BREWER – A bill aimed at giving the city control over the community’s water supply heads back to the Legislature’s Utilities and Energy Committee today without the official endorsement city officials hoped to obtain from the Brewer Water District board.

A special trustees meeting was called Tuesday by two newly appointed and one current board member. The purpose of that meeting, according to the agenda, was to adopt a resolution regarding the board’s position on a bill submitted to the Legislature in January at the city’s request. Instead, trustees and city officials spent almost two hours debating who is – and who isn’t – a trustee.

A bill seeking to dissolve the district, repeal its charter and turn its assets over to the city government was submitted to the Legislature in late January at the city’s request. In February, the district’s board of trustees unanimously voted to oppose the bill. The dispute has since become increasingly divisive, with the city and the trustees each retaining legal counsel.

“At this point, I don’t know what else we can do,” City Manager Stephen Bost said early Wednesday evening. Attempts to resolve differences between the city and district trustees so far have included two negotiating sessions, several meetings, and a flurry of correspondence, legal opinions and financial analyses. As Bost and Mayor Michael Celli see it, the city has responded to numerous inquiries, concerns and challenges posed by trustees, only to be confronted with more.

At issue is control of the Brewer Water District. The district, established in 1946, serves most of Brewer and parts of nearby Orrington, Eddington and Holden. It is governed by a five-member board of trustees appointed by the City Council.

City officials say they want to take over the district because of increasing water rates, fire hydrant rental fees that are among the highest in the state, and the district’s growing debt load. An analysis by Joseph Cuetara, senior vice president of the city’s bond counsel, Moors & Cabot of Boston, concluded that the district is “mortgaged to the hilt” and predicted the city would need to step in with a bailout within a few years if its financial patterns continue.

Trustees say that after this year, the district essentially will be finished with its improvements to the water system. They project a 15 percent drop in rates by 2007, after rates peak in the next few years.

Four of the five original water district trustees are resisting the move because they say the city has not demonstrated to their satisfaction that it is financially or technically able to operate the water system. They also expressed discomfort at the speed at which the takeover is proceeding and because they weren’t consulted before the city put the effort to acquire the district into motion.

The exception was trustee Andrew Landry, who spoke and acted on the district’s behalf while Chairman William Hayes was in Florida, where he spends several months each winter. Landry was unable to attend today’s work session but wrote a letter Wednesday to state Sen. Edward Youngblood, R-Brewer, outlining the shift in his position on the bill and parting of the ways with the rest of the original board.

In the letter, Landry said he initially was concerned that the city’s acquisition of the district might have an adverse effect on district customers and that the lack of a detailed transition plan could put public health and safety at risk. He wrote that his worries had been allayed after reviewing the copious documentation provided by the city, after the original bill was amended to give the city flexibility in refinancing the district’s federal debt and after the city proposed inviting trustees to serve on a permanent advisory board that would include members from the three adjacent towns the district serves.

“Having addressed the potential adverse impacts arising from the consolidation … let me say that I believe that the city has much to offer with respect to assuming the operations,” he wrote, citing the city’s superior credit rating, access to capital to provide savings in operations and debt service.

A tentative compromise between the city and trustees struck Friday, March 8, crumbled during a special trustees meeting Monday, March 11, after trustees opted not to withdraw their opposition to the bill by not seconding a motion to that end.

After listening to testimony from more than a dozen people on both sides of the issue the next day in Augusta, members of the legislative committee postponed a scheduled work session on the bill to give city officials and water district representatives another chance to work out their differences.

As of late Wednesday time had run out without a viable resolution or compromise in sight. City officials’ last-ditch effort to compromise – a proposal to amend the bill to ensure no transition of water system responsibilities took place until affirmed by both parties – was rejected by trustees during their regular monthly meeting Wednesday afternoon, according to Bost.

In Tuesday’s board membership debate, Everett Gray and James McLellan, whose three-year terms are expiring, maintained that their appointments were valid through the end of March and that to cut their terms even by less than two weeks might expose them to personal liability.

City officials countered that Gray and McLellan had been succeeded by newly appointed trustees Gary Briggs and Wayne Porter, who were sworn in Sunday. While they agreed tradition has been to make water district appointments effective April 1, they provided a four-page opinion from Verrill & Dana, their legal counsel in the water matter. The letter essentially said the trustees’ charter, approved by the Legislature, did not specify dates for terms.

Though attorney Kimball Kenway of Curtis Thaxter Stevens Broder & Micoleau, the trustees’ legal counsel, attended Tuesday’s meeting, he said he wasn’t prepared to give an on-the-spot legal opinion on the matter.