PERRY – The million-dollars-a-year offer from an Oklahoma developer is back on the table – if the town of Perry is willing to support a liquefied natural gas facility.

But the signatures on the offer this time around are not those of the town’s three selectmen, who had signed a similar contract offered last spring, but of the members of the Perry Improvement Association.

Perry selectmen have not yet been approached by either Quoddy Bay LLC, the company behind the million-dollar deal, or the association, which is negotiating with Quoddy Bay for how the money can be spent.

Every Perry resident – there are 844 – received a letter last week from the fledgling association, which formed last fall and has adopted “Caring For Our Community” as its slogan.

The letter outlined 15 outcomes that could occur if the town works with Quoddy Bay to put a portion of the LNG development – the storage tanks – within town boundaries.

David Turner, the president of the association, and the 19 other members of the group all signed the letter. Today Turner will appear in Augusta at a media conference with the Quoddy Bay leaders, who last week filed a notice with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission of their intentions to bring LNG to Washington County.

Turner could not be reached for comment on Monday.

John Spinney, one of the town selectmen, said his board has not been formally informed by the association of its activities or negotiations.

“I got a letter just like everyone else,” Spinney said Monday. “So I can’t speak for what [the association] is doing. … Somebody has to initiate these things.”

That the town has been left out of the loop so far doesn’t fare well with the chairman of Perry’s planning board.

“How can these people, who were elected by nobody, purport to represent Perry and negotiate on behalf of the town?” Nancy Asante said. “They have created a group by themselves. No one constituted them.”

The association’s premise in the letter is that if Perry doesn’t do something soon, the residents will lose out on a potential annual million-dollar windfall.

Two other developers have plans to build LNG facilities in next-door Robbinston and Calais, and Pleasant Point is the focus of the Quoddy Bay project. Accordingly, the letter reads: “While we recognize the benefits of the development in terms of jobs and positive impacts on our local economy, we fear that the Town of Perry may be left in the middle of these projects with NO direct benefits to our town finances.”

Quoddy Bay also announced last week it was choosing to work with Perry rather than Robbinston. As recently as last summer, Quoddy Bay had made a verbal offer to Robbinston residents for their own $1 million a year if its storage tanks were built there.

But the company since has shifted its plans. Quoddy Bay’s first application to a state agency – for a permit for a submerged lands lease at Pleasant Point’s Split Rock – was effectively tabled last month. It was considered incomplete and sent back to Oklahoma by the Bureau of Parks and Lands.

The association projects that property tax payments from Quoddy Bay could cover about 80 percent of the town’s tax bill, residents learned in the letter. As for the $1 million each year, that would cover:

. A Washington County economic development fund, for $500,000.

. A town development and general improvement fund, for $300,000.

. A town children’s recreation fund, for another $100,000 (for ball fields, skating rinks, tennis courts and playgrounds.

. A town general recreation fund for $100,000 more, for a community recreation center, senior activities and hiking, biking and snowmobile trails.

Additionally, the Perry Improvement Association wrote, Quoddy Bay would contribute $100,000 to a scholarship fund for students from Perry. Further, the town’s legal fees, emergency services and security measures incurred for the project would be financed by Quoddy Bay.

Perry voters in a referendum last March had rejected, 279 to 214, putting an LNG facility on Pleasant Point land annexed from Perry in 1986. That essentially made the million-dollar offer a moot point – in spite of signatures all around on the contract, termed a “binding obligation.”

When some residents reread the fine print of the contract last August, Quoddy Bay’s public relations firm maintained that that contract for $1 million was void – since the voters didn’t support the LNG terminal.

“That proposal was rejected by Perry voters and has since been abandoned,” Dennis Bailey of Savvy Inc. said when asked about it.

The new offer that surfaced last week comes at a time of transition for Quoddy Bay and some of its previous partners.

Dec. 1 brought a severing of relationships for Quoddy Bay with both the tribe’s attorney, Craig Francis, and the company’s public relations group. Dennis Bailey’s Savvy Inc. firm in Portland has been replaced by a Bangor public relations firm, Sutherland Weston Marketing Communications.

Of gaining Quoddy Bay as a client, account manager Cary Weston said: “Savvy was hired to take the project to one point, and now we are taking it further.”

Emily Francis, the wife of Craig Francis, worked on the LNG account for Savvy.

No longer representing the Passamaquoddy, Craig Francis is now working with a law firm in Portland, Jensen Baird Gardner & Henry. The firm had provided legal counsel for the town of Harpswell when LNG developers wanted to place a project there and were eventually rejected.