The timing couldn't be better, and Frank Katz's cause is just: The city attorney figures now is the time to determine whether Santa Fe's historic-design ordinance applies to other governmental entities.

No, this isn't another attempt to stop the county from building a new district courthouse at the corner of Montezuma Avenue and Sandoval Street; that project will go ahead when or if health hazards from long-ago gasoline-tank leaks on the site can be neutralized.

And no, it's not an attempt to halt Santa Fe Public Schools' expansion of Carlos Gilbert Elementary at Griffin Street and Paseo de Peralta, an almost-complete project.

Least of all is Katz considering legal action against the parking structure immediately west of the state Capitol, which now is in operation.

Those three projects potentially were affronts to our community's preservationist lifestyle and, of course, to the Historic Design Review Board, arbiter of what harmonizes with the pueblo and territorial styles predominant in our city's designated historic zones. Conflicts between original designs and H-board notions were, for the most part, resolved — amicably, at that.

Yet between judges anxious for a secure courthouse, school officials protective of their prerogatives and the initially clueless contractor of the Roundhouse parking terrace, it became clear in recent years that City Hall needed legal clout to keep non-municipal officials from turning the town into a stylistic hodgepodge.

Whether by statute — lots of it already passed, but too often ignored — or by a court's declaratory judgment, Santa Fe and other New Mexico communities have needed clearer and stronger preservation laws.

At its last session, the state Legislature applied those adjectives to longstanding laws allowing local governments "full and complete powers to preserve, protect and enhance the historic areas and landmarks" within their jurisdiction — at least between local and state government.

But what about city vs. county? Or local government vs. a school district whose leaders think they're accountable only to the state?

Ideally, design disagreements, such as those over building height and bulk, can be worked out with personal diplomacy — which is how Katz and other city officials helped turn a plug-ugly parking terrace into a Santa Fe-style structure in the time between its original design and its completion at Paseo de Peralta and Don Gaspar Street.

But the parking garage, and the originally designed monolith of a courthouse, shouldn't have gotten so far into the planning process that Santa Feans had to march on officialdom to restore sanity to the projects.

That's what has prompted Katz — inspired by former City Councilor Steven Farber's protest of the courthouse project's scorn for height limits he had helped enact — to propose a lawsuit asserting the city's historic-design powers.

On Tuesday, the City Council will take up his suggestion in executive session. Some might be nervous about suing the county and the school district — even though proper interpretation of appellate-court decisions should favor the city. If City Hall doesn't go to court, our leaders should prevail on our senators and representatives to take a few more statutory steps — spelling out municipal power to apply the same historic-district rules to counties, school districts and state government that now regulate private developers. Still another route would be Councilor Matthew Ortiz's proposal of an ordinance requiring anyone hooked up to city water to conform to city rules.

County leaders are in a bit of a huff over Katz's proposal — but mostly because they're still on the defensive over their too-tall courthouse project. But the idea here isn't to whittle that building down to size, more's the pity; it's to keep future projects in their proper perspective.

That's fine and farsighted thinking; one way or another, it should gain the force of law.