When meeting with the public, those drafting Wiscasset’s next comprehensive plan will seek a balance between sharing the committee’s ideas and seeing what attendees have to say.

“I don’t want us to put in so much work that then if it totally doesn’t match with any of what the public says, we’ve wasted our time and we need to totally rewrite,” Committee Chair and Selectmen’s Chair Sarah Whitfield said Sept. 13.

“Or try to help educate, maybe,” committee member Carla Dickstein said, smiling.

Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission has done “tons” of those meetings with other towns and can help Wiscasset’s public feedback sessions have prompts and other structure, Whitfield said in the meeting at the town office and carried over Zoom and YouTube.

The committee also plans another survey. Like the first, this one will be online, and paper copies will be available at the town office and community center. Members also mulled releasing a QR code for the survey and maybe having a table at the polls in November. And member Anne Leslie said waiting until the committee’s work is a ways along might lead to better questions to put on the survey. “I think some things might bubble up that we really want answered by the public.”

Also Sept. 13, members said the comp plan will note the town’s historic preservation commission that stemmed from the 2008 comp plan is no more. Voters repealed the historic preservation ordinance in September 2020.

The committee meets next on Oct. 11.