03-E Hist Pres.Comm. (10/14/02) - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

October 14, 2002 Page 33 of 35 in Austin is the whole idea of communities figuring out what they want they want to look like in five years, ten years plan. And this kind of effort that we are doing has been a long time coalescing. I mean, Mike and Larry have been working on it for a long time; Main Street has certainly been working on it for a long time; the CDC has been working on it for a long time; Keep Paris Beautiful has been working on it for a long time. And we need kind of, everyone needs to link hands and make sure that this actually really happens. Because what we have here in Paris, Texas, are the best bones in Texas. We've got more square blocks of wonderful stuff here than anybody. It just needs some polishing up and some appreciation and some demolition. And the reason, Karen is not here today because she had to go to a funeral in Albuquerque, but she would be talking instead of myself if she were here, because we went to the City Council knowing that the Building and Standards Commission, which was mandated by the legislature, needed to happen. But our concern was also that you could apply the same criteria for rat infested, non-occupied buildings downtown as you could a crack house that was burned down across town. So obviously all of you have a pretty big elephant. What I wanted to tell you is that the Certified Local Government, which is the historic preservation end of this, has been approved from one desk top to the next in Austin and is supposed to come back here shortly. The entire program was set out by Bratten Thomason and she is committed to come up to Paris, Texas, to give a workshop for us all so that we can kind of understand how this works in other cities. And I think that her knowledge and Maude Emerick could come and help everybody not only on Building and Standards, Main Street, and Historic Preservation, so that's kind of difficult to show, and hopefully the CDC would come and hopefully everybody here who has a major interest in how you actually structure this and how have others done it. I think Mary asked that question. There are three million people living right now under Certified Local Government Administration in the State of Texas and lots of those people are attracting tourism, and you know people coming to live in their towns, because they look so special and wonderful. Which really, when you go to Dallas now and you think how filled up it is going to be with all of those millions of people, you are sitting out here just perfectly positioned to grow in this kind of special way that we can. The discussion was for her to come sometime the first of November and she would come from Austin and give a workshop so everybody could kind of get some real help. What Larry said is fine, and everyone agrees to, but it is a whole lot for everyone to be getting overwhelmed, myself included. But the suggestion was to take just one historic district, don't designate all three at one time. Just take one. This suggestion was, on Building and Standards, that you would learn as you go so that it is not something that is insurmountable but it is a very exciting thing. I think the more people that are involved in this the better off we are going to be. All of a sudden I have more hope for Paris, Texas, than I have had in the 31 years I have lived here. Terry, did you have anything else to add about Main Street, because I really did not say anything about Main Street.