LEWISTON — The Lewiston City Council will hold votes Tuesday to remove Councilor Linda Scott as president and to censure Councilor Scott Harriman.

The move comes after Scott called out four councilors last week for meeting and discussing city business outside an official meeting at a local bar.

Her comments turned the conclusion of last week’s meeting into a tense back and forth between an already divided council.

The council agenda for Tuesday, posted last Friday, also has an item requesting to release a memo from the city attorney concerning Maine Freedom of Access Act rules. The law includes language on what constitutes a meeting by elected officials.

The agenda items immediately following that item would rescind the council’s vote taken at the start of this year to appoint Scott as council president, and introduce a resolution to censure Harriman. Then, the council would vote on a new council president to finish the term.

According to a council memo, the proposed censure against Harriman is “for his deliberate and continual misrepresentation of facts and willful attempt to malign the integrity, character and reputation of a fellow councilor, and for bearing false witness against fellow councilors.”

Following the previous council meeting, Harriman issued a letter in the Sun Journal, stating, “Coordination in private silences the voices of everyone whose representative was not present, but these city councilors seem more concerned with bullying their agenda through than they are with basic respect for representative democracy.”

On Oct. 4, Scott said Councilors Bob McCarthy, Rick LaChapelle, Larry Pease and Lee Clement recently met with two Planning Board members at The Cage bar on Ash Street and discussed city business.

According to Maine statute regarding public proceedings and freedom of access, public proceedings and deliberations must be conducted openly and records of actions must be open to public inspection. The statute also states that “clandestine meetings, conferences or meetings held on private property without proper notice and ample opportunity for attendance by the public” must not be used.

The four councilors, whose numbers constitute a quorum of the board, defended their actions and said Scott’s statements were nothing more than election-season “politicking.”

Submitted public comment from Planning Board member Josh Nagine, who was at The Cage meeting, said topics at the bar meeting included Central Maine Power, zoning, the Lewiston Housing Authority and school district issues.

McCarthy defended the gathering, saying the four councilors, who often vote similarly at council meetings, assumed they might be “attacked” regarding the meeting, and that some of the topics they broached at The Cage “were just a plant to see who we can trust.”

A day earlier at a Lewiston School Committee meeting, Scott, who is the council’s representative on the School Committee, said The Cage conversations also included privileged information discussed about specific students in School Committee executive sessions that only the School Committee should know.

Scott requested that the city attorney look into whether The Cage meeting broke the state’s open meeting laws.

According to the council agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, there is also an executive session with the city’s attorney scheduled prior to the meeting.

The council memo states that councilors LaChapelle and Clement requested the items be placed on Tuesday’s agenda.

In February, the council censured Mayor Carl Sheline for violating the council’s rules of conduct regarding a letter he drafted voicing the city’s support for a Portland housing nonprofit.

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