POLAND — The Ricker Memorial Library’s Board of Trustees has voted to remove its million-dollar trust fund from Bank of America. The trustees cited bank mistakes and lingering questions over fees.

“It’s still difficult to get a straight answer from them,” Town Manager Dana Lee said Thursday. “It’s just their stone-walling, ‘we’ll-do-what-we-want’ attitude.”

Despite months of inquiries, trustees still haven’t received a full accounting of how many thousands of dollars the bank has charged in fees, Lee said. Much of that was done for the years that the trust was mistakenly categorized as a public trust, rather than a private one.

The move from Bank of America to another trustee will take court action. It wouldn’t be the only such move in Maine.

A Maine court has ordered the termination of a Bank of America-run trust in Winthrop that helped pay outstanding medical bills for residents, according to the Kennebec Journal. The move was made at Bank of America’s request but without the knowledge of town councilors, the newspaper said.

In  Poland, trustees have asked Lee to work with selectmen and Auburn attorney Jill Checkoway to pull the money out of Bank of America’s hands.

“The Ricker Memorial Library Board of Trustees is interested in entering litigation to remove Bank of America as trustee of the Jane Jeffrey Ricker Trust,” trustees wrote in a letter to Lee. Their aim is to find a new trustee to oversee the whole pool of money.

Jane J. Ricker created the fund in the early 1960s to help operate the small town library.

The original trust fund was signed with a bank that no longer
exists: the Manufacturers National Bank of Lewiston. As small banks
have been purchased by larger and larger institutions, the trust went
through several hands, including Fleet Bank, before ending up with the
massive Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America.

About one-third of the library’s income comes from the trust, said Catherine Tetenman, secretary for the library Board of Trustees.

Since its creation, Ricker’s $300,000 fund has climbed in value to more than $1 million. Little of the profit has reached the library trustees. Lee believes Bank of America has been overcharging for years.

In recent months, trustees discovered that Bank of America had mistakenly categorized the private trust as a public fund. As a private trust, the bank would face a mandatory, minimum 5 percent annual payout, which would not be required of a public, nonprofit fund.

It was corrected within the past year, Lee said.

In a Dec. 21 telephone conference with trustees, Poland selectmen and Checkoway, Bank of America representatives said they hoped to track the fees for the past 15 years and hoped to forward the information to trustees by mid-January.

A phone call Thursday to a Bank of America spokesman was not returned.

[email protected]