Palo Alto historic board reviews CLG annual report, cites state's PDF accessibility problem

Staff presented the City of Palo Alto's Certified Local Government (CLG) annual report and told the Historic Resources Board that the state's submission deadline is April 24, 2026. Stephen, the city's historic preservation planner, said the report covers the Oct. 24, 2024 to Sept. 20, 2025 reporting period and that the packet now in front of the board is a draft that will be finalized before submission.

The planner said the CLG program derives from the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and that Palo Alto has been certified since 1992. "This reporting period has nine meetings and five members who served," he told the board, and he asked members to forward any trainings they completed after the packet was published so staff can include them in the final filing.

Board members raised a separate, immediate concern about the state's new fillable PDF form. Several members said portions of the form in the packet were not legible behind the fillable fields and asked staff to read the missing lines aloud or supply the underlying text so they can review it before the April 24 deadline. Stephen acknowledged the tradeoff: the fillable PDF improves online accessibility, he said, but the printed or packet view can obscure paragraphs. He offered to resend the full historic resources evaluation and the report text by email and to include any additional trainings in the final draft to be sent to the state.

There was no formal action required on the CLG report at the meeting; staff said it would compile the outstanding items and circulate a final draft to the board. The next steps identified were: (1) staff will provide the missing text from the state's form to the board, (2) board members should submit training records they want included, and (3) staff will send a final draft prior to the April 24, 2026 submission.