News

LIGHTNING EDITORIAL: Let's honor our history

By Bill Moss, Published: January 27, 2015

Formed in 2008 to preserve the county's history, the Historic Resources Commission has worked hard to move forward on the creation of a historic landmarks ordinance.

With the official historic landmark seal of approval, properties would be eligible for a property tax discount of 50 percent. It sounds appealing to many homeowners until they realize how much time and cost goes into the designation. An old letter from Aunt Ada or a cracker-barrel reminiscence is not enough to prove historic significance.
After a false start two years ago, the historic landmarks ordinance last week won the endorsement from the county Planning Board. The presentation back in 2013 was fumbled on many levels. The county planning staff presented a spreadsheet showing that Henderson County contained 12,000 structures over 50 years old, implying that that number made up the pool of homes eligible for historic landmark designation. The number was laughably exaggerated.
The real number of eligible properties is closer to several dozen and the current number of finalists for designation is six.
Commission members Don Wilson, Stephen Fosberg and Terry Ruscin have worked tirelessly over the past five years putting together an inventory of potential landmark properties and then paring it down. The sticker-shock number of properties had the Planning Board members grabbing for the keys to the county treasury.
"They could see dollars with wings flying out the window," Wilson said.
Last week, the Historic Resources Commission painted a more thorough and far less scary picture of the potential fiscal impact. It was in the ten-thousandths of a percent of the total county property tax collection.
"We made the point that there are 38 very historic structures in the village of Flat Rock, two of which have been designated as landmarks," Wilson said. "In the city of Hendersonville, there are 54 eligible properties and only three have been designated."
By way of perspective, too, the Board of Commissioners should take into account the its own advisory board has done. By 2013 it had pared a list of 160 homes to 20 and then narrowed that list to eight. Since then a couple of those finalists have fallen away. It's demonstrably false, in other words, that the ability to certify a property as historic leads to a great many such certifications.
But the landmark ordinance is an important tool. It's an incentive for property owners to keep historic buildings intact. It signals the community's commitment to preserving history. It boosts tourism. On behalf of the county's history and its economic vitality, the Board of Commissioners should adopt the ordinance when it gets the chance next month.