AUBURN — The Auburn School Department has hired a law firm to take over its monthslong battle with an East Auburn nonprofit over a strip of land.

The two sides are negotiating.

“We’ve got the lawyers involved now, which is too bad,” School Committee Chairman Tom Kendall said.

At issue is a 30-foot-wide, 500-foot-long strip used by the East Auburn Community School as part of its parking lot.

For 15 years, everyone thought the school system owned the land. However, the East Auburn Community Unit, a decades-old nonprofit, discovered last summer — during the school’s parking lot renovation — that it actually owns the property.

Although the School Department was notified that it didn’t own the strip of land, school department officials decided to keep going with the renovation. They also continued to allow teachers to park on the property, even after saying they would block off the land.

The School Department and nonprofit have been arguing for months. Unit Treasurer Alan Whitman has said the nonprofit is willing to sign over ownership of the strip of land in exchange for 5 acres nearby. Kendall has called that proposal unreasonable. 

The unit’s lawyer gave the School Department until the end of March to resolve the situation. If it didn’t, he said, the unit planned to “take measures” to block off access to the land April 1.

Last month, a pile of large rocks was moved onto the unit’s property next door, leading Kendall to assume the boulders would be used as barriers.

A couple of days ago, the school system blocked off the property on its own, putting up Auburn Public Works wooden barricades to prevent teachers from parking on the strip of land. However, it has continued to allow school buses to use the property to turn around. 

“It’s just turning. We’ll see what they say,” Kendall said of the nonprofit.

Whitman declined to comment on the situation except to say the two sides “are right in the middle of the negotiation.”

The school system has hired Portland law firm Drummond Woodsum to represent it.

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