We were a little surprised at the “We’ll pass, thanks” reception that the Wiscasset Historic Preservation Commission’s members are giving one piece of the new ordinance. They say they don’t want to exempt any properties in the historic district from getting their projects reviewed by the commission, even if the projects don’t involve one of the really old buildings the downtown is known for.

We get it. They want to protect the district’s historic look. So do residents, or they wouldn’t have passed the ordinance last spring. But by the time an ordinance gets to voters, it’s been analyzed and vetted and commented on, by residents and various panels, so much that, if there’s something that enough people don’t like, that part gets cut.

Maybe the ordinance’s designers, and the voters who passed it, all missed the ‘contributing, non-contributing’ part. It just seems doubtful.

The part about the commission being able to say which properties do and do not contribute to the district’s historic value survived the lengthy process to passage.

The “non-contributing” valve isn’t a way for a horrible-looking project to escape scrutiny. As departing Town Planner Jamel Torres points out, the planning board would still have its crack. We suspect anyone owning a non-contributing property wouldn’t be out to drag down the neighborhood with the pink and purple stripes and polka dots of members’ more humorous what-if’s.

If someone has invested in downtown or waterfront property, they probably want their place to look nice, too, whether it’s circa 1800 or 2000. An extra layer of tape that the commission’s review represents is a good thing for preventing bad things at the village’s beautiful, oldest buildings. But for the newer ones, the standards of the other districts they also sit in should be enough to keep the projects in good form.