CANAAN — The appointment of five new members of the Lake George Regional Park board of directors in March has ignited a dispute between the town of Canaan and the park, leaving officials on both sides of the disagreement deadlocked on how to proceed.

The monthslong rift, on its surface, centers on the legal question of whether municipal law or the bylaws of the park, a private nonprofit corporation, determine how board members are appointed. But the decision to replace the five board members came after discontent from people in Canaan about how the park is being run, a member of Canaan’s Select Board said.

“This will be the third year that we have — the Select Board has — tried to communicate with them our concerns,” Daniel Harriman said.

Once the home of Camp Modin, one of the oldest Jewish summer camps in the country, the 320-acre park off U.S. Route 2 in Skowhegan and Canaan was purchased by the state in 1992. The state leases it to the towns of Skowhegan and Canaan, which rely on the Lake George Corp. to manage the park.

The Skowhegan Board of Selectmen and Canaan Select Board each appoint five people to the corporation’s board, per the interlocal agreement that defines the park’s organizational structure. The original agreement expired in 2012, but it was re-signed in 2018 and is valid today.

On March 28, the Canaan Select Board appointed five new members to the board: Mark Philbrick, Maureen Delahanty, Mary-Anne MacArthur, Katherine Gee and Vanessa Bean.

The appointments were made along with other routine municipal appointments, such as health officer, fire chief and planning board members. The Canaan Select Board typically makes appointments each year at its first meeting following municipal elections in March, according to multiple Select Board members.

Minutes of the meeting indicate there was no discussion about the appointments at that meeting. Select Board member Jeffrey Clarke, who was elected to the Select Board in March and is currently chairman as part of a rotation of the position, said he recalls a superficial discussion about all of the appointments.

Clarke said he did not fully realize that there were five new appointments to the Lake George board or know why the previous board members were not being reappointed.

“A lot of these decisions were made way before I came on in March,” Clarke said. “I’m struggling with how it all came about.”

The other member of the three-person Select Board, Megan Smith, was absent from the March 28 meeting. When reached via telephone, Smith deferred all questions about Lake George to Harriman.

At the Select Board’s June 3 meeting, Clarke and Smith voted to rescind the appointments made in March, according to meeting minutes. Harriman was absent, records show. The two present also decided to hold a meeting with the town’s attorney to discuss the matter.

At the next meeting, June 17, the town’s attorney said that the Select Board rescinded the new appointments to the Lake George board two weeks prior without cause and due process, meeting minutes say. The five were then re-appointed.

But the Lake George board is not recognizing those appointments.

THE LEGAL DISPUTE

In a series of social media posts in late June, the park called the replacement of Canaan’s previous board members an “unprecedented action.” The previous board members — Heather Kerner, Emilee Robertson, Penny Deraps, David Snell and Nancy O’Connor Ames — all served on the Lake George board for several years and brought skills and experience to their positions, the posts stated.

Darryll White, park director, deferred questions about the situation to the park board’s chairman, JP Kennedy. Kennedy also declined an interview.

The lawyer who is advising the park’s board of directors said that she believes the new appointments violated the park corporation’s bylaws and required municipal procedures, and that they should not be recognized.

“What I have advised the board is that the proper procedure was not followed in appointing new members to the board,” said Claudia Raessler, who runs a Skowhegan law firm.

The park’s bylaws state that members of its board serve three-year terms, Raessler said. “That’s very clear in the governing documents,” she said.

On the other side of the coin, Canaan’s attorney, Kenneth Lexier of the Skowhegan law firm Mills, Shay, Lexier & Talbot, P.A., advised the Select Board that like other municipal officials, the appointments have one-year terms, Harriman said.

“According to state statute, you can only have one-year terms,” Harriman said. “We’ve always had one-year terms.”

In Skowhegan, selectmen made their appointments for boards and committees on June 25, with the terms for the Lake George board listed as three-year terms in meeting materials. Skowhegan town officials are looking into the appointments to clarify the terms and other details after the issue was brought to their attention, Town Clerk and Treasurer Gail Pelotte stated in an email Friday.

Aside from the term length, Raessler also said that members of the Lake George board have said that statutory notice requirements for municipal meetings were not followed.

