News

Gray contingent appeals to Attorney General
By Elizabeth Prata

Augusta--SAD representatives accompanied the Town of Gray representatives on Thursday, November 4 to Assistant Attorney General's office to appeal for the uncomplicated transfer of the Pennell Institute, lands, and Pennell Educational Trust to the Town of Gray.

New documents uncovered by two citizens last month and reviewed by the Gray Town Attorney substantially affected the parties' positions regarding who owns Pennell Institute.

Pennell is a 19th century brick building in the center of Gray that was specifically constructed to become the town's educational institution. It served in that capacity from the late 1880s until the early-1960s, when the School Administrative District was formed and the SAD took over ownership. Now that the SAD no longer needs to use the building, which was expanded fifty years ago, school officials want to offer the building back to the Town.
Even the term 'ownership' has caused squabbling, because there is a Trust that governs how the building is to be used. The SAD maintains that the Trustees own the building, the SAD technically does not own it, the SAD Board as Trustees do.

Once a School Department no longer needs a building, it must follow certain Maine statutory conditions in the disposal process, outlined in Title 20-A, "Chapter 202: Closing And Disposition of Public Elementary And Secondary School Buildings, §4103. Disposal or other use of real property closed for school purposes."

However, the existence of this trust trumps the statutory disposal process in Pennell's case. There has been eighteen months of discussion, negotiation, and lawsuits lodged with the Attorney General as officials try to untangle the enmeshed two-hundred year old history that surrounds the building and issues regarding its ownership, use, and disposal process.

In 1953, Private and Special Legislation was created for the special purpose of making the Gray School District in anticipation of its issuance of bonds to expand the high school (Pennell). A resulting 1954 Superior Court order properly noticed and extinguished the remainder interests of the Pennell heirs and unencumbered the building and lands associated from the trust. There is a 1954 deed that supports this transference.

The "upshot," Attorney William Dale wrote, "is that the original Pennell land and building have not been encumbered by the trust restrictions since 1954 and are instead subject to the school closing statute, 20-A section 4101-4104...This reasoning probably applies to the other lands as well, after all, they were to be subject to the same restrictions as Mr. Pennell's gifts."
Councilors Gary Foster and Matthew Sturgis and Manager Mitchell A. Berkowitz supported Town Attorney Bill Dale as he pled that case before Assistant Attorney General Christina Moylan last Thursday, said Foster. Superintendent Victoria Burns and Facilities Committee Chair and SAD 15 Board member Peter Pinkerton along with the District's Attorney listened and asked a few questions of their own.

Foster said that the main substantive comment that Moylan offered durn the hour and a half meeting was to wonder if the intent of the 1954 transfer was to specifically abandon the trust, or if dropping of the trust language was inadvertent and the pattern and practice of the SAD's fifty year commitment to the trust since that time carries enough weight to prevail over Gray's pleading.

Moylan said she will take the materials and pleading under advisement and will render a decision in a month or two. Meanwhile, the suit against the SAD that Gray had lodged will continue to be set aside pending judgment.