San Mateo council directs staff to draft historic-preservation ordinance update, seeks owner-consent rules

SAN MATEO, Calif.

On June 2, 2025, the San Mateo City Council directed staff to move forward with drafting updates to the city's historic-preservation ordinance and to begin community outreach, while asking staff to base local designation criteria on the California Register of Historical Resources and to include a mechanism for local historic districts with owner consent requirements, council members and staff said.

The council's direction follows a staff presentation from Zach Dahl, director of community development, and Julianne Murphy, an architectural historian with Rincon Consulting, who outlined the project timeline, the purpose of a historic-context statement and several policy choices for council consideration. The city allocated approximately $330,000 from the advanced planning fund for the effort; staff said the fund holds roughly $6,000,000 in total with about $2,200,000 unencumbered for projects such as this.

City staff told the council the effort implements actions in the city's recently adopted general plan and aims to return a final ordinance for adoption beginning in early 2026. "The purpose of a historic context statement is to provide a framework and ... it does not evaluate individual or groups of properties," Murphy said, describing research and outreach tasks that will accompany the ordinance update.

Why it matters

Changes to the local preservation ordinance would…