POLAND – Town Manager Dana Lee hopes to untangle Poland’s multimillion-dollar money mess in a public meeting meant to end the two-year controversy.

“This will be the wrap-up, the closure and the explanation,” Lee said. “We want people to understand what happened.”

And if people want to ask some angry questions, they can do that, too, he said.

The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 29, at the Poland Community School gym.

The explanation will be tough to craft.

After all, if the combination of tax increment financing and credit enhancement plans were simple, the controversy would never have happened, Lee said.

Last year, an audit of the town’s books unearthed six years of mistakes in a tax break deal with Poland Spring Water Co.

By the time it was caught, the town owed about $2.7 million to the company.

The money had been going into the town’s savings and used to offset taxes.

“We never knew it was happening,” Administrative Assistant Rosemary Roy said last year after the mistake was discovered. “It was simple human error.”

No one has been accused of any wrongdoing, Lee said Friday.

Part of the problem may have been the sheer complexity of the tax breaks, said Lee, who replaced longtime Town Manager Richard Chick in July.

Much of his time has been spent trying to understand the details of the agreement between Poland and Poland Spring Water Co., including almost two days with a financial consultant.

And Lee has experience.

The former instructor for the Maine Municipal Association had handled TIF agreements as Mechanic Falls’ town manager.

“If there’s one thing to be learned from this, you need to give the administrator the resources to manage something like this,” he said. “That’s why there is a whole market of consultants to help towns.”

Poland has hired some of its own in the controversy’s wake. There have been several auditors, and a consulting firm, RHR Smith & Co., went through the past two years of books to clear up gaps discovered by auditors.

The cost: about $12,000.

An auditor from the Smith company and a tax increment financing consultant will be at the Aug. 29th meeting, as part of Lee’s “three-pronged message” for people.

Lee plans to make it all as understandable as possible. He is already beginning work on a computer-generated slideshow to lend a hand.

Attendees will learn the basics of how a TIF works, hear an overall explanation of the town’s finances and some talk about the effects of the mistake on future budgets, Lee said.

The town and the water company have already worked out a deal to pay off the money over five years. The company is not asking for interest and forgave the first $200,000.

The payments and the absence of savings to draw on will force a rise in taxes, a fall in services or a combination of both, he said.

“For years, property taxes have been artificially low,” he said. “It’s time to pay the piper.”