PERRY – Gov. John Baldacci shook hands on Monday morning with the recipient and the grant-writer for $120,000 in federal funds to help expand a small business in Perry.

But none of the town’s selectmen was present for the announcement.

They were simply not aware that the town was receiving the competitive award, which is intended to create four jobs in the tiny coastal community with just a handful of manufacturing businesses.

The announcement was made at the Machias Airport, unbeknownst to Perry selectmen. They would gladly have welcomed Baldacci to Perry had they known he was flying into Washington County for the day.

“I didn’t know a thing about it,” Dick Adams, one of the three Perry selectmen, said when he was told about the occasion after the fact.

The Community Development Block Grant was awarded to Kirsten and Kevin Shorey, Calais residents who run the Quoddy Trail Moccasin Co. in Perry. A former state senator who represented Washington County through 2004, Kevin Shorey serves as chairman of the Washington County commissioners.

At the airport occasion, the Shoreys presented the governor with a pair of hand-sewn moccasins. The governor said how much he appreciated what the Shoreys are doing for the state with their Maine-made products. Kevin Shorey replied how much he appreciates what the state is doing for his business.

The $120,000 is one of eight business assistance grants totaling $2.4 million that the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development is awarding statewide to municipalities this month.

Such grants are given to companies – with their towns as the financial conduit – that have exhausted traditional funding for growth, and would not be likely to carry on and expand, if not for the federal boost.

The Shoreys’ grant is the first to be announced by the governor’s office – even though its application was the last of 17 that were completed.

Announcements on seven more grants are expected later this week.

Nine other applications competing for the federal funds were denied, Orman Whitcomb, director of the Office of Community Development, said Monday.

The grant application had a Feb. 10 deadline – but the Shoreys’ application was not considered complete by Whitcomb’s office in Augusta until after Feb. 17.

A special town meeting for Perry residents had to be called a second time for them to approve the Shoreys’ plan, because the meeting was not properly posted the first time.

Whitcomb excused the application’s incomplete status when the deadline was missed, because Dianne Tilton, who wrote the grant for the Shoreys, had informed him of some problems encountered along the way.

Tilton is the executive director for the Sunrise County Economic Council. Shorey is a member of the council’s board.

A grant-writing specialist who submits applications frequently to the Department of Economic and Community Development, Tilton is also a member of the Washington County Economic Development Task Force, which is co-chaired by Shorey and Rep. Eddie Dugay, D-Cherryfield.

The town of Perry wasn’t able to hold its special meeting about the Shorey grant on Feb. 7, as Tilton and the Shoreys had planned, because Shorey had not sought out selectmens’ signatures when he posted meeting notices around town.

The town could do no more on Feb. 7 than hold a public hearing on the application. The Shoreys then requested that a special town meeting be held Feb. 17 or the minimum requisite 10 days out for residents to approve the application.

Advised by Tilton that she was submitting a “placeholder” within the Shoreys’ application – short of reporting the outcome of the residents’ vote to approve – Whitcomb agreed to accept the late material.

But, he said on Monday, he thought he was making an allowance because of a snowstorm.

He noted that making exceptions for CDBG applications completed after the deadline is rare for him.

“We know there are things that the town can’t control, and weather is one of them,” Whitcomb said. “But if [an application’s] problem is that the town hadn’t scheduled its public hearing and special town meeting in time for the deadline, then that’s the town’s problem and it’s too late.”

Not realizing that the meeting’s delay was indeed because of a notification error, Whitcomb told Tilton that he would accept the application’s missing material after the Feb. 10 deadline, knowing that the vote had been rescheduled for Feb. 17.

Then he learned that the application’s delay wasn’t a snowstorm matter after all.

He reconsidered the application’s status briefly but felt that because he had told Tilton he would accept the material after Feb. 17, “I could not go back on my word to her.”

The exclusive gathering Monday didn’t sit well with everyone.

Perry Selectman Jeanne Guisinger is not happy about the town’s exclusion Monday.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Perry has been left out of the announcement,” she said. “There were and still are a number of questions about the way the application was handled.

“As far as I know, the town has never been officially notified that the stipulations put on the application at the town meeting have ever been met, including verification of the time frame for submission. The last word I heard from Orman Whitcomb came on Feb. 21, that the application was being treated as a late entry.”

Twice before this, Shorey has sought and received federal funds to boost his family’s business. In 1998 and 1999, at a time when Shorey served on the committee of the Business and Economic Development Committee of the Maine Legislature, his company was approved for assistance through the new Governor’s Training Initiative program under Gov. Angus King.