BELGRADE – Selectmen have agreed to pay $3,500 to the man who owns the domain name
to relinquish ownership of the website name to the town.
Town Manager Gregory Gill said the town last week signed an agreement with Matthew Hunt, owner of A2Z Computing Services Co. in Oakland, to buy the domain name rather than take the case to court.
Gill said the town paid Hunt $150 to set up the website 12 years ago, but it’s been unclear who actually owned the domain name.
“We sent that question to our lawyer and he said it was up in the air. It could go either way (in court) because of the type of agreement we signed,” Gill said. “So we contacted (Hunt) to see what he would sell it for rather than take it to court and battle it out.”
“You have to look at the cheapest way to get out of this,” Gill said. “The board thought this was the way to handle it.”
Hunt had told town officials that $150 was the cost of registering the site and he has always owned the domain name. It’s not clear why the town paid Hunt to register the site name.
Gill said the select board wanted the town to own belgrademaine.com so staff and department heads could place information on the site without going through Hunt. He said selectmen also wanted to rid the site of advertising.
Kennebec Journal Staff Writer Mechele Cooper can be contacted at 621-5663 or at:
mcooper@centralmaine.com
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