WELLFLEET — The select board’s efforts to address citizen concerns about the process leading to the signing of a purchase and sale agreement for 247.5 acres of shellfish flats off Indian Neck have been stymied for a month by members’ recusals and a canceled meeting. It is unclear at this point how the board will ever be able legally to have a discussion of the issue.

“Are you leaving, too?” Chair Janet Reinhart asked Selectman Justina Carlson as she got up and walked out of the room at the board’s last meeting, on July 23, following in the footsteps of fellow board members Michael DeVasto and Helen Miranda Wilson.

The three recused themselves from consideration of the town’s imminent purchase of the tidal flats from the HDYLTA Realty Trust for $2 million, leaving Reinhart to explain to observers that no discussion of the matter by the board could take place without a quorum of three board members. Selectman Kathleen Bacon was absent.

Carlson took part in the board’s signing of the agreement on June 21, even though she had recused herself from all previous discussions of the purchase. She told the Independent this week that she planned to continue to recuse herself from any further discussions of the flats purchase. DeVasto must recuse himself because he is a shellfisherman. And Wilson has recused herself since revealing in June that she was the previously anonymous donor of $1 million towards the town’s purchase of the acreage.

At the July 23 meeting Town Administrator Dan Hoort reported that “everything is progressing as we had hoped it would” with the purchase. “We have hired a surveyor. We have also hired someone to do an appraisal. We expect to have both of those around Labor Day.”

Various questions have been raised about the process leading to the sale agreement, including how it progressed so far when three of the five members of the select board appear to have a conflict of interest in the transaction.

When no discussion could take place on July 23, Reinhart said questions would be addressed at the board’s Aug. 13 meeting, but that meeting was canceled because, Reinhart said this week, “I was out of town, and there wasn’t really anything else pressing on the agenda.”

At the July 23 meeting, with the select board unable to hold a discussion, citizens questioned how the board would ever be able to discuss the HDYLTA affair without a quorum.

“When Kathleen is here, and Janet is here, and Justina is here, they will have a quorum,” said Hoort.

“And if Justina does the same thing she did tonight, you still won’t have a quorum,” Bob Costa said.

“That will be her call,” replied Hoort.

Hoort would not say this week whether he had sought legal advice on the quorum problem.

Moe Barocas and Sheila Lyons told Reinhart and Hoort that citizens were losing confidence in the select board’s ability to manage town government.

“We all know this was done with good intent,” said Lyons. “The point is three people could not legally vote and should have been recusing themselves. So how did the question even go forward?”

Carlson expressed frustration this week with the continuing controversy over the flats purchase.

“The people who are complaining were against HDYLTA from the beginning,” Carlson said. “I’m questioning why this thing is being picked to death. The town voted for HDYLTA. We’re volunteers, not lawyers, and we’re trying to do our best. We’re bending over backward to make sure all the ‘I’s are dotted and the ‘T’s are crossed.”

On July 23 Barocas repeated his view that voters were misled at town meeting by official statements that the purchase would be contingent on the town’s obtaining an independent appraisal of the value of the flats, which were purchased by the four HDYLTA Trust members in 1999 for $25,000. In fact, there was no such contingency in the purchase and sale agreement.

Carlson said this week she couldn’t answer Barocas’s question about why there was no appraisal contingency. “Nobody’s lining their pockets,” she insisted. “Only in Wellfleet do we get a gift of a million dollars and people are complaining.”

“I’m not opposed to the purchase,” Barocas had said. “But I’m not happy with the transparency. The town is losing confidence in this board. We need to grab this situation and correct it.”

He asked that an independent task force be created to look into the sequence of events and how the decision not to get an appraisal was made. “We need people outside the board to have a look, report to the public, and have a formula for improvement,” said Barocas.

Reinhart told the Independent this week that she would address the “HDYLTA questions that everyone has been asking” at the board’s next meeting on Aug. 27. “I am expecting that we will have a quorum,” said Reinhart, adding, “Expectations reduce joy.”