The Camp Bomazeen entrance on Horse Point Road in Belgrade is seen on July 17, 2020. Maine’s highest court ruled Tuesday that the Pine Tree Council has the right to sell the camp, but any proceeds must go to benefit Boy Scouts in central Maine. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

BELGRADE — The state’s highest court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that a much-loved Boy Scouts camp on Great Pond in Belgrade can only be sold if the proceeds from its sale are used to support camping activities for Boy Scouts in central Maine, not to pay off debt.

However, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court also rejected a counterclaim from the leaders of a group trying to keep Camp Bomazeen a Boy Scout camp, and perhaps take control of it locally, ruling that a regional scouting group that took possession of the camp did so improperly.

The court’s decision, issued Tuesday, leaves Camp Bomazeen, for now, in the hands of the Pine Tree Council of the Boy Scouts of America, and its future still in limbo.

Leaders of the Pine Tree Council entered into a purchase and sale agreement with a nonprofit entity in 2020 — an agreement, court documents note, that is contingent on the lawsuit over the fate of the camp being resolved. The state’s highest court ruled Tuesday the council can sell the camp, but can’t use the profits from the sale of the 330-acre waterfront property to pay down the council’s debt or support the operations of the regional scouting group elsewhere in Maine.

Instead, the court ruling states, the proceeds from the sale, if it moves forward, can only be used as specified in the 1944 deed when the Scouts were given the property: “for uses that support camping activities for Boy Scouts in Central Maine.”

Pine Tree officials had sought to be declared the owners of the property and be free of any deed restrictions and thus able to sell it and use the proceeds in any way, saying the charitable trust that oversaw the property had dissolved in 2008 after members had left or died and no new members were reappointed to take their place.

The court found that the deed to Camp Bomazeen included provisions that if its board of trustees were to dissolve or not be reappointed the camp should still be used to fulfill the trust’s mission, which included that the camp benefit Scouts in central Maine.

“Consequently, it would defy logic and nullify the law favoring charitable trusts to conclude that the (donor of the Camp Bomazeen property) intended to ‘reward’ Pine Tree with full title to Camp Bomazeen upon its absolute failure to follow his directions,” the justices wrote in their decision.

A directional sign for Camp Bomazeen on state Route 11, pointing out the turn onto Horse Point Road in Belgrade, is seen July 17, 2020. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

A counterclaim filed by leaders of the Bomazeen Old Timers, an association of caretakers, Scout leaders, organizers and volunteers of the camp who want to see it remain as a camp for Scouts and other youths, claimed the Pine Tree Council breached its fiduciary duties, including by failing to appoint new trustees for the camp, and by attempting to sell the camp.

The group asked the court to declare that Pine Tree does not own Camp Bomazeen because it never properly dissolved the charitable trust overseeing it, cease efforts to sell it, and appoint successor trustees to oversee it. They suggested they, as local intervenors in the case, could be appointed as successor trustees of the trust overseeing the camp property and be given control of the camp.

Group members have said they want the property to continue as a youth camp, expressing fears that if it is sold, it would  be developed.

The court ruled that Pine Tree had succeeded in taking title to the property properly, after it had not appointed successor trustees to oversee it.

“The court also concludes that Pine Tree was permitted to sell Camp Bomazeen but that its proposed use of the proceeds was inconsistent with the trust’s purposes, which require the proceeds to be used for camping, especially for Scouts in central Maine,” the justices wrote.

The issue ended up in court after the Pine Tree Council of Boys Scouts of America sought to sell Camp Bomazeen to pay down debt and cover operating expenses elsewhere, mostly at its southern Maine properties. Council officials have said, in 2022, they had a purchase and sale agreement to sell the camp to a local family, which planned to provide a perpetual easement over part of the property for Scouting.

The council had at least one buyer strike an initial agreement to purchase the property, but then back out of the deal.

The state attorney general’s office sued the Pine Tree Council to block the sale of the camp, saying its plans to sell it and use the proceeds to help the council get out of debt violated the terms of the the deed to the property in place since it was donated by Dr. George Averill in the 1940s as a place where Scouts could camp.