Dear Editor:

Letters in this paper from a retired member of the school committee unfortunately misrepresent the history of the debate around (re)building our middle school.  

Mr. Lorrain, the letter writer, complains of the unfairness of a town referendum given a lack of engagement in what he describes as welcoming problem-solving meetings. Four hundred petitioners disagree with that notion.  

Many of the petitioners did attend those meetings and found that their requests to consider alternatives either fell on deaf ears or were given lip service attention or evasive non-answers. Any disagreement was shut down by a podium controlled by administrators whose jobs were on the line if those alternatives came to be.       

Unfortunately momentum for a building project overtook any real problem analysis because of a large, well meaning, donation which directed a physical structure before any honest analysis of the problem and alternative opportunities.  Is it any wonder that an oversized Cadillac building and triple cost estimating was the result?  

Voters were further disenfranchised by a scheduled revote in mid week in April that smacked of election timing. 30% less voters barely approved a $30M “remodel” when 30% more voters rejected a $28mm “rebuild” just six months prior.  

Rather than consider the referendum openly, our school boards engaged expensive lawyers to trump-up technical bumps in the road and voodoo law in closed-door meetings to stop it. 

Given the courage of 400 petitioners in the face of a compromised school board the matter of a revote is thankfully for the courts to decide, not Mr. Lorrain. What is unfortunate is that had we had the kind of meetings he imagines, all this could have been avoided from the start. 

Tom Myette

Boothbay Harbor taxpayer