Milton officials close book on historic district paint palette

Milton Town Council will not establish a palette of colors for use in the town’s historic district.

At the Jan. 6 council meeting, Mayor Ted Kanakos said he brought up a paint palette to provide suggestions for homeowners to use paint colors consistent with the historic district.

“All I said was, maybe if someone came to historic preservation, if they bought a historic house, we make a suggestion,” he said. “This was a harmless suggestion that took on a life of its own. It became a pretty hostile thing.”

Kanakos reiterated that he was not trying to make official policy but trying to make suggestions. 

P.D. Camenisch, vice chairman of the commission, said, “If you look at Milton, we have eclectic houses. We could not come up with a specific color palette.”

Still, he said, “We do have a say over color. If someone comes to us and they want a recommendation on color, we can give them a recommendation. But we can’t give them a recommendation that it has to be blue.”

Kanakos said he hoped the commission could have made suggestions to people, but Camenisch argued that’s not what Kanakos asked the commission to do. 

“You asked us to come up with a color palette,” Camenisch said.

Project Coordinator John Collier agreed with Camenisch and the commission’s interpretation of what they were asked to do, and said the variety of architectural styles in Milton made it difficult to zero in on a particular color palette. The commission also agreed that a color palette would be extremely difficult for the town to enforce.

“From my perspective, and the commission’s, it became almost nightmarish: how do we monitor and govern this if we get to that level of specificity?” Collier said.

While the episode has been chalked up as a misunderstanding, the mayor appeared shellshocked by the reaction.

“This thing took on a life of its own,” Kanakos said. “People were angry.”

Council elected to move on, and accepted the commission’s recommendation.