Historic Preservation Committee. The watermark would also contain contact information to order reproductions. Rob agreed to find a way to do this and to make sure that all images uploaded to a public server will be watermarked.


Borough Liaison Report

No report.

Old Business

Update on Ordinance edits

Tom Dagger provided a draft copy of the latest version of the ordinance updates. This draft translated the revisions into the language of the ordinance for adoption. Some minor work still remains but the final draft should be completed soon. Once completed, Tom will seek input from Borough attorney Robert Oostdyk on final language.

He reviewed all the revisions with the committee and everyone was pleased with the progress and results thus far.

Salvage/Pump House (aka “dynamite shed”) update

Alex Gotthelf reported that he prepared a report of repairs that are necessary before moving in. That report has been forwarded by Bill to Mark Prusina, the head of DPW to determine availability of Borough resources to do the work. Alex has not received any response and Bill assured the committee that he would press Mark again on Friday the 21st. Consequently the move to the new salvage shed is still in limbo pending a response.

Centennial Book reprint

Margaret Dewitt presented hard and soft cover options for reprinting the centennial book. The hard cover would cost $31/copy and the soft $15/copy with a minimum of 25 copies of either. The committee agreed that the hard copy should be purchased to replenish the stock. The price would be $75/copy. Lesley has the file for the dust jacket and will provide the disk with the contents of the book.

Summary of July 21 Morris County Trust for Historic Preservation lecture

Lesley reported that several members of the committee attended the lecture. She has a copy of the slide deck. There was discussion about the definitions of weak and strong commission. The committee discussed the possibility of transitioning to a weak commission in the future. Tom reviewed the history of the formation of this committee. Katy suggested and the committed agreed that surveying the community to determine if the sentiment toward preservation has changed would be a good idea for the future.

Facebook page

Rob Infante shared a status of the committee’s Facebook page. The page currently has about 350 likes. Rob has been cross-posting to the Boonton Historical Society’s page as well as the Love Mountain Lakes page and several others. There is good interest and questions are coming in. Lesley discussed the fact that she created the page as a community organization page instead of a group page. As a result, visitors’ posts are hidden. Rob and Lesley discussed the pros and cons of making our page a group page. Pros included enabling visitors to post directly to the page feed; cons included the probability that we would have to take down the current page and start over. Rob will find out if we can convert without taking it down. The committee discussed the concept for ecommerce to sell books and other items through Facebook.

32 Condit

Tom attempted but was unable to convince the owners to save the house. The deadline (based on the 90 day waiting period) to do documentation is December 12th. Lesley agreed to reach out to Ginny and ask her to recommend a videographer and coordinate documentation with the homeowners. The goal is to have it done in November. The cost is expected to be around $250. The owner has agreed to deconstruct the house to help salvage as much as possible. Others are interested but we “have first dibs.”

New Business

Ginny Cassidy continued membership in HPC

Lesley reported that Ginny has moved out of Mountain Lakes but would like to remain on the committee. The by-laws allow for up to 2 members to be from out of town. The committee unanimously agreed that Ginny could and should remain on the committee.

Borough grant writer assistance

The Borough has contracted with a grant writer who can help us with the Morris County Heritage Commission grant application. Bill A. says we have until the end of 2016 to utilize the grant writer at no cost to HPC.

Stickley Museum Tour

Margaret DeWitt is organizing a tour of the Stickley Museum in Parsippany for the committee to get a better feel for the origins and examples of craftsman style furniture and architecture. The requirement is for 12 people to attend. The cost would be $12-$15 pp. Spouses and others would be encouraged to attend.


Date for Next Meeting

Next meeting date – Nov. 17 @ Mtn. Lakes Library meeting room



Minutes prepared by Alex Gotthelf and Lesley Karczewski.





3