Peoria Pundit

My two cents: Peoria’s litter czar has called it quits. Steve Pierz is sick and tired, mostly tired, of the fight the city’s Historic Preservation Commisstt put him through over his wish to put vinyl siding on a house he owns. Preservationists hate aluminum siding. It violates their sense of aestetics. So, if they manage to get YOUR property declared “historic” — which doesn’t mean anything interesting happened there, it just means that your property is kinda old and can be described as an example of any particular architectural design, or you live in a “historic district”  – then they have the right to tell YOU how you can use your property.

Want to replace your windows? Gotta run it by them. If what they want is more expensive than you can afford, tough. Do it anyway. Case in point:

Earlier this year, Pierz and his wife, Leslie Paulson, petitioned the Historic Preservation Commission for the right to take down the existing aluminum siding on the 528 W. High Street home they are restoring and replace it with vinyl siding. Permission was necessary because the house is located in a historic district. The plan was for Paulson’s father to live in the house, which is just a couple of doors down from their own home.

In July the commission turned down their request, preferring that the siding be replaced with wooden siding similar to what had originally fronted the house. Pierz said the decision was arbitrary because the commission had approved similar siding requests on previous occasions, including one on the same street.

Well, they sued the city. Eventually the Peoria City Council settled and said they don’t have to put up the wooden shingles if it would cost more than $30,000. Since the wood shingles would cost $70,000, they are off the hook. But the estimate for the vinyl siding has gone up from $10,000 to $30,000.

Pierz got the message. He quit the city and he’s going to stick to doing public service through his church, which is probably a smart thing to do, considering he’s apparently made too many enemies by trying to clean up litter and take care of his properties.

I would almost suggest that Pierz punish the city by renting 10 drunken college students, but the people who attacked him have proven again and again they they don’t care about neighborhoods and the people who live in them as much as they do making sure that when they drive THROUGH struggling neighborhoods on the way to someplace better, they can look at older buildings without having their dainty sensibilities offended.

Members of the Historic Preservation Commission need to dissuade themselves of any notion they have that they are making the city better. They are not. Peoria needs people like Steve Pierz, and losing him and people like him is a predictible result of pushing people around simply because you have the power to do so.

“Oh, good heavens, dahling. Look at that crackhouse. The owner occupied home next to it has VINYL SIDING! Simply ghastly.

I agree Peoria needs historic preservation. So what happens when historic preservations colides with property rights? Where’s the line? I dunno, but these people have crossed it. They think their job is to take the city into a long legal battle to keep a homeowner from replacing  aluminum siding with vinyl siding. They need to be reigned in. Peoria needs people like Steve Pierz fighting litter on behalf of older neighborhoods more than it needs the Historic Preservation Commission, especially if they keep doing dumb things like this.

I say disband the group, and replace them with people less prone to mission drift.