“It appears that the town of Canaan selectmen had a meeting and replaced the board members without following the process that’s required,” Raessler said, though she said that she had not investigated the issue enough to provide a full legal opinion on the matter.

Harriman denied the assertion of holding what he said some have called secret “peekaboo meetings.”

“It was all done in open selectmen’s meetings,” Harriman said.

According to Harriman, town officials began discussing replacing the Lake George board members last summer but decided to wait until March to take any action.

This winter, the town posted a notice on its website asking for volunteers to serve on the board, Harriman said. He reached out to some people directly to ask them to serve, while others saw the notice and contacted the town office.

YEARS OF DISCONTENT

Harriman, who has been on the Select Board for about 15 years, said that the decision to appoint five new board members came after some Canaan residents’ concerns about the park went unaddressed for the last three years.

The park access fees are too expensive — $8 per day for adults, according to the park’s website — for most residents, Harriman said.

Then there is the long-brewing debate over parking on the road on the east side of the park, in Canaan.

Harriman said that during the summer, many Canaan residents park on the road before reaching the kiosk where the park access fee is collected, to swim in an area well-known among locals.

In recent years, park staff has tried to enforce parking restrictions on the road, threatening to tow vehicles while citing safety concerns and other reasons, Harriman said.

Attorneys have advised Canaan that the road is owned by the state, which means that the town is responsible for enforcement of parking and other rules. Representatives from the town, the park and the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office met in July 2023 to discuss the road issue, meeting minutes show.

“They refuse to hear us, they refuse to do anything about it, even after repeated attempts, even after advice from our sheriff at a meeting we had all of us combined last summer,” Harriman said.

Harriman believes that park leadership, including some of the replaced board members and White, the director, do not like the crowd that swims there because it runs contrary to their vision of the park as a regional destination. At the swimming hole, some people smoke and drink, which are both prohibited in the park, Harriman said.

The park is currently undertaking several renovation projects to develop other revenue streams to supplement access fees, like event space rentals.

“We don’t want a resort,” Harriman said. “We want a place for our people to swim.”

Harriman also takes issue with the attitude of the park’s leadership: “They’re rude and condescending to everyone in town,” he said.

The new board members appointed in March were interested in addressing these issues, among others, including concerns about the leadership of the park’s summer camp, Camp Podooc.

“It’s like being put on a back burner before we’ve even had the opportunity to bring about some good things for the park,” said Delahanty, one of the new appointees.

STUCK IN STALEMATE

Delahanty said she did not try to attend a Lake George board meeting in June because she was out of town for family matters. But MacArthur, one of the other new appointees, said she and another appointed board member attended and were not allowed to participate as board members, while some of the previous board members were allowed to participate.

“I have advised the board that those five board members were not properly (appointed) so they will not be participating,” said Raessler, the attorney advising the park’s board.

For Delahanty, the situation has led her to resign from the board. She said Thursday that she plans to submit her resignation letter to the town office on Monday.

For MacArthur, the only solution is that the state, which owns the land, steps in.

“I am at the point that it just seems like we’re getting nowhere, and the state needs to step in and fix this issue,” MacArthur said. “Because it’s not getting resolved between the town (Canaan Select Board) and the lake (board of directors). The lake’s attorney is saying one thing, the town’s attorney is saying another thing. Nobody really has an idea of where to go from here.”

To end the interlocal agreement, Harriman said the Select Board would need to send a letter to the Lake George Corp., and then it would go to a town vote. He said he would support that decision.

A spokesperson for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry said Friday that a town would need to provide one year’s written notice to end an interlocal agreement and return park management to the state.

If Canaan did want to end the agreement, it would likely take a while, Harriman said. In the meantime, the town is not planning any legal action about the dispute over the board members.

“I think we’ve spent enough money already on the legal part — of the taxpayers’ money — which is unnecessary for us to spend,” he said.

The Lake George board, meanwhile, plans to continue with business as usual.

“The board, under JP’s leadership, is going to continue to act in a business fashion to make sure that the organization is stable and growing the way it should,” Raessler said. “They are not interested in getting embroiled in a political discussion of how the town of Canaan conducted itself. So, they’re hoping that the town of Canaan will sort out what it needs to.”

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