Last month we reported that, at the January BOT meeting, the Mayor and Chris Hansen pushed to have the draft BAR Guidelines passed into the rules that govern what we can do on our properties – 58 pages of rules that greatly expand the power of the BAR … If it had passed, we would need BAR approval for things like: our selections of lawn furniture, for property maintenance, for approval of demolition, (that is, unless the BAR decided to require us to rebuild a structure). The rest of the Trustees refused to approve these draft guidelines.

For the February BOT meeting, the Mayor placed an announcement on the agenda that he will propose a law that will allow the BAR to make up their own standards without Trustee approval. This appeared on the agenda before the Mayor had even received comments on the guidelines from the other boards. (See: So Much for Open Government) These guidelines, which have been in development for well over two years, are certainly worthy of review and input from the BZA and the Planning Board residents and Trustees … In fact, the agenda item was positioned as an announcement, not as something for the Trustees to discuss and approve. (Fortunately, the Mayor ended up tabling this part of the Agenda.)