Councilor Mike Joseph is pictured during Tuesday’s meeting of the Winslow Town Council. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

WINSLOW — Voices were raised and a lawyer and law enforcement were present for the first Town Council meeting since a councilor filed a request for a protective order against the town manager.

Consultation with legal counsel was the only item on the agenda for the meeting Tuesday evening, which was not open to the public. All seven of Winslow’s councilors attended the meeting in person, though Town Manager Ella Bowman was not present.

It was the first time councilors have gathered since Councilor Mike Joseph filed a request for a protective order last month after alleging Bowman “started to yell at me and putting her finger in my face” after a July 8 council meeting, according to court filings. A judge denied the request.

Councilors Tuesday remained in a meeting room at the Winslow Public Library for about two hours. Though the public was not allowed in the room once councilors voted to move into executive session, voices and shouting could be heard from the library’s lobby.

Several councilors who were contacted declined to comment on the meeting, saying personnel matters cannot be discussed publicly. Councilors Joseph, Fran Hudson and Ray Caron did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Councilors each took turns commenting on “recent matters” during the meeting, according to Councilor Lee Trahan, though he could not share exactly what those matters entailed.

“We all got our few minutes to speak our minds regarding the matter we were addressing at the meeting, and after we all went around and spoke, we had a little discussion back and forth,” Trahan said. “I felt we left the meeting with a more informed and a better working council than when we went in there.”

Town councilors are pictured Tuesday at the Winslow Public Library before a special meeting. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

Legal counsel was provided by Stephen Langsdorf, a partner with law firm Preti Flaherty who has provided services for many Maine municipalities, rather than Town Attorney William A. Lee III.

Langsdorf requested Bowman not attend the meeting as “it was matters pertaining to the council and council only,” according to Trahan.

Winslow Director of Public Safety Leonard Macdaid was also present at the meeting at the request of councilors.

Joseph’s account of his July 8 complaint went into detail about the alleged incident but made no mention of what incited the interaction. His filing alleges that Bowman followed Joseph into a hallway and continued to raise her voice before Councilor Adam Lint tried intervening by stepping between the two. Joseph wrote Bowman responded by asking Lint, “You want some too?”

Bowman denied claims of harassment or abuse though she acknowledged expressing anger over Joseph’s statements during the public comment period of the July 8 meeting, in which he claimed Bowman was conspiring with others to “embarrass” and “undermine” him.

“I didn’t harass him, I didn’t threaten him, or touch him,” Bowman wrote Monday via text. “I was mad and I told him how I felt about what he said to me in a public meeting and in front of a camera.”

The tension between Joseph, a first-term councilor elected in November last year who has described himself as a conservative Christian businessman, and Bowman comes following earlier instances of unrest among Winslow’s municipal officials in recent months.

Councilors Joseph and Hudson recently questioned Trahan’s cognitive function and ability to govern following a coma he suffered this year.

That incident also raised concerns among some residents about municipal officials legislating in private, a topic that had already made headlines when an independent investigation found councilors risked a “fine line” last year by discussing town matters behind closed doors.

Bowman was hired as Winslow’s town manager last October after nine years of serving as nearby Oakland’s head administrator. Oakland put her on administrative leave last year after six town employees lodged complaints against her, although officials never made public what those complaints entailed.

She is among the only openly transgender town managers in the country and began her gender transition three years ago.

Bowman wrote in her letter of resignation to Oakland that she left due to an uncomfortable environment in the town office that only began after her gender transition. The six employees in question “struggled with my transition the most,” she wrote.