UPDATE: The planning board has set a 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 12 meeting via Zoom. Jeff Spinney’s dock proposal will be taken up at another meeting, yet to be scheduled, members said.

With multiple parties seeing no way to go on after technical and other issues, Alna’s planning board decided to reschedule a meeting several people turned out for May 7 on Zoom. The items the board was set to take up included Jeff Spinney’s dock proposal that has drawn a letter from dozens of Alna and Newcastle residents and one from Spinney’s lawyer rebutting it.

Access concerns arose as people came into the session and some participants were unsure what others could see and hear, and how those who couldn’t be seen or heard could address the board during the meeting. Participants who were working to resolve the issues noted, due to so many participants, the session was set up as a different type of Zoom session than the Zoom one selectmen use.

When Wiscasset Newspaper hit the Zoom link in the meeting notice, the paper found there was another step to take to get into the meeting than it has experienced on Zoom during the pandemic. Once in, the paper could hear and see board members, town attorney Amanda Meader and Spinney’s lawyer Kristin Collins, and communicate with the session via a chat.

Some attendees raised concern if a new link went out for a session to try to still hold the meeting that night, it wouldn’t be proper notice. Then, responding to a question from Meader, Collins said: “Unless you could repost it on the town website right away, and I don’t know, I think there’s still going to be some issue.”

Meader agreed, and said she appreciated Collins’ offer for the next meeting to be via a web service her office uses “if we can’t get it worked out through Zoom ...”

Meader said of the attempted meeting, “I think we need to just call this one, and go from there.” Board members concurred.

“I apologize very, very copiously ...,” Meader added.

The May 4 letter the town received from resident Catherine Johnson – and saying it was from the 39 Alna and Newcastle residents and landowners listed – contends Spinney has been operating Golden Ridge Sportsman’s Club as an unlicensed business at home at 126 Golden Ridge Road, Alna. The letter asks selectmen to stop him and to suspend his application to the town for a dock, ramp and float on the Sheepscot River until GRSC has a business permit and all required land use permits.

Spinney is the planning board chair but said he has been recusing himself for the dock-ramp-float application. Second Selectman Doug Baston forwarded Johnson’s letter to the planning board’s Taylor Mcgraw. Baston wrote: “Because (First Selectman Melissa Spinney, Jeff’s wife) has recused herself from this matter, I am taking the liberty to transmit this letter over to the Planning Board. Business permits are in your jurisdiction, not ours.”

Collins’ May 6 letter disputes the other letter. The club is not a business, sells no goods or services and is registered as a mutual benefit nonprofit corporation under Maine law, so it can distribute no profits to members, directors, or officers, Collins wrote. “This request (to selectmen) is part of a collateral attack against a dock and boat landing application for which Mr. Spinney has received approval from both the Army Corps of Engineers and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Respectfully, the Board of Selectmen should defer to the Planning Board for review of the dock pursuant to the Shoreland Zoning Ordinance, as it is clear that the Building Code Ordinance provides no redress to the complainants.”

In a May 6 selectmen’s meeting, Baston said the town got the letters too late to get them on the agenda. He said selectmen would take them up next time.

The planning board set no new date for its May 7 agenda items. Selectmen meet next at 6 p.m. May 20 via Zoom.