Park Director Darryll White walks May 1 along the island portion of Lake George Regional Park West in Skowhegan. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel file

CANAAN — Citing legal advice, the three-member Select Board is standing by its decision to abruptly appoint five new people to the Lake George Regional Park board of directors earlier this year.

That decision over park management comes even as two board members said at a meeting Monday night that they were not aware at the time of the appointments why the five previous appointees were being replaced.

Jeffrey Clarke, who currently chairs the Select Board as part of a rotation of the position among the three members, said Monday night that the board is following legal advice from the town’s attorney that the former Lake George board members cannot be reappointed at this time. The new appointments were rescinded in June, but later reinstated for legal reasons, according to Clarke and meeting minutes.

“Is it painful? Yes. For some people in this audience, it’s very, very painful,” Clarke said to an audience of more than 30 people at the meeting room at the Canaan town office Monday night. “But community government is not easy, and it’s a give and take. And most of the people that have things taken from them are always mad, and the ones that are given stuff are always happy. Unfortunately, that’s the way it is.”

Many of the people who attended the meeting appeared to be concerned about the ongoing disagreement between the town’s elected officials and the park corporation’s board about how the appointments were made in March.

The Select Board also reappointed a former park board member, after one of the new appointees submitted her resignation Monday night.

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

The 320-acre park was once the home of Camp Modin, one of the oldest Jewish summer camps in the country. The 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.

On March 28, the Select Board appointed five new members to the park’s board, while making several other routine municipal appointments. On June 3, after a motion by Clarke, two Select Board members voted to rescind those appointments. But that decision was reversed June 17 at the advice of the town’s attorney, leaving the appointments made in March unchanged.

“I had a solution, OK?,” Clarke said, referring to his attempt to reinstate the previous five board members to then consider all 10 people for the positions. “It wasn’t allowed to be put forward. So we decided to take the legal maneuver to keep the town of Canaan out of trouble when we reinstated the five.”

The town’s attorney, Kenneth Lexier, had advised the Select Board that the appointments were made legally because municipal officials serve one-year terms per state statute and can be replaced without cause once the term expires. The attorney advising the park’s board, Claudia Raessler, said the park’s bylaws specify three-year terms, which means the appointments made in March were not made legally, since no just cause was given.

Raessler said she advised the Lake George board that the people appointed in March cannot participate in board business.

But it remains unclear why exactly five new Canaan residents were appointed to the board, replacing five others who each served on the board for several years.

Clarke, who was elected to the Select Board in March, voted with Daniel Harriman, who was then the chairman, to make the appointments at a meeting March 28. The park board appointments were made along with other routine appointments for municipal officials.

Clarke said he asked then if the five previous board members were considered, since he was not on the board when discussions about replacing them would have taken place. He said he was told they were.

“I found out later there was no consideration given,” Clarke said at Monday’s meeting.

Megan Smith, another member of the Select Board, said she was initially not aware of the five new appointments and found out about them about a month after the March meeting from a former board member who was not reappointed. Meeting minutes show that Smith was absent from the meeting when appointments were made.

Smith said she has since been trying to investigate when discussions about the Lake George board would have taken place, but has not determined when it was discussed. “As a selectman, I’m sorry,” Smith said. “Because I, to this day, don’t know how I missed it.”

Harriman, the other Select Board member and previous chairman, declined to answer questions during the meeting about the reasons five new people were appointed to the park’s board, though he said in a recent interview that several of his concerns about the park’s management have not been addressed in recent years. Harriman instead said Monday he would provide answers later in a written statement.

Also at Monday’s meeting, Clarke and Smith voted to reappoint one of the previous board members who was not appointed in March, Heather Kerner.

The move came after one of the new appointees, Maureen Delahanty, submitted her resignation from the Lake George board during the Select Board meeting.

“The ‘old board’ will continue to be a dark shadow over anything we may have hoped to accomplish,” Delahanty said, reading her resignation letter. “I have no doubt that as new members, we could have brought our own ‘skillset.’ We have been denied that opportunity.”

Delahanty said she attended the meeting at the request of the Select Board, who she said had asked all five new appointees to attend. Delahanty was the only one present, which Smith called “disappointing.”

“It’s a smack in the face to us,” Smith said. “It makes me question what’s going on.”

Smith, though, said later in the meeting that she hopes park and town officials can find a solution for the current situation.

“What we are doing, from here on out, is not trying to fix a broken leg with a Band aid,” Smith said. “We are trying to move forward.”