Call it the Port of Bremerton effect.

Time was when the Port of Manchester commissioners, who clearly would like to see the district purchase the property next door to the Manchester Library, would have exercised their legally constituted right to do so by means of a property tax hike.

But having witnessed the fallout that attended the larger port’s decision in 2006 to raise taxes without the courtesy of a public vote and after only minimal debate, the Manchester commissioners opted for discretion over valor and voted on Monday night to scrap plans to create an Industrial Development District.

Port of Manchester Commissioner Jim Strode pointedly cited Bremerton’s actions on Monday as an example of how a district shouldn’t proceed. Not coincidentally, he made the same reference back in July when the commissioners scheduled a public meeting to determine the community’s feelings on the subject.

And when that gathering turned contentious, the commissioners concluded the time wasn’t right and voted this week to abandon the IDD resolution.

Kind of.

What the commissioners actually did was vote to take no action on the measure — a parliamentary device that has the same effect as killing it, only without the painful necessity of actually stating one’s preference one way or another.

But regardless of their motives, it’s always refreshing to see public officials subjugate their own agendas to the public will — and all the more so in the case of a project that would only nominally have satisfied the port’s mandate to create economic development in the first place.

Would that other local leaders had applied the same standard to lamentable projects on which the taxpayers didn’t share their personal vision.