CANAAN — The Select Board appears close to a resolution on the ongoing disagreement over appointments to the Lake George Regional Park board of directors, following months of heated meetings of the town’s elected officials.

At Monday night’s Canaan Select Board meeting, Selectman Jeffrey Clarke said that the Lake George board appeared to support the town’s latest proposal for an agreement to resolve the dispute over its appointments.

Under the proposal, the town would change its five appointments to the board from one-year terms — which town officials say is the standard for appointments of municipal positions — to staggered, three-year terms, which is what the park’s board believes is dictated by its organization’s governing documents.

This spring, when some appointments would expire, the Canaan Select Board would seek recommendations from the Lake George board for appointments for the available spots on the board. The town has the ultimate authority to make those appointments, which the park’s lawyer has acknowledged, according to the proposal.

The change to appointment term length would also need to be approved by voters at Canaan’s town meeting in March, according to Clarke.

The Lake George Corp. manages the 320-acre, state-owned park off U.S. Route 2 through an interlocal agreement with the towns of Canaan and Skowhegan. Per the interlocal agreement, which officials say was re-signed in 2018, each town appoints five people to the corporation’s board.

Clarke, who attended the monthly Lake George board meeting in November to discuss the proposal, said Monday the Lake George board members are now reviewing it with their lawyer.

The president of the park’s board of directors, JP Kennedy of Skowhegan, did not respond by afternoon press deadline to attempts to reach him Tuesday morning.

According to information Kennedy provided previously, two of Canaan’s five representatives on the Lake George board have terms expiring in 2025: Nancy Ames and Dave Snell. There is also one vacancy.

Clarke confirmed Tuesday the town has not yet taken any action on filling the current vacancy and the Select Board expects to discuss the matter soon.

“Part of our discussion has been, do we just wait until March?” Clarke said of appointing someone to that spot.

Town officials arrived at the current proposal after consultation with attorney Kenneth Lexier, who said the park’s lawyer, Claudia Raessler, would not budge on the issue of appointment term length. Lexier advised that the town could go to court, but that would be a costly and lengthy process, according to meeting minutes.

This year, through September, Canaan paid $1,000 to Lexier’s Skowhegan law firm, Mills, Shay, Lexier & Talbot, for services regarding issues related to Lake George, according to invoices obtained through a request under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.

That total does not include Lexier’s most recent meeting with the Select Board Nov. 12 and any related work since September. Lexier charges the town $250 per hour for his legal services, records show.

The monthslong dispute, at least in the legal sense, centers on the length of terms for the people the Canaan Select Board appoints to the board of the Lake George Corp.

In March, Canaan appointed five new members to the board, replacing several long-serving appointees. Those appointments were then rescinded June 3, but two weeks later, the new appointees were reinstated.

The park’s board did not recognize the new appointees, however, saying that the corporation’s bylaws call for three-year, staggered terms, not all of which had expired in March.

Citing Lexier’s legal advice, Select Board members stood by the appointments, saying they have one-year terms, like most other municipal posts in Canaan.

Since then, two of the new appointees have resigned, while the other three have not been recognized by the Lake George Corp.

Only one of the Select Board members, Daniel Harriman, acknowledged he was involved in the conversations that led to the five new appointments.

Clarke, who served as the board’s chairman as part of a planned rotation of that position for much of this summer and fall, voted with Harriman for the new appointments at a March 28 meeting. But since he was elected in March, Clarke said previously that he thought that decision had been discussed.

Megan Smith, who currently chairs the board, was on the board when discussions would have happened prior to the March appointments, though meeting minutes show Smith was absent from the March meeting when the appointments were made. She has said multiple times that she was never aware of any discussions about making new appointments.

In response to questions from members of the public this summer, Harriman provided his reasons for supporting the new appointments in a written statement, most of which he had already explained in an interview with the Morning Sentinel.

The reasons he cited were a lack of communication between the town and the park, costly park entrance fees and a dispute over control of the road on the park’s east side in Canaan.

Harriman also faced accusations of wrongdoing. Lake George board member Heather Kerner suggested that an alleged June 2023 incident at the park led to Harriman’s decision to dismiss the five previous board members.

Kerner was among the five previous Lake George board members who were not reappointed this spring, though she was later reappointed to the board after a new appointee, Maureen Delahanty, resigned in July.

An incident report including statements from park staff, provided to town officials and the public by Kerner, alleges Harriman yelled at two teenage staff members and their supervisor in an altercation stemming from a parking dispute.

Harriman said previously the report is not completely accurate.

Given his concerns about the park’s operation, which he said many taxpayers share, Harriman suggested multiple times that the town of Canaan withdraw from the interlocal agreement entirely because it has no benefit for the town.

That decision would likely have to go before voters at a town meeting. During a tense exchange Nov. 4, Clarke asked Harriman if he intended to organize the petition to get an article to that effect on the March town meeting warrant.

Harriman said he had no plans to organize that effort.

The town would need to provide one year’s written notice to dissolve the agreement and return park management to the state, according to a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

In Skowhegan, meanwhile, Town Clerk Gail Pelotte presented updated appointment oaths to reflect the three-year, staggered terms of Skowhegan’s representatives on the Lake George board to the town’s selectboard Aug. 27.

Selectmen there had no objections.

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