With less than three months to go, nobody can say for certain whether the 115-year-old Conneaut Lake Park will open on schedule this year.

And, at this point, it’s uncertain who will make that decision.

It will be up to an as-yet-unnamed board of directors to be appointed to succeed court-appointed overseer, LeRoy Stearns, who announced Tuesday he will ask to be relieved of his duties within the next 20 to 25 days.

Mark Turner, director of the Economic Progress Alliance of Crawford County, said once the board is named it will have to decide whether it can or should open the park.

After reviewing a proposed master plan prepared by the EPA for the park’s future operation, Stearns said he agrees with it. It includes the recommendation that a new board of directors be named.

Stearns had proposed sale of 3.3 acres of land to give the park the money to pay off some of the debt and give it money to open. However, the plan doesn’t mention the sale of the land.

Turner said the plan wasn’t to focus on opening the park this year. “None of the work we have done has anything to do with the operating issue (for 2007) — it was long-term.”

However, once the new board is established, the EPA will work with the board to “get into the issue of whether we could or should open the park.”

His plans are to help provide direction for new board appointments.

He said the park has been operating at “serious losses” for years and noted “you have to give it a year or two before it makes money.”

“I don’t think anybody really knows,” he said of whether the park will open this year. The board will “work with creditors to ask for their help — not necessarily lending money, but staying (delaying) of payments.”

He said the new board will come up with an operating plan and address the creditors about it.

Once the plan is complete that “shows the operating loss at only $50,000 or $60,000 a year, we can borrow against it until we turn it around long-term.”

He’s convinced that once the board takes the business plan showing the park’s future development to a local lending institution, a loan will be granted.

In the meantime, Stearns said his focus is completing three legal projects before stepping down.