Calling all preservationists! Nearly two weeks into his second term, Mayor Bloomberg has made the single most critical decision for the future of our city’s historic neighborhoods. That is to re-appoint Robert B. Tierney as Chair of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). Tierney’s confirmation hearing will take place on Wednesday, January 18, at 11:00 AM before the City Council’s Rules, Privileges & Elections Committee (City Hall, 2nd Floor).
Please plan to attend! Your presence will demonstrate how much preservationists care about who is chosen to lead the agency – the only agency – with the mandate to protect our most beloved landmarks in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. No public testimony will be taken on the 18th, but please contact your local council member and urge them to attend and ask questions (for contact information, go to http://www.gothamgazette.com/city/index.php). If you would like your own questions submitted to committee chair Leroy G. Comrie (Queens), please send them to us at landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org and we will pass them on.
Please underscore your concern about the LPC’s dire need to improve its processes for…
a) deciding which buildings and neighborhoods do and do not get public designation hearings,
b) collaborating with organizations and individual citizens working to preserve their communities,
c) interacting with the City Council and other city agencies to promote landmark designation and protection,
…as well as addressing the broad range of complaints that many of you raised at an unprecedented three oversight hearings that you attended over the past 18 months. Remember, at the end of 2005, over 60 organizations were so frustrated that they (you!) had endorsed changing the Landmarks Law itself. Those problems have not gone away. The responsibility for those problems rests squarely on Tierney’s shoulders. It’s up to us preservationists to hold him accountable.
See you on the 18th.
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