Thomas Hennessey will have to wait another week before he finds out whether the good people of Petersburg, through their duly elected representatives on the City Council, will grant him the privilege of installing vinyl siding on the house he owns on Harrison Street.

Hennessy had been in the process of doing so back in April when a stop-work order was issued. Petersburg's Architectural Review Board nixed the home-improvement project, seeing as how Hennessey's house is part of the Poplar Lawn Historic District, which was expanded to encompass the residence two years ago.

The city preservation planner says the house is a good example of a two-story Italianate dwelling and that vinyl siding is not as historically appropriate as wood. Last month Hennessey appealed. The City Council has deferred its decision until next Tuesday.

IT WILL BE considerably longer than that before the pupils of Petersburg learn whether the Commonwealth of Virginia will take a still firmer hand in improving the city's schools. But even that little learning might be thought of as an improvement.

The state has brought an extraordinary level of pressure to bear on Petersburg's school administration. As

Times-Dispatch reporter Olympia Meola noted this spring: "It's been nearly two years since Petersburg schools entered into an agreement with the state to make drastic changes to a failing school system.

"TODAY, FIVE of its seven schools are still unaccredited; unlicensed teachers are teaching core subjects; and there are questions whether some middle-school students who are already on a pre-GED track are missing mandated Standards of Learning tests. Of all Petersburg public school students who take the GED, the state believes about 51 percent pass. The state average is 72 percent." This despite Petersburg's high per-pupil expenditure (more than $10,000) and low student-teacher ratios (16-1 in elementary school, 7-1 in secondary school).

If the schools don't clear stipulated hurdles in the next year, then the state will step in with an alternative program for middle-schoolers in the fall of 2009 -- more than a year hence.

Petersburg's police department awaits assistance as well. Recently the City Council heard a presentation noting that starting salaries in Petersburg ($29,848) are lower than in Hopewell ($31,900), Colonial Heights ($32,600), Prince George ($36,370), Dinwiddie ($30,671), and Chesterfield ($38,000). Chief John Dixon says he is losing officers -- the department already has only 80 cops out of an authorized complement of 107 -- to other jurisdictions because "they need to be able to feed their families."

Some of the squad cars are more than 25 years old, and more than a third of the vehicles have more than 200,000 miles on the odometers. The city has a crime rate markedly worse than the national average, and a homicide rate that sticks out like a traffic cone in terrarium.

Thank goodness Petersburg's leaders invested more than $4 million to rehab the Lee Park golf course.

PETERSBURG also has been expanding its historic-district footprint, partly at the urging of businessmen eager to reap concomitant tax breaks; the city now has nine historic districts and, as noted above, has been expanding some of them, with the attendant effect on Hennessey's investment. He says he was hoping to renovate the home and rent it out, perhaps to soldiers.

Well. Recently the Crater Planning District heard a report from RKG Associates Inc. of Alexandria about the anticipated regional growth from the expansion of Fort Lee. It shows that while Petersburg ought to be able to expect more than 600 new residents, the city realistically can count on . . . zero.

As Richmonders know all too well, a rich history is not enough to revive a struggling city. Nor will public investment in niceties -- either in the form of a golf course or a downtown mall such as the now-defunct Sixth Street Marketplace -- summon a great revival so long as the principal core services, education and public safety, remain impaired. Perhaps Petersburg should worry a trifle less about preserving the past -- and a trifle more about preparing for the future.