City OK's Retirement Contributions Status Quo, Denies Demolition Request

By Desiree Parker Friday, June 11, 2010

At their meeting Thursday afternoon, Williamsburg City Council chose to keep employee retirement contributions paid by the city at the same level, and they decided not to allow a local family to demolish two older homes to make way for new ones.

Thanks to a new piece of state legislation, localities must make a decision soon on whether to reduce some retirement costs they currently cover for employees. Today, the city (and all other local governments) pays the five percent employee contribution to the Virginia Retirement System. They now have the option of requiring all employees hired after July 1 to pay that contribution. Either way, the state mandates they need to make the decision by July 1.

Council had the option to keep picking up the five percent and then change its mind at any point – however, if this change is made it will still apply to all hires after July 1 regardless of the date of the future decision.

City manager Jack Tuttle said he’d talked to James City County staff as well as folks from WJCC schools to see what they were planning on doing in this instance, and he said they’d likely continue to pay the five percent.

Council members didn’t even need time to discuss the measure and approved it unanimously, though Councilman Paul Freiling took a quick moment to say for the record that council had assumed during budget discussions that the contribution would be maintained, and that it offered worthwhile future benefits to employees.

Council wasn’t quite so quick to come to a decision on an appeal to an Architectural Review Board decision, but they also ended up presenting a united front when defending the ARB’s choice.

Three brothers and a sister, children to Helen Mahone, came to appeal the ARB’s ruling that they couldn’t tear down two homes on their property on Capitol Landing Road.

Son Tommy McDaniel explained that their mother was living in Patriot’s Colony and has dementia. Her care costs about $65,000 a year, and the family was ready to move ahead with plans to build 44-home, high-end development on the property to earn some income.

Part of their plan included razing two homes, one built in 1919 and one from 1920, which happened to be on the city’s list of homes under the architectural preservation ordinance. The ordinance says the homes need to be moved, or sold and preserved. State code adds that if the homes don’t sell in a year, then the family can go ahead with the demolition plans.

McDaniel said the homes were in disrepair, and experts had told him they couldn’t be moved. He said he was certain they wouldn’t sell due to their small size and condition, and that the family would plan to demolish the homes after a year.

He also said he was confused as to why the city wanted to protect homes from this era when there were many others in the city of the same period.

He pointed out adding a few more new homes on the lots would increase tax revenue, and he asked council why they would bother to delay the inevitable and force their development plans to be put on hold.

Council gave a member of the ARB a chance to defend the decision.

Jeff Klee said his group felt these homes had value because they predated the Colonial Williamsburg renovation, and the ARB had made preserving these types of homes a priority.

He also said the ARB felt the homes weren’t too run down, and they were sound enough to rent and restore. He also argued the homes would not be in the way of development and could be incorporated into the design.

Councilwoman Judy Knudson asked what the value was of having a list of homes to preserve if they could just be demolished in a year; staff pointed out that sometimes the homes do sell and are preserved.

After asking a few more questions, council members voted unanimously to uphold the ARB denial of the application.

Freiling said he didn’t think there was a basis to overturn the ARB’s well-considered opinion, and that the applicant could find creative ways to incorporate the homes into the development design.

Vice Mayor Clyde Haulman pointed out that the smaller homes would mean keeping some affordable housing in the city, which was important.

Other business
Council unanimously approved two new ordinances to reinstate a Heritage Tree program to help maintain trees with character, exceptional size or historical significance and to approve an initial list of trees that would be protected under the program.