NORWAY — The Board of Selectmen accepted the resignations of Chairman Matt Gurney and Lou Page, two of Norway’s representatives to the Norway-Paris Community Television Board of Directors, at its meeting Thursday night.

The board also appointed Town Manager David Holt to a temporary position on the NPC-TV board so it can continue to pay its bills until new members are found.

Holt said his appointment will be on an emergency basis only and he hopes he will be on the committee for only a month or so.

Paris Town Manager Amy Bernard said she expects to ask Paris selectmen also to be appointed on a temporary basis.

“We’ll try to keep station operations afloat until we get members on board,” Holt said. “We’ll all do the best we can to keep this going.”

Gurney and Page cited frustration with their treatment as members of the board as the reason for stepping down. Both submitted their resignations to the Town Office on Thursday.

Gurney and Page announced their resignations to other NPC-TV board members during their meeting Wednesday evening. Their departure leaves the board with only three members, not enough for a quorum to conduct business. 

In his letter to Holt, Gurney said he volunteered to join the board in order to make a “positive impact” on the community television and hoped there would be cooperation toward that goal, but instead there was “a vocal resistance to improvements.”

“I feel that, in effect, my efforts are being made ‘ineffective’ and the positive energy that I tried to bring to the board has been blunted by resistance to change,” Gurney wrote. 

The NPC-TV board has been the subject of controversy for the past few months, after revelations about a physical altercation between two board members came to light at a tumultuous selectmen meeting in Paris in mid-January that all members of the NPC-TV board attended. 

Both Gurney and Page reference their experience at the Jan. 13 meeting in Paris in their resignation letters. 

Two weeks ago, selectmen from Norway and Paris held a joint meeting to discuss additional concerns Paris selectmen had about the board’s operation, particularly that members acted inappropriately at meetings, repeatedly overstepped their authority and attempted to micromanage day-to-day operations at the station.

In his resignation letter, Page suggests his departure is due to the actions of Paris residents and the NPC-TV station manager, Steve Galvin.

“… I did not anticipate the viciousness of certain individuals in Paris, nor was I aware at the time of my appointment to the board of directors that I would face such undermining from the present station manager,” Page wrote. 

He also said several letters to the editor critical of the NPC-TV board published in the Advertiser Democrat were the product of “untruthful information” fed to the writers by the station manager. 

In his letter, Page said he was subjected to many insults, including the dubbing of “in come the clowns” to the beginning and ending of a video recording of the Jan. 13 selectmen meeting in Paris, shot and edited by NPC-TV. 

The video, available online at the NPC-TV, includes circus-themed music clips at the beginning and end of the footage. 

” … I believe a reprimand or suspension is in order,” Page wrote. “Matt, (Richard) Kimball and I are not ‘a bunch of clowns.’ We were fighting lies.”

Gurney was not available to answer questions on Thursday afternoon and a phone call to Page was not returned.

The duo’s departure leaves the board with three members — Ingrid Small of Norway and Janet Jamison and Richard Kimball, representing Paris. The Paris Board of Selectmen have formally reprimanded Kimball for his allegedly inappropriate behavior on the board.