"The reasoning behind our selection to include the rental property is
that the landlords in our city are wealthy in both terms of money and
political power. Most of the members of the city council are landlords

and would not be willing to live with some of the extreme measures that

the historical society has mandated.

To include additional neighborhoods will increase the number of
homeowners affected by the societies dictates and increase the
political power to mitigate some of their influence. Again most of the

city council, the mayoral candidates and the society members themselves

would have property in one of the affected neighborhoods, in addition
to the mayoral residence itself. And if the society began to selective

enforce their dictates, then we would have a stronger legal avenue,
possibly even enough for class action. There's even a judge in one of
the neighborhoods that we would like to include. "


You obviously can do whatever you want. To me, your plan is a long
term strategy with all kinds of risks, to try to solve an immediate
problem of getting your roof fixed. Are you prepared to wait years to
make the repairs, while pursuing new council candidates, elections,
etc? IMO, all you're going to do is get a lot of people mad at you
and in the end not likely get what you want. For example, you're
trying to get the historical designation expanded to cover landlords,
town officials, etc., with the notion that these folks will then reign
in the historical control board. If these landlords and town
officials are half as powerful as you think, why would they simply not
just prevent the designation from being expanded? That's what I would
do. I wouldn't waste my time worrying about relaxing it on other
areas. And if that happens, you will have just made enemies of some of
the people you need to help you.

Rather than worrying about the future and strategies that could take
years, have you met with the current mayor and council members? Met
with the municipality business administrator? Or sat down with the
historical control board members to discuss your situtation? Have you
taken samples of slate that you would use for repair so they can see
that they will match the existing roof ok and shown it to all these
folks? What did they say about your specific roof problem, which
seems like an obvious injustice?