Background: RSU 1 has been found in court to have overcharged West Bath $1.9 million over 4 years.

The City of Bath’s town council will consider offering West Bath $1.2 million to settle West Bath’s lawsuit against RSU 1. I think this is an undeserved good bargain for the City of Bath.

What do you do when you make an honest mistake and accidentally overcharge a neighbor?

Well … you pay him back immediately when you discover the error and apologize profusely and maybe do something else to make up for the error. That would be fair. This is not what RSU 1 or the City of Bath did.

What do you do when you purposely overcharge a neighbor? Well … you deny that you overcharged him and you tell him to take you to court.

That is what the City of Bath and RSU 1 did.

So the only thing West Bath could do to its supposed good neighbors was to take them to court. There the RSU 1 (Bath) position was that West Bath was not overcharged and even if it was then too much time had gone by for them to get paid back. Some good neighbor !

I urge all to read the deposition of RSU 1 Superintendent Shuttleworth. Therein it is clear to me that there was collusion between Shuttleworth and the Bath City Administrator Giroux to implement the incorrect (and let me point out — illegal) funding formula. This was despite the RSU 1 lawyer giving a substantive detailed written opinion specifying why the correct formula specified in the law should have been implemented.

Any responsible administrator would have said, “Let’s let everyone know what the concerns are and together find out what is the right thing to do.” This was not done by the RSU 1 Superintendent or the Bath City Administrator — almost everyone else was kept in the dark. West Bath on questioning it was repeatedly told: “Certainly we are using the correct formula!”

Legally, it seems to me that the implementation of the incorrect funding formula, which violates state law, should be a criminal offense. Those responsible should bear appropriate responsibility and punishment.

Monetarily, it seems to me what would be fair is to pay back all the overcharged amount of $1.9 million to West Bath … plus years worth of interest … plus legal expenses. For the City of Bath to get off with a bargain when it instigated the mess in the first place would be a travesty.

Just to make this amount of money more relevant to each taxpayer in West Bath: The $1.9 million amounts to about one half of the towns entire yearly budget. Hence that amount being taken from the town is the same as half of a year’s real estate tax bill being taken from each and every tax payer. On average, this amounts to a couple of thousand dollars out of each taxpayers pocket … which is as surely gone as if a gun was placed to his head or it was embezzled from his bank account … it is still gone … and it is a lot of money … and again this was taken from every taxpayer in the Town of West Bath.

Unfortunately, we will just have to wait to see what kind of justice is dished out to our not so good a neighbor, the City of Bath.

Steven Winter
West Bath