OK, so the city of Bath takes a building it purchased for $1, assesses it at $6.5 million then sells it for $799,000.

Deal or no deal?

Councilors made the deal. But they did it privately. Now taxpayers are left wondering how it happened, and why.

The first thing officials wanted us to know about the sale was that — as a headquarters for nonprofit groups — it was never taxable. So it could have been assessed at $1 billion and the city wasn’t ever going to collect a dime of taxation on it.

The second thing they wanted us to know was that, when you buy something for $1 and sell it north of three quarters of a million, you did pretty well.

All well and good.

But if the deal was so great, how come no one knew about it?

Land deals are often done in executive session, but there are usually discussions in public session or notes released to the public outlining the deal.

Clients in the building you’re selling also would be notified. These were not.

Players that could have offered a better deal — bidders, developers, average citizens, corporations — could have been invited to bid, upping the price. That wasn’t done, either.

So, deal or no deal, Bath city councilors are left with a lot of very tough questions to answer.

And they haven’t really answered them. There’s a forum on Wednesday, at which they will attempt to mollify critics of the deal.

Too late.

You can’t make a private deal for public property and tell no one about it.

You can’t sell public property exclusively to one bidder without a competitive process or any public notice.

And you can’t explain away the shabby response by the city to citizens asking honest questions about the deal.

So, is it good for taxpayers or a shady deal?

The answer is, it’s both.

Good for taxpayers in that it may get developed and put back on the tax rolls; bad for taxpayers in that they’ll never know the terms, or whether there were better offers, or whether a relationship between the buyer and city officials greased the deal.

Citizens should make sure these questions get answered Wednesday.

— Did anyone on the City Council have a prior relationship with the buyer?

— Was there ever any public notice about the council’s actions?

— Were there ever other considerations for the property, beyond selling it?

—Who set the deal in motion, the buyer or seller?

— Was the property ever listed in a public notice or commercial real estate listing?

Tax rolls may swell. Maintenance costs for the city will vanish. Hey, who knows: The buyer might have Trader Joes waiting to take up the space.

But none of that is OK without robust public notice.

Because that notice clearly was not given — and seems instead to have been assiduously not given — no amount of explaining on Wednesday will erase the mistrust the Bath City Council has earned through its lack of transparency.

Think how you’d feel if you came home and found a piece of your property not with a “for sale” sign on it, but a “sold” sign.

Would you be OK with that?