“I think we’re going from one extreme to the other extreme,” Wiscasset ordinance review committee member Allen Cohen said Dec. 22 about selectmen’s proposed change to the planning board’s handling of surveys. 

Due to the site plan review ordinance’s calling for surveys to be “recent,” without the ordinance further defining that, the planning board has for years gone by six months, Planning Board and ORC Chair Karl Olson has said. Dec. 22, Cohen, who also serves on both the planning board and ORC, recalled the planning board having sometimes also accepted surveys that were two or three years old. 

After recent public backlash over the six-month timeframe, the selectboard last month called for the ORC to consider an ordinance change to wording that is devoid of a timeframe: “The bearings and length of all property lines of the property to be developed, and the source of this information. The Planning Board may waive this requirement of a boundary survey when sufficient information is available to establish, on the ground, all property boundaries.”

Eying a June town vote, the selectboard wanted a proposed ordinance change back from the ORC by March 1, and asked the ORC to make this work its top priority. 

And the selectboard recommended the planning board proceed as if the town had already changed the ordinance.

Dec. 22, Cohen told fellow ORC members the change to no timeframe did not make sense to him. 

“If we go back to some (boundary documentation) that’s 100 years old leaves it open to a lot of challenge,” Cohen said.

Town Manager Dennis Simmons and Code Enforcement Officer and Planner George Chase noted protections in state law, and the protection of placing the accuracy burden squarely on the applicant. 

“We can’t be so restrictive in what we do, for fear of lawsuits. If that were the case, we’d get nothing done,” Simmons said. 

“The town doesn’t need to play the intermediary in all civil disputes,” Chase added.

Olson asked what the planning board is to do if an abutter comes forward with a survey that differs from the applicant’s survey. 

Said Chase, “Then you have reason to believe that an updated, accurate document is needed.”

The ORC supported keeping the selectboard's proposed wording intact, with one addition, that the survey can also be waived if no external changes are proposed.