At the Cortez historic preservation board’s first meeting of 2018, held on Wednesday, members voted in a new board chairwoman and vice chair.
Linda Towle, who has served as chairwoman of the board for about eight years, has expressed her desire to leave the position ever since the end of 2016. Dale Davidson took over as chair for about eight months in 2017 before leaving in August for health reasons. On Wednesday, the board voted to appoint Patricia Lacey as her replacement, while approving Towle as the new vice chairwoman.
In addition to serving on the historic preservation board, Lacey is an archaeologist and does volunteer work for the Bureau of Land Management.
Although her appointment was effective immediately, Lacey asked Towle to run the meeting, which included discussions on the board’s 2018 spending, the next Historic Preservation Day celebration and other issues.
The board voted unanimously to authorize Lacey to write a letter of support for a $10,000 grant application to the National Trust for Historic Preservation that would help repair the windows and doors on the Calkins Building. They also informally agreed to do further research within the next few weeks on copyright laws that could affect the podcast guides to Cortez planned for release this year.
Towle also gave a few suggestions on how the board could spend its $500 budget in 2018.
“I thought we should be proactive this year, instead of waiting until December to spend our money,” she said.
Her suggestions included setting aside money to print posters for Historic Preservation Day and donate to the Calkins Building preservation, but the board did not vote on them on Wednesday.