UPDATE: Selectmen on Tuesday night announced a special board meeting at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27 on the planning board bylaws matter.

Original post: Alna’s planning board is putting its meeting practices into bylaws and has opened the draft up for public comment. According to interviews Feb. 20-24, the bylaws, in draft form at alna.gov, are a good idea that may or may not need changes.

The board has found the public and sometimes new board members don’t always know how the meetings work and how they are announced, Chair Jeff Spinney said. “We’ve had a lot of people coming to meetings that don’t seem to understand the way (the) operation works and then they’re kind of getting frustrated saying, ‘Oh, why aren’t you doing it this way, or why aren’t you sending out an email when you post (meetings)?’ So ... we basically wrote down all the things we do the way we do it, to make it clear.”

The bylaws won’t need a town vote like an ordinance would, Spinney said. But the board still wanted public comment ahead of its March meeting when the draft will be reviewed, he said.

As for the meetings’ postings, Spinney said they go at the town office, post office and Alna General Store. They also have appeared on the town email,  but that is as a courtesy and cannot count as a required location because the town email is by signup, Spinney said. 

Resident Cathy Johnson has been attending planning board meetings and agreed it is good bylaws are being drafted. She was still looking at the draft ones but said she thinks the town email should be one of the ways the town announces the meetings. “We’re in the 21st century now.”

Second Selectman Doug Baston chaired the planning board about two decades. He supports the bylaws idea, for the same reasons Spinney gave. And he has offered his input. In a document he shared with Wiscasset Newspaper, Baston recommends the planning board’s members together ratify any time limits on speaking “so everyone is on the same page.”

In another interview Tuesday, Baston said, fter hearing more on the issue Monday night from residents, he and Third Selectman Greg Shute are considering options for the town to get an objective look at the bylaws.