MISQUAH — Written comment on the proposed eighteen-lot plat closes today at 4:30 p.m. at the clerk’s window, and as of press time Monday evening the file stood at sixty-three comments — sixteen of them arriving in the last week, four of them Monday alone, one of them hand-delivered by a man who told Clerk Donna Skoglund he had rewritten it three times and would like her to know it was the short version.

Skoglund, who bought a second drawer this month and has declined to price a third, said Monday she expects the last hours to be busy. “It’s always the last hours,” she said. “I have been doing this for nineteen years and I could set a clock by the people who mean to write something all summer and write it at four.”

She restated, for the fourth week running and the last time, that 4:30 means 4:30. She has also, at the request of the board, prepared a summary that will go to the five members Wednesday: sixty-some comments sorted by subject, with the recurring concerns tallied. Without characterizing the balance — which she declines to do, on principle, and which the board has not asked her to do — she confirmed the four subjects that come up most: the county road’s shoulder, septic and well capacity, what eighteen new docks would mean for the bay, and taxes, which appear in comments on both sides of the question and mean different things in each.

The planning board’s special meeting is Tuesday, August 25, at 7 p.m. at city hall — a week from tonight, the week after the fair, in the room with the folding chairs that were counted in July and have been recounted since. Chairman Ross Vig will open it. Ald. Pete Hagen remains recused. The board will make a recommendation to the council, which will do with it what councils do, at a later date, in the fall, in a room this newspaper will also be in.