At a special Whitefield town meeting tonight, Whitefield residents voted not to pursue ownership of the Clary Lake dam just like they did at a similar meeting held last spring. I don’t know about anyone else, but I certainly didn’t expect a different outcome. At least the meeting was well attended! Jefferson held their own special meeting last night and only about 20 people showed up. They too voted (again) not to pursue ownership of the Clary Lake dam and the meeting was over in less than 5 minutes. It was over so quickly that Paul Kelley, who arrived a few minutes late, was walking into the meeting while everyone else was walking out.
Paul Kelley was at tonight’s meeting as was Richard Smith, Manager of Aquafortis Associates LLC. Ellis Percy, President of the Association stopped by long enough to present Kelley with a revised offer on the Clary Lake dam. So far, attempts to meet with Kelley to discuss the Association’s purchase of the dam have been unsuccessful but we remain optimistic that the Association will end up owning the dam sooner or later.
Tonight’s meeting pretty much wraps up Kelley’s obligations under the statute. Next step is his consultation with the Department of Environmental Protection.
At the Association’s annual meeting last month, the membership voted to work on updating the 
Our treasurer Linda Gallion tells me that she’s received only 44 membership renewals so far this year. The majority of our members pay up at the Annual meeting but this year a number of people showed up for the meeting but must have forgotten their checkbooks. It is not unusual for membership renewals to trickle in for a while after the annual meeting. It’s not too late! Dues are $25 and you can sign up online if you want.
I’ve updated the 
Finally got around to posting the proposed agenda for the Annual Meeting scheduled for this coming 
Many of you were subjected the other day to the first mailing of the Association’s E-NEWS Newsletter which I liken to an Emergency Broadcast System but that’s just my flare for the dramatic. In reality it’s just another way to disseminate information in a timely, cost effective way to a targeted audience and one which we have no intention of over-using: the ability to drop emails into your inbox is a privilege we don’t want to abuse or lose. We’re happy most of the time to let you drop in and peruse the website at your leisure but there will be times when we want to get your attention sooner rather than later. And of course there is an 
Plans are well underway for the Association’s Annual meeting to be held Saturday August 3rd at 2 PM at the home of Robert Antognoni. Robert lives on the south side of Clary Lake at the end of Robert E. Dow Road in Jefferson. For those of you who don’t know where it is, here’s a 
I received an email today from a fellow with the Natural Resources Council of Maine. He was looking to update the listing for Clary Lake on the 
Well almost in the mail. Our application to reinstate our 501 c(3) exemption is going in the mail in about an hour, just as soon as the post office window opens up again at 1 PM today. Again, we are grateful for Paul Kelley bringing this matter to our attention. Of course, I sincerely doubt he thought he was doing us any favors, but clearly he did. Who knows how long it would have been before we came to the realization that our 501 c(3) status had been revoked? What is totally ironic is that he filed an objection with the Attorney General’s office because he objected to our soliciting contributions without 501 c(3) status. And what were we soliciting contributions for? A dam repair fund which could well end up benefiting him. Go figure.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been annoyed that the Maine office of GIS has not updated it’s Google Earth Parcels.kml file to include the recently completed Whitefield parcels map file. Whitefield parcels have been available for a while as a shape file, but that’s no help unless you have Arcinfo or Arcview. If you wanted to view Whitefield parcels in Google Earth, you’ve been out of luck.
The Summer 2013 issue of the Clary Lake Clarion, the newsletter of the Clary Lake Association, is going in the mail tomorrow morning. As usual it’s being mailed to all Clary Lake shore owners as well as a number of other interested parties. I’m a firm believer that every organization, no matter how well represented digitally, really needs to put out something tangible once in a while to stay firmly in touch with their membership. The plan has been to prepare 2 newsletters per year but in for the past few years it’s been all I could do to get one out in time for the Annual Meeting. And so it is again this year.