The Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor Community School District Board of Trustees is still recoiling from the public lashing it received from the Boothbay selectmen after the community tennis courts controversy. However, a new plan is in the works to bring transparency to the table.

The tennis courts kickup stems from the November 6 trustees meeting when the selectmen confronted the trustees over the apparent failure to notify the public about the procurement of a $393,000 loan, a move the selectmen cited as a violation of the school charter.

The trustees and Superintendent Eileen King have acknowledged the lack of a formal public notification, despite that the Boothbay Register had covered the events that transpired at the trustees monthly meetings.

“In hindsight, like we did with the meeting, we probably should have had public forums to discuss it,” said Trustee Chairman Chris Buchanan at the December 4 meeting. The trustees said that although they could still schedule an official public hearing, it would be “after the fact” since the tennis courts have already been built and are nearing completion.

Since the public might not have been fully aware of the tennis courts loan, King said she has reestablished the “community link” process to bring about better communication amongst organizations in the region.

“I think it brings a group of people to the table face-to-face, once a month to keep them updated on what's going on and what the topics are, and provides a forum for questions and support,” King said.

Every month King will meet informally with town managers and administrative heads of various organizations to keep abreast of what's going on in the community. She said hopefully this will keep everybody on the same page.

“There are a lot of things that happened that maybe, had we been at the community link table, if we looked at some of the things that rolled out in the past couple years, we would have all been better informed on what was going on and why,” King said.

The first informal community link meeting is scheduled for December 12.