Bath Citizens for Responsible TIF Action is happy for the taxpaying citizens of Bath who will get a slight reprieve from the city and Bath Iron Works after the city’s agreement to trim a bit more off the original proposal to cut taxes for the shipbuilding corporation.

BIW may accept the 29 percent tax return deal or not; the 50-50 split they sought is now off the table.

This amendment has earned the city of Bath over $3 million more in new taxes from the BIW development.

We are certain that this “compromise” only came about because many Bath residents spoke up, and our City Council and staff listened.

While Bath Citizens for Responsible TIF Action is ultimately disappointed that any, in our opinion, unneeded tax dollars should go to BIW, we are still quite heartened about the support the public gave to this effort.

Our agenda all along was to bring this important issue to the public’s attention and slow down the process long enough for residents to catch up with it. While it is an imperfect ending, we do think that at the least we accomplished our top priorities.

It is our hope that, in the future, the public will be given much greater access to vital information about “want vs. need” when such controversies arise.

We thank the citizens of Bath for helping us save some money for our fiscally strapped community. During our door-to-door work across the city, we saw many abandoned homes and heard from many folks who said they can’t afford to pay their property taxes anymore.

Under these increasingly difficult local circumstances, the tax break for a profitable corporation seemed all the more questionable. It became even more sour when news of a potential multibilliondollar contract from Saudi Arabia broke in the online edition of major daily newspapers yesterday, even as BIW executives stood up at the hearing to ask for tax relief without ever providing any evidence of real need.

But even in light of that story, we do feel this was a victory in one battle, in a greater war.

As one of BCRTA’s panelists noted at our Nov. 13 forum, engaging in these kinds of grassroots efforts is now “the new norm.”

There is a shift in the flow of corporate dominance that has taken root in past decades, and we are proud to have assisted Bath taxpayers in standing up for what is right.

LORRY FLEMING is a member of Bath Citizens for Responsible TIF

Action. This OpEd also represents the views of members Gary Anderson, Bruce Gagnon, Susan Lubner, Jerry Provencher and Howard Waxman.