NEW GLOUCESTER — Three panels met with selectmen on Thursday to review the draft amendments to the New Gloucester Zoning Ordinance to meet requirements in Maine’s Mandatory Shoreland Zoning Act.

The law became effective on July 1 but New Gloucester’s efforts to bring the town’s ordinance into compliance hit a snag at a public meeting in July when residents’ outcry forced the Planning Board to go back to the drawing board to improve the document.

Attending Thursday’s meeting were the Board of Selectmen, Planning Board, Land Management Planning Committee and the Environmental Committee.

Each panel must send selectmen a written recommendation to approve or deny the ordinance within 21 days.

Then the board will send the document to the state for review, followed by the town attorney before a public hearing is scheduled during the winter.

Planning Board Chairman Jean Libby said the ordinance revision would go to voters by spring or possibly the annual town meeting in May.

Thursday’s meeting gave each panel an overview of the document and chance to comment. Assistant Town Planner Amanda Lessard outlined the proposed changes, the results of four workshops following July’s public hearing.

Lessard noted that zoning map changes and a newly defined limited residential shoreland district are now in place.

The Mandatory Shoreland Zoning Act requires that municipalities adopt shoreland-zoning ordinances, which regulate land use activities within 250 feet of great ponds, rivers, wetlands and 75 feet of streams. The ordinances must be consistent with, or no less stringent than, the minimum guidelines established by the state Board of Environmental Protection.

New Gloucester is integrating the shoreland zoning requirements into the roughly 200-page Zoning Ordinance. Some changes include renaming the Lake District to Limited Residential Shoreland District to reflect that the district encompasses multiple types of water bodies.

And, performance standards and definitions are included in the new district.

Performance standards for timber harvesting in the shoreland zone were updated to reflect the new statewide standards.

And, single-family and two-family dwellings in the Limited Residential Shoreland District will no longer require site plan review by the Planning Board, and will instead be permitted subject to a permit from the town’s code enforcement officer.

Nonconforming structures in the shoreland zone may be expanded to a maximum total floor area instead of the current 30 percent expansion rule.