Wiscasset Board of Appeals

Neighbor appeals Wiscasset panel’s deck decision

Fri, 09/23/2016 - 5:45pm

    A Bradbury Street property owner is appealing the Wiscasset Historic Preservation Commission’s decision on a project at a neighbor’s home.

    The Wiscasset Board of Appeals will meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday night, Sept. 27 at the municipal building to take up Jane Blanchard’s appeal of the commission’s approval of Pamela Logan’s request to expand her deck at 16 Fort Hill Street.

    Blanchard, of 9 Bradbury Street, writes in her Aug. 24 application for the appeal: “I am appealing because I was not properly notified of the (commission’s) meeting on Aug. 4 for the certificate of appropriateness review. I am an abutter to 16 Fort Hill Street.”

    In a phone interview Thursday, Blanchard said that in addition to the notification issue she is raising, she is concerned about noise and the deck’s size, which she called disproportionately large for Logan’s house. The home was recently featured in a Wiscasset Newspaper article describing it as “Wiscasset’s ‘Tiny House.’”

    Logan’s application to the commission proposed extending an existing deck with a 12-by-12-foot one made with pressure-treated pine. The deck would have a railing and, on the east side, a four-foot-high lattice “replicating an image of the house which stood there one time in the mid-1800s ...,” the application states.

    The commission approved Logan’s request Aug. 4.

    Reached by phone Wednesday, Logan said she followed the town’s steps and would be building the deck.

    Codes Enforcement Officer Stan Waltz said Friday that Logan has a building permit; under town rules, the appeal does not put the permit on hold, but he said as long as an appeal is pending, there’s always a chance the town could make new decisions. Depending on those, if the deck was already built, it might need to be removed, Waltz explained. Logan was not immediately available for further comment Friday.

    The town created the commission in 2015. The panel recently began fielding property owners’ requests. Tuesday’s meeting will be the first time one of the commission’s decisions has faced an appeal to the appeals board, Averill said. Asked about the notification issue Blanchard cites, Averill said the Aug. 4 meeting announcement was posted at the municipal building, and that the procedure the commission was following for Logan’s application did not require abutter notifications.