More changes in state rules may closely follow the ones Wiscasset is now looking at fitting into its shoreland zoning, Town Planner Ben Averill said. The changes the state made in 2015 are the ones the Ordinance Review Committee was looking at Monday night, but state staff have said to expect additional changes soon, Averill told the ORC.

Until the town adopts the mandated, 2015 changes, the town is out of compliance, but he wasn’t aware of any repercussion other than the possibility the state would be sending the town letters and emails,  Averill said.

Ordinance changes take a town vote. The ORC drafts them; selectmen can return them to the ORC for more work or put them on a town meeting warrant. Monday’s meeting was the ORC’s first review of how Averill said the ordinance would look according to what the state is requiring. Local rules need to be at least as stringent as the state’s but can be more stringent if the town chooses, he said.

According to paperwork Averill handed out at the meeting, the state’s updates include limiting a lot to one dock, pier, wharf or similar structure that reaches below the normal high water line, unless the lot has at least twice the minimum shore frontage. Also, watercrafts registered with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife would be the only structures that can be built on a float.

The state is ordering most of the changes, but a couple are optional, perhaps only included in this round to lay the groundwork for requirements still to come, Averill told the committee. For example, the panel can consider defining a hazardous tree or, as the state terms it, a “hazard tree,” he said. “If we choose not to add it, then there’s no harm, no foul.”

In addition to the state’s updates, panel members spotted other possible changes to consider. Among them, Al Cohen suggested possibly expanding the definition of garbage to include food packaging as well as paper towels and other items used to prepare food. And Gordon Kontrath, who also serves on the Wiscasset Historic Preservation Commission, observed that the definition of a historic structure cites the U.S. Department of the Interior but not the local commission.

Averill said he would search Wiscasset's ordinances for their use of the terms garbage and historic structure. Depending on the outcome, there may be no reason to further define them, Averill said.

Finding other things that may or may not need work is part of the process when updating an ordinance, according to Chairman Karl Olson. “That’s what happens when you open these worm cans,” he said, smiling.