BELFAST – The planning board has scheduled a special executive session to discuss the legal fallout from earlier secret meetings involving board members.

The closed-door session will be held tonight, before the board’s regularly scheduled business meeting. The executive session was requested by board Chairman Eugene Kirby.

During the session, board attorney Paul Gibbons of Camden is expected to discuss the ramifications of a recent legal filing against the city by residents of the Patterson Hill neighborhood in East Belfast.

The petition for government review was filed in Waldo County Superior Court last week on behalf of the neighbors by former Belfast City attorney John Carver and his law partner Joseph Baiungo. The complaint asks the court to overturn planning and zoning board approvals of the $8.6 million Bay Head Apartments project proposed for the hill neighborhood.

Besides contesting the approval of the 24-unit apartment complex proposed by Penquis Community Action Program on technical grounds, the neighbors’ complaint makes reference to the dealings of an “ex-officio” planning committee as reasons to suspend the project.

Although the group was not an officially sanctioned city committee, it was composed of members of the planning board and City Council. Its members held informal meetings with prospective developers on at least two occasions during the past year.

The group was setting up a third meeting with another prospective developer when its activities were abruptly halted earlier this month after Councilors Mark Riposta and Walter Ash raised red flags. The so-called committee was immediately disbanded.

In their complaint, Carver and Baiungo charged that the “ex-officio” committee “met to discuss pending land use applications, permit requests and other matters … involving the Belfast Planning Office and/or the Code Enforcement Office,” and was “reviewing land use matters at the time the Penquis applications were pending.”

At his weekly press briefing Tuesday, City Manager Terry St. Peter described the committee as an “advisory panel” that was formed to assist Wayne Marshall, the city’s planning director, during a period when he was also acting as code enforcement officer.

While he acknowledged that City Council and planning board members sat on the panel, St. Peter said neither of the developments discussed were subject to the review of the council or planning board. St. Peter said the meetings involving two recent projects, construction of an Auto Zone parts store and Dead River convenience store, dealt with code issues.

“I suggested that he get some community input. He called on members of the planning board and a couple of councilors particularly vocal in their interest in these construction matters,” St. Peter said. “They were strictly acting as advisory input” to the code enforcement officer. “Clearly, they were aided by face-to-face contact with the applicants.”

Though they had no authority to demand them, the “advisory panel” managed to convince both companies to agree to design changes. Auto Zone agreed to reposition its building and reduce the scale of its sign, and Dead River changed the design of the canopy above its gasoline pumps.

St. Peter acknowledged that the advisory panel had the effect of blurring the lines between an official and nonofficial body. The fact that the panel was composed of people with the power to regulate and legislate was, in hindsight, regrettable, he said.

“We do want to be candid, we are open, we are always open,” St. Peter said. “Maybe we made some mistakes with this committee. They exercised that role in two instances and those two instances were within the purview of the [code enforcement officer]. … The distinction is that the [approval of the] two developments was not to be up to the planning board.”