The new deck Pam Logan is putting on Wiscasset’s “Tiny House” is no longer under challenge from a neighbor. The Wiscasset Board of Appeals on Oct. 5 let stand the nod the deck got this summer from the Wiscasset Historic Preservation Commission.

Logan’s neighbor Jane Blanchard said afterward, she will not further contest the commission’s decision. In addressing the board, she raised three main issues, but members determined two of those — the deck’s size and nearness to her home — were not in the board’s purview. Besides the certificate of appropriateness the commission approved Aug. 4, Logan also got a building permit, so the town has already found the deck meets the rules, board members said.

Logan said the deck only has to be 10 feet from Blanchard’s property line and is 37 feet from it. “I just want to sit out and have a glass of wine and enjoy the sunset,” Logan added at another point.

As for Blanchard’s argument the deck is oversized for the house and detracts from the look of the historic district, Logan’s fiance Anthony Vitti said the $40,000 in improvements that have gone into the property have enhanced the neighborhood.

The other issue, the one Blanchard gave on the appeal application, was that she got no notice of the Aug. 4 meeting. If she had, she would have been there, she said.

Blanchard told the board Town Planner Ben Averill and Code Enforcement Officer Stan Waltz told her she would be notified, but nothing ever came in the mail. “I’m very upset about this. Of course I would have been there,” she said.

Asked later about Blanchard’s statement, Averill said he recalls talking with Blanchard when she came into the office, but does not recall saying she would be notified. Waltz was not at the Oct. 5 meeting. In a phone interview Oct. 6, he, too, recalled speaking with Blanchard about the deck, looking into it and finding it could be there and needed the commission’s approval as well as the building permit it had received. As for Blanchard’s statement about being told she would be notified, Waltz said, “I don’t know if we told her that specifically.”

Averill told the board the Aug. 4 meeting was announced on the bulletin board in the municipal building hall, and outside on the message board on Route One. Since Logan wasn’t proposing a new building, abutter notification by mail was not required. It would have been if the proposal varied from town standards, but it didn’t, board member Peter Rines explained to Blanchard.

“There really isn’t another step for us. I know and understand how frustrating that is, but I don’t know what else we have,”  Rines said.

The board concluded it had nothing it could act on in the appeal. “The board of appeals regrets the inconvenience that was suffered by the petitioner, but we feel there is nothing that has been presented to us that we can act upon at this time,” member Susan Van Alsenoy said in making the motion.

The board also decided to have a letter go to the board of selectmen, advising all department heads to make sure “immediate interested parties get the information they need, to try to avoid this in the future,” as Rines put it.

One of the appeals board’s members, Susan Blagden, left shortly after the start of the meeting. She also serves on the preservation commission so could not take part, she has said. The board picked her for chairman, Joan Barnes for vice chairman and Van Alsenoy, secretary. Then Blagden noted her membership on the commission and said, “Therefore, I’m out of here and turn the meeting over to Joan.” Then Blagden left the building.

No other commission members were on hand. Reached afterward for comment on the outcome, Chairman John Reinhardt said the carrying out of the appeal shows the process the Historic Preservation Ordinance provides is working well. “People have the ability to appeal, and that’s what makes America great,” Reinhardt said in a phone interview.

During the meeting, Van Alsenoy suggested the town reconsider the wording on an ordinance heading that refers to abutters even though the rules listed in that section do not call for abutter notification. “It’s not very logically presented,” she said.

The appeal was the first one to be brought against a decision of the commission. Averill said in an interview afterward, “I think this does give us a chance to reflect on our year-old historical ordinance which could lead to changes to it.”

Waltz said Oct. 6 if abutter notification were added, that would straighten out the issue.