Heather Donahue, one of three members of the Freedom select board, has amassed a stack of materials while researching whether Beaver Ridge Road is public or private. After town residents filed a recall petition, Donahue faces an April recall vote. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

FREEDOM — Residents submitted a recall petition for Board of Selectmen member Heather Donahue, criticizing her actions amid a town road dispute.

The petition, bearing nearly double the required number of signatures, was approved March 12 by Laura Greeley and Ryan Willette, the other members of the select board. A recall vote will take place by secret ballot from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on April 23.

The petition argues Donahue strayed from her municipal duties while researching Beaver Ridge Road, a 2-mile road that is the focus of a townwide fight. Donahue, who lives on the road, says the road should be open to the public, while others maintain it should be a private way.

Town officials determined the road to be public Feb. 24, but a pending lawsuit complicates matters.

The simmering controversy over the road has divided the 700-person town and left Donahue the focus of residents’ ire. Her transgression: Walking on Beaver Ridge Road and painting trees with orange blazes to mark the boundaries of the road easement, even though the road’s status had not been decided in court.

Freedom resident Prentice Grassi asked Donahue to resign at a Feb. 17 select board meeting, citing a conflict of interest and poor judgment. When she refused, Grassi said the recall petition was a necessary measure.

“In a small town, getting to the bottom of that dispute by essentially taking things into your own hands and going up and marking trees — that’s just poor judgment, no matter how you slice it, and potentially illegal,” Grassi said. “But whether it is or not, she just lost my confidence as someone who can lead a town through a dispute or crisis.”

Donahue, who as a former film actress has been in the spotlight before, said she is the select board’s legal point person for Beaver Ridge Road matters. The actions cited in the petition were all done in that role, she said over email.

“The things the petition is pointing to are all things done in the course of preparing my affidavit in response to the litigation. Every single thing,” Donahue said. “I don’t think the issue here is that I’ve done a bad job. I think the problem is I’ve been very effective.”

What provoked the petition?

The petitioners’ motion for summary judgment currently awaits a decision from the judge.

The town held its own fact-finding process in January and February and determined the road to be a public way. Donahue was asked to recuse herself from Beaver Ridge Road hearings and deliberations because of her potential conflict of interest as an abutter.

She said this was a first step toward ousting her from office.

“They keep upping the ante,” Donahue said. “It would be one thing if they had actual cause, but the accusations are deliberately misleading. I was the lead researcher for the select board. I was performing my duties, as assigned. The fact that everything I’m accused of is actually presented in my sworn testimony makes it even more ridiculous.”

Her affidavit contained 91 statements and pieces of evidence supporting the road as a public easement, including maps, town minutes, screenshots from hiking maps and her own findings walking the road over the last three years.

A dispute over whether Beaver Ridge Road in Freedom is a public or private road has led to an effort to recall Heather Donahue, one of three elected members of the town’s select board. Donahue’s research on the road’s status includes photos, maps, affidavits, hearing transcripts and documents dating to 1818. She says she has over 100 hours invested in researching the road and road disputes. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Donahue moved to Freedom in 2022 and was elected to office in 2024. She settled in the small town in western Waldo county decades after rising to fame as the lead actress in the 1999 horror film “The Blair Witch Project.” An avid hiker and snowshoer, Donahue said she was drawn to Beaver Ridge Road for its trails.

During the hearings, more than 20 residents gave testimony of their own experiences walking, snowshoeing and snowmobiling on Beaver Ridge Road. At the first hearing, however, one resident addressed Donahue and publicly shamed her for marking the trees.

That was the tipping point, Coffin stated in her recall letter.

The will of the people