The Scarborough school facilities manager raised serious questions this week about the town’s new turf field.

Norm Justice, who has been on the defensive for the last year about the quality of construction at the high school, this week raised questions of his own about the quality of the town’s new turf field, a project that was under the supervision of town officials.

The situation was practically a mirror image of the questions and responses that surrounded the construction of the town’s new high school. This time, however, town councilors went on the defensive, questioning the motives of Justice. In the past, defenders of the high school project have questioned the motives of councilors who were questioning the quality of the high school.

There’s no doubt Justice is firing back here. He connected his questions to the ones raised by councilors in a memo he released publicly this week. However, the questions he has raised are significant and need to be answered.

“As community leaders, you have made much-to-do over the last year about your responsibilities to ‘advocate for the long-term investments of citizens, our children and taxpayers’ as it relates to school construction. It is now your turn to answer to the community and demonstrate that through your own actions you have lived up to these ideals as it relates to your oversight responsibility of the new turf field at Oak Hill,” Justice wrote in a memo this week.

In the memo, Justice said the contractor, Sports Turf International, had to remove huge portions of the artificial turf field before completing the project. He said there have been “significant” repairs in at least six areas, which led him to believe the field had been poorly installed.

The contractor removed a “geotextile fabric” during the repairs, according to Justice. He questioned whether it had been properly replaced. He also questioned whether independent engineers had overseen the project and the repairs.

Justice also questioned the cost of the project, which at less than $400,000, came in at about half of most of the other bids, some of which exceeded $750,000. The town needs voter approval for projects that cost more than $400,000. He questioned whether town officials were trying to avoid voter approval by accepting the low bid.

Once again, it is difficult for residents to make sense of what appears to be another mess. Town officials are once again trading serious questions about a public construction project, and no one appears to be neutral. The only way to restore public trust is to stop pointing fingers and simply answer the questions that have been raised.

The price tag alone is enough to raise suspicions about the quality of the work. The owner of Sports Turf International, Scarborough resident Eric Lenardson, said the company took a $200,000 loss on the project so that it could win the bid and show the field to other communities in Maine. While bidding low to gain a better foothold in a market is certainly not unheard of, that seems like a big hit to take on a project of this size.

Town officials told us this week the town does not have a budget for the project; the contractor alone does. The town has only a contract with a price tag on it. Sports Turf International should open up its books to help answer any doubts about the quality of construction and explain in detail what repairs were made to the field before the project was completed. That would hopefully put to rest any questions about the quality of this field.

Brendan Moran, editor