The Taipei City Government has been inundated by requests to preserve old buildings after the promulgation of the amended Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法), the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs said on Tuesday last week.
The amended law has led to an increased number of parties contacting the department with conservation queries, Taipei Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Tien Wei (田瑋) said, adding that his department has not been given the extra resources to handle them.
The new law imposes fewer restrictions on heritage status applications submitted by those who do not own the property. In addition, commemorative buildings and public buildings that have 50 years or more of history are qualified to be considered as heritage sites, according to the new law, he said.
The changes resulted in a flood of conservation requests, including sites that the city had previously reviewed and rejected as being unworthy of the status or unviable as a cultural resource, he said.
“The new law will lead to an increase of heritage sites on a massive scale, but the central government has not given local governments the money, staff or legal authority needed for the job,” Tien said.
“The central government should amend the law, giving local governments more resources in the same way that they do for government-led urban renewal projects. Otherwise, cultural heritage conservation will become so much empty talk,” he added.
The Taipei City Government is charged with protecting 166 existing cultural heritage sites and the new law allows cases that were thought to be settled to be reopened, he said.
Up to 600 sites that were submitted during the tenure of former mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) could be up for reconsideration, in addition to new applications filed by private citizens, Tien said.
“This department does not have the money or staff to deal with all of this. Just dealing with the old law exhausted the department’s regular annual funding for heritage preservation. We still do not have the money to pay for the expert reviews of heritage sites that were conducted last month. How will we enforce the law?” he asked.
The Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the municipal government should both consider giving the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs more resources to process the additional work, Tien said.
Privately owned heritage sites are often difficult to refurbish or manage because of the complicated status of their ownership and legal disputes among family member, situations that the law does not provide clear guidelines for, he said.
The Cultural Heritage Preservation Act should be amended to address these situations, Tien said.
The law should also oblige private owners of heritage sites who have sold their property to for-profit entities to return part of the proceeds or ownership of the heritage structure to the city so that the city can pay for the expenses incurred in reviewing and maintaining the sites, he said.
The implementation of the new law needs fine-tuning to resolve the problems that the city is currently experiencing, Tien said.
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