Members of the Pine Point Residents Association are accusing the town manager of conducting secret meetings regarding a proposed Pine Point land swap with the Lighthouse Motel owners, saying the public has been closed out of the process.

Members of the association who spoke at the June 3 Town Council meeting read from letters criticizing the proposed project and Town Manager Tom Hall of not having an “open public process.”

“Several of our members have joined me here tonight to express a sense of disbelief, frustration and disappointment as to what is happening in our neighborhood community,” Harold Hutchinson read in a letter on behalf of the association. “Town Manager Hall has negotiated exclusively and secretly only with attorneys representing a private interest intent on acquiring and privatizing Depot Street in Pine Point for personal gain.”

Hall said on Monday he has met with Nick and Peter Truman, the motel owners, to discuss a land swap.

Through the swap, the town is trying to acquire a drop-off area for the beach on a 3,400-square-foot piece of property donated to the town by original Beach Walk developer Paul Hollis. The land abuts the motel’s parking strip, which is on the opposite side of Depot Street from the 22-unit, two-story condo building.

The Trumans would get the paved portion in front of the hotel (Depot Street), and the town would get the Trumans’ current parking strip, approximately 22.5 feet in its entirety.

The Truman’s would get the area in front of the hotel for expanded parking. The town would be able to take the 22.5 feet it receives to create a public drop-off area eliminating parking for cars on the side of the road.

“That enables us to get vehicles off the roadway and into a turnaround drop-off area,” Hall said. “It’s physically not possible without the Trumans’ land to do that. The public’s needs come first in my opinion, and I feel that this will benefit the public. But we will know more as the process moves forward.

The association has pushed for better beach access, but they say this deal is not the way to do it.

“The secrecy of this land exchange is just awful,” association member Judy Shirk wrote in a letter to the Town Council. “This is public property and a lot of people worked for almost a year to design what (former town manager) Ron Owens called the Ocean Gateway Park on Depot Street. That committee had a great idea to change Depot Street from being privately used by the motel to a nice area for the public to enjoy.”

The Trumans approached Hall in April to discuss the land swap, Hall said.

Hall said he met with the Town Council earlier this spring and told him of his plans to meet with the Trumans and that the Council gave him “its blessings.”

“Part of the criticism, I understand it, but I don’t think it’s warranted,” Hall said of the secrecy accusations. “For confidentiality of the parties, I’m entitled to have private meetings. If I brought to the council every half-baked idea that I see, it would waste a lot of the town’s time.”

The town is expected to have a formal public hearing and bring the topic to light at its June 17 meeting, Hall said. More details will be released at that meeting.

“This will be subjected to the regular public process,” he said.

Hall said he met with Shirk on Friday and drew her a sketch of the land swap.

This is not the first time a proposal regarding the motel has drawn an outcry from Pine Point residents.

Five years ago the Trumans discussed with the town turning the motel into seven townhouse condominiums. The Pine Point group opposed the plan and the Trumans agreed to scale the plan back to as few as five condos before later scrapping the plan.

The Pine Point group agreed to the five-condo plan, Hutchinson said.

In 2007, the Trumans planned to turn the hotel into 22-individual condominiums for private sale.

At the time, the Pine Point group argued that the public should have been notified about the motel owners’ plans to sell units, and the town should have stepped in to regulate the conversion, according to a 2008 article in the Current.

“Residents learned of this by chance since it was not revealed to the public,” Hutchinson said at the Town Council meeting.

A 90-page report released in March of 2008 by the town’s attorney and Owens, said the town staff acted properly in allowing the conversion to condominium ownership.

Pine Point residents also fought to have orange barrels removed from Depot Street and a chicane that replaced the barrels. They said the road was a public way and the barrels were placed there by a private party.

“For over 20 years, with town consent, orange barrels were placed across Depot Street, a public road, by the owners of the motel,” Hutchinson said.

In 2007, Pine Point residents voiced their concern over the developer behind the Beach Walk subdivision on Claudia Way, saying they believed he violated an agreement he made with the residents there.