It’s amateur hour at the Bath City Council.

First, let’s sell a building without telling anyone — not the tax paying citizens, not the building’s tenants, not bidders, nobody.

Then, when someone inquires about it, let’s say how improper it is to even ask.

After someone goes to the media, we’ll schedule an open meeting to address these questions.

At the meeting, we’ll “answer questions” by declining to answer them. Again.

Finally, we’ll get everyone to believe we did nothing wrong.

What an absolute circus.

Back on July 5, the council — facing an angry mob and more or less in full retreat — scheduled Wednesday’s meeting to “answer questions” about selling — without public notice or a competitive bid — a building assessed at $6.5 million, for $799,000.

At the time, Councilor David Sinclair reassured the public saying, “We can address their concerns without dealing with what happened in executive session.”

Here’s what that sounded like Wednesday:

Carolyn Lockwood: “I don’t feel I need to answer any additional questions.”

Andy Winglass: “I will not answer.”

Steve Brackett: “No.”

Meadow Rue Merrill: “No, I won’t answer additional questions.”

Sean Paulus: “I will not add anything to that.”

Tink Mitchell: “I have nothing to say.”

Sinclair: “I bow to the will of the council.”

Profiles in courage and medals of honor for all of you.

First, we have a city solicitor who cites a section of law involving executive sessions that says information about property sales can be private when there are competitive bidding situations that may jeopardize a deal or favor one party over another — a misapplication of the law since, by all accounts, there was no competitive bid here.

Next, we have an assessor saying his assessment for tax purposes is completely irrelevant. “Use the cost approach” to valuation, he says — basically what it would cost to rebuild the building from scratch.

We doubt 9 Park St. could be rebuilt for $799,000. But the larger point is there’s also something called the “market approach” — what other comparable properties have sold for recently — and the “income capitalization approach,” which values a building based on its income.

Based on the tenants there, we believe the city was probably pulling in approximately $80,000 per month. Whether that was enough to satisfy maintenance, insurance and other carrying costs, we don’t know (of course), but the statement that only the cost approach is valid is just another example of city officials dealing with people as if they’re stupid. (Furthermore, much of the interior fit-up at 9 Park St. is suited to medical and educational uses for which there are comparatively few properties to choose in the market, thus enhancing the income value of the property even more.)

Finally, as ever, we have a batch of unanswered questions from our readers about the sale, who knew about it and when, and whether the city got a fair price.

We still don’t know why the city would put $1 million worth of improvements into a building then sell it for $799,000, endangering the businesses of well-paying medical tenants and education-related nonprofits in the process.

We don’t know why you would call a special meeting to answer citizens’ questions — then choose not to answer any questions.

We don’t know whether officials considered a different use for the building — let’s say as a cheap and ready replacement for Morse High School, a crumbling facility that will have to be replaced, soon, at the going rate of about $25 million these days.

It’s great the city and residents are crafting new rules for disclosing property sales.

In the meantime, citizens of Bath may want to reassess opinions of the value of their elected leaders.

We suggest the cost approach.