The new scoreboards being installed this week at the Bangor Auditorium are part of a good faith bargaining move by Bass Park with the Maine Principals’ Association.

“We had been talking about new scoreboards for a while and it was a show of good faith,” Bass Park Director Mike Dyer said.

The MPA and Bass Park agreed in principle back in July to change the rental agreement from a flat-rate fee to a percentage of the gate ticket sales, beginning with the 1996 tournament.

Under the proposal, Bass Park will receive eight percent of all ticket sales, and the MPA will continue to do the actual selling. The principals would have paid Bass Park a flat fee of $12,970 for this year’s 13-day tournament.

Bass Park’s take will increase to 10 percent if the Bangor Auditorium repairs the floor, which would be at Bass Park’s discretion, Dyer said.

Depending on the length of the tournament, the change in rental fee could provide a $5,000-$8,000 increase in base rent for Bass Park, Dyer said.

MPA Executive Director Dick Tyler said he expected the association would soon ratify five one-year contracts, which would keep the Eastern Maine basketball tournaments at the Auditorium through 2004.

In a perennial battle to come up with a way to get the flooring to lie flat against the concrete, the Auditorium staff has shifted the floor 3 feet further to one side than normal, which has left the floor “sitting fairly flat” this year, Dyer said.

The scheduling of Big East games gets more complicated every year, and this year, it took an MPA waiver to fill Eastern Maine Class A schools’ dance card to 18 games.

The waiver was necessary when Big East members and cross-river rivals Bangor and Brewer needed to play each other three times in the course of the 10-week regular season, while each picks up a pair of games with two Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference schools, to play an 18-game schedule.

Meanwhile, Big East members Hampden Academy and Nokomis of Pittsfield play the other six members twice each, two KVAC schools twice, and a pair with neighboring Class B rivals Hermon and Maine Central Institute of Pittsfield, respectively.

But why the trouble finding 18 games for Big East members?

“A couple of factors contributed to that,” Big East commissioner Paul Soucy explained. “There are seven teams in the Big East, and two games against each opponent gives you 12 games, and then schools have to pick up the remaining games outside the schedule.”

With two KVAC schools agreeing to play each Big East member, that brings the schedule up to 16 games.

“Every team would prefer to play 18 games, but there weren’t enough teams, so, for instance, Nokomis would play MCI, and Hampden would play Hermon,” Soucy said. “But there were no other teams left for Bangor and Brewer.”

Once upon a time, there were eight Big East members, but when Stearns of Millinocket decided to make the move to Class B for the 1993-94 season, and the Class B league formed with northern and southern divisions, the real scheduling problems began for the Class A conference.

“Everybody lost two games [with Stearns], and we picked up those games with a Class B school or outside the conference,” Soucy said. “When the Class B League was formed, the Big East schools weren’t able to pick up those traditional games. Then the KVAC voted to play only two teams outside the conference and that left a void for Bangor and Brewer.”

“We’d rather play an all-Class A schedule,” Soucy said. “The concept would be nice to play all the Class A teams in eastern Maine at least once, because they’re all going in Eastern Maine and you’re going to see them in the tournament. But that won’t come about because of transportation and conference affiliations.”

So the Big East athletic directors had to petition the MPA to allow Bangor and Brewer pick up a third game with Presque Isle and Caribou, rand Brewer pick up a third game with Presque Isle and Caribou, respectively, at the Bangor Auditorium.

“It was so late in the scheduling process that was the only way they could get 18 games,” Soucy said of the one-year agreement. “It’s not ideal, in fact, it’s far from ideal.

“It’s been difficult to get an 18-game schedule within the Class A ranks because the KVAC has some bylaws about playing outside the conference.”