Cascade Park lesson

The saddest part of a report about fund-raising activities around Bangor’s Cascade Park is that what began with a healthy measure of community spirit ended recently with an exchange of letters between lawyers concerning questions of who owns a lemonade stand and how much ice an ice-concession might sell.

Issues surrounding the fund raising were at once both more and less serious than this. More, because there was the potential for a large amount of money to have been mishandled, and less, because it is unlikely that anything will come of the report. The question Bangor city councilors were asking, essentially, was this: Was any money missing from the fund-raising work by former City Councilor Marshall Frankel for the purpose of helping the park?

After work by City Hall, an independent audit and months of written exchanges between the city and the former councilor’s lawyer, the answer is, Who knows? The city is fairly certain that no direct donations are missing, but is less so about money raised from 1992 to ’96 through activities such as a lemonade stand, an ice concession at the state fair and, possibly, the sale of Christmas trees.

On the advice of his lawyer, who argues that the fund raising was a nonmunicipal effort and no business of the city’s, Mr. Frankel would not answer many questions from the City Council or provide banking records. That certainly is his perogative, but it leaves a taint on a project that he especially worked so hard on. Mr. Frankel was the driving force behind the committee that in the late 1980s to ’92 raised $147,000 of the $200,000 needed to restore the park. It was his continued work after that time that raised questions among council members.

The lessons for the city in this are, fortunately, far more clear than the conclusions in its audit. Informal agreements are fine when no possible legal action could result, but when city officials, in their official or unofficial capacities, are involved, get everything in writing. A difficult lesson for projects based on community spirit.