Her name is Honor Sage. She spoke June 8 in Alna’s fire station in a nearly four-hour hearing on Ralph Hilton’s ethics complaint against First Selectman Ed Pentaleri in connection with the town’s ongoing court effort to remove Jeff Spinney’s boat ramp.

Sage said she was seeing a lot of note-taking and lawyers taking issue with things – doing their jobs but in the process, she said, “It took this town to a whole new level.

“Before that, we were handling ourselves, maybe not all that well, but this is terrible. And I’m afraid that if the selectboard doesn’t do what this group wants it to do ... they’re going to come back saying ... ‘We’re going to sue you,’ or ‘We’re going to take you to it,’ and this is going to go on and on and on ... This town is better than this. I know it is. I know all of you are.” She praised Second Selectman Steve Graham and Third Selectman Coreysha Stone as doing a terrific job presiding over the hearing.

As for Pentaleri, Sage said, “He was elected twice, folks. The second time, everybody knew where he was on all the issues. And he was overwhelmingly voted in again.” She thinks he is doing a lot of good things for Alna, “and I think the town, I’m sorry, Ralph, but I think the town recognizes that,” she said.

Had the hearing been a trial, much of Hilton’s ethics complaint might have been torn apart, Graham said. He did not find Pentaleri was spending town funds to serve his interests in the ramp matter. 

But Graham and Stone said the appearance of bias is, according to their research, as important as actual bias in a board member’s determining when to recuse himself. They cited a 2007 Liz Chapman article they said made that point in the Maine Municipal Association publication Maine Townsman. Due to what Stone and Graham said was the possible appearance of bias on Pentaleri’s part, the two decided to censure him, and said from now on, they will handle the court matters over Spinney’s boat ramp without Pentaleri. 

Asked for comment on the hearing’s outcome, Pentaleri said via e-mail June 9, he was really proud of “how far Alna's municipal government has come in the last several years. I'm proud to have championed Alna's first-ever Code of Ethics and Conduct, and I'm proud of my colleagues Steve and Coreysha for the diligence they exercised in reaching a difficult but principled decision. There is more to do, and I look forward to continuing to work with both of them.”

Hilton referred Wiscasset Newspaper to his attorney, Benjamin Smith of Augusta, for comment. Smith said in a phone interview June 9, “I think Ralph and I appreciate the board’s time and consideration at last night’s hearing. Obviously Mr. Hilton took a different view (on) the process that he was given, but ultimately it appears that the board found in favor of at least one of the issues that he had raised.”

Smith added, he and Hilton look forward to the board’s written findings. “And at that point we can decide whether or not they reflect what the board had communicated” in the hearing, he said. Asked about any potential steps if Hilton and he took issue with anything, Smith declined comment at this time.

In the hearing, Smith repeatedly took issue with the board’s blocking of his attempts to speak, including his doing the questioning of Spinney’s lawyer, Kristin Collins, as a witness. That was for Hilton to do, and Hilton could consult with Smith but Smith was to speak to Hilton, not to the gathering, Graham and Stone said. They discussed that part of the protocol with residents a week earlier. June 8, Smith said Hilton was entitled to have a representative. 

Stone suggested Smith could walk over to Hilton and “make your suggestions quietly.”

“That’s not how attorneys act,” Smith said.

An attorney stands in the shoes of his client, Collins said.

Graham – retired after practicing law almost 50 years, according to Wiscasset Newspaper files – said he and Stone were not looking for a lecture on procedure, “as you would do in court. This is not a court of law ...”

The hearing included praise for Pentaleri’s character and service from some; rebuke from others, over his involvement in the ramp litigation as a selectman after he appealed the ramp’s approval while he was off the board; and the statements and attempted statements by Spinney’s and Hilton’s lawyers. 

Graham limited the comments of Collins as a witness. When Graham blocked her from recapping the ramp matter, but let her otherwise speak, Collins said he had interrupted her so many times, she was not sure what she had been going to say. The board later let Collins speak during public comment. 

Collins said, before Pentaleri came into office, the last word she got from the town was its request to formalize a prior selectboard’s settlement agreement allowing the ramp. The next communication she received, after he was elected, was to remove the ramp, Collins said. When it was his turn, Pentaleri noted the board’s enforcement decision was made before his service began. And since then, the only board vote he has taken part in on the Spinney litigation was the April one to appeal a Superior Court decision to Maine Supreme Judicial Court – a move he said could, if successful, help end the town’s costs in the matter.

Hilton said, when Pentaleri was the selectman in contact with the town attorney, “he was driving the bus, and not putting the town’s interests ahead of his own ... He’s waged an all out legal war using taxpayers’ dollars.” Pentaleri said other selectmen were in the loop, seeing documents and being able to ask questions, which they did, he added.

To Hilton’s claims about Pentaleri’s involvement in Sheepscot River Legal Defense Fund, Pentaleri said he only opened the fund’s post office box so there would be one to include on the Fund’s website he was creating. And creating the website did not make him a representative, he said. He noted he also created a website for the town, and ones for Fund to Support Historic Alna and Albee Farming. Selectmen gave him the Spirit of America award for creating the town’s site, he added.

Stone commended Hilton for showing bravery, and she said Pentaleri is a committed community member with a quality “very rare in leadership,” a willingness to say if he has made a mistake.

A letter Beth Whitney read from Doug Baston, one of the then-selectmen who settled with Spinney on the ramp, described tensions between Pentaleri and Spinney and between Pentaleri and Spinney’s wife, then-first selectman Melissa Spinney, as “obvious to the public in every encounter.”

Planning Board Chair Jim Amaral called Pentaleri fantastic and diligent, but recommended, to avoid the appearance of bias, Pentaleri be involved in none of the selectboard’s deliberations on the Spinney matter.

And a letter Mike Trask read from Tom McKenzie, still code enforcement officer when Pentaleri was elected to his current term, said he believes Pentaleri is spending town money not in the town’s best interest, but in the interest of a small group of residents. McKenzie said all of Pentaleri’s actions while a selectman should be questioned, and said he fully supported Hilton’s complaint.

Trask and others questioned the need to spend large sums on legal costs; some recalled when previous boards have decided not to.

Some speakers wondered how any resident with an opinion could serve the town, if it can be taken as bias or the appearance of it. Katy Papagiannis said Pentaleri did not serve on the planning or appeals boards and vote on the ramp; he was elected to the selectboard, where he has taken part in its duty to enforce other town boards’ decisions, she said. “There are so many people who dislike each other, personally, that you could never be able to serve again,” she said and began looking about, eliciting some laughter among attendees. “You would never be able to serve again. No one would be able to do anything, any sort of movement at all.”

Former selectman Linda Kristan, who with then-selectman Charles Culbertson voted to pursue the ramp’s removal, read a letter from Culbertson. In it, Culbertson “reject(ed) all accusations” in Hilton’s complaint Culbertson described as a “work of fiction riddled with conspiracy theories...”

Then, Kristan spoke for herself and she, too, refuted points in the complaint. She recalled the enforcement decision was made in consultation with town counsel, and she understood the gravity of pursuing legal action,“but I believed then and I believe now, that it’s important to enforce our town’s ordinances.” She added, she was and is capable of making an informed, independent decision. And she said, as Pentaleri did, he was not serving on the board when she and Culbertson took that vote.