A Bangor homeowner’s request to keep his new roof that replaced aging slate tiles is being stalled by ongoing attendance problems at volunteer city commission meetings.
Steven Farren, who owns a home in Bangor’s Broadway Historic District, applied for retroactive approval from Bangor’s Historic Preservation Commission for his new asphalt roof, which mimics the appearance of slate shingles. The request needs four commission members to approve it in order to pass.
The Historic Preservation Commission has held three meetings since Farren submitted the application in June, but each time the decision was pushed to the next meeting because not enough members attended.
Now, Farren’s request is scheduled for consideration during the commission’s October meeting — nearly a year after the homeowner first asked the same body for permission to replace his roof with the fake slate.
The months-long saga has cost Farren, commission members and city staff countless hours and highlights the extra steps owners of historic homes have to take in order to maintain their properties, and how expensive and beyond their control that work can be.
“We’re doing our part and committee members aren’t doing theirs,” Farren said. “If they can’t figure this out, how many times am I expected to go back?”
The Historic Preservation Commission is made up of seven volunteer members — five regular and two associates — who are appointed by the city council. The associate members typically don’t vote if all regular members are present, but can vote if someone is absent or recused due to a conflict of interest.
City records of monthly Historic Preservation Commission meetings from 2025, 2024 and 2023 show it’s rare for all seven members to attend a meeting. However, five or six members are usually present, according to meeting minutes.
Two Historic Preservation Commission meetings in the last year have received full attendance. That happened in March and April of this year.
The city’s rules give an applicant the opportunity to ask that their request be continued to a future meeting if there are fewer than five voting members present to consider their application, according to David Warren, a spokesperson for the city.
There’s no language in the city’s rules for the commission that limits how many times an applicant can request a continuance if member turnout remains below five.
The city’s bylaws for the group also don’t contain language that requires members to attend a certain number of meetings, or set a limit on the number of meetings they can miss.
Crews installed Farren’s roof this past spring a few months after the commission, then the Bangor Board of Appeals, told him he couldn’t because features on historic homes should be repaired when possible, or replaced with the same materials.
City officials quickly issued him a violation notice, which ordered him to “fix the violation” within 30 days. Instead, Farren appealed the notice, but the city’s Board of Appeals ruled in May that the city was right to issue it.
On June 3, Farren submitted a revised application for the same roof he had installed without permission, but with two new letters that provide evidence for why he needed it. The city is approaching it as an entirely new request because of that new testimony.
The Historic Preservation Commission members were scheduled to consider Farren’s application on July 10, but only three members came to the meeting, forcing them to postpone.
While quorum for the group is three people, the city’s rules require at least four affirmative votes from the Historic Preservation Commission to approve a certificate of appropriateness, which is what Farren applied for. When only four members of the commission are present, that requires Farren’s application to receive a unanimous vote in his favor for his new roof to be allowed.
Five members came to the next meeting on July 31, but member Peter Keebler left after the group voted 3-1 that he has a conflict of interest because he rents workshop space to a company that does restoration work, including slate roofs.
With four members present, Farren decided to present his request and allow the commissioners to deliberate. However, Farren asked for the request to be continued to the next meeting after member Anne Marie Quin indicated that she would vote against it.
Only four members attended the most recent commission meeting on Aug. 14, which led Farren to again ask to postpone his request to a future meeting in the hopes of getting more members to attend.
There has also been confusion among commission members regarding Farren’s application.
At the most recent commission meeting in August, Quin said, “I’ve been told that we need a court order to start this thing de novo,” as commissioners were voting to push Farren’s application to a later date.
Quin did not say where she received that information, but Warren said her statement is “inaccurate.”
“There is no court order needed for the [Historic Preservation Commission] to hear the application,” Warren said.
It’s unclear how long Farren can wait for the full commission to convene. Without the commission’s approval of his asphalt roof, Farren is still in violation of city ordinance.
Brenda Hanscom Bilotta, the code enforcement officer who issued Farren’s violation notice, previously said the city would be willing to delay enforcing it if Farren went back to the Historic Preservation Commission with his new evidence.
Farren’s application was pushed to October because he is unavailable during the commission’s September meeting.
“Hopefully they’ll be able to produce a full panel, as they haven’t been able to do during the last three meetings,” Farren said. “I just want it to be over with.”
