Towns settle with Viking Lumber over roofing materials

TREMONT, Maine A dispute over payment for materials used in a roofing project on the local school has been settled, according to the town manager.

Millard Billings, Tremonts town manager, said Monday that the town and Viking Lumber have signed an agreement to settle the matter for $11,000. Viking had placed a lien for $25,692 on the school for the materials.

Its been settled, Billings said. They [Viking] are doing a release deed on the lien.

Last fall, Viking, Inc. placed liens on the Tremont school and three other buildings in Maine that had been re-roofed by the same contractor. Blue Hill Consolidated School, the town office in Hancock and a low-income housing building in Skowhegan all had materials on them for which Viking had not been paid, the building supply company alleged.

According to documents filed last fall in the Hancock County Registry of Deeds in Ellsworth, Viking Lumber had placed liens of $5,056.99 on the school in Blue Hill and $4,540.98 on the Hancock town office.

School officials in Tremont have said they hired Darren Stover to do the work and that they paid approximately $46,000 for the project. Stover allegedly led the property owners to believe that he was working for Northeast Facilities Management of Bangor.

But in a letter sent last Nov. 10 to municipal officials, Bangor attorney Seth Harrow indicated that the management company had no involvement with the alleged lack of payment to Viking Lumber.

I write to inform you that my client, Northeast Facilities Management Inc., had nothing to do with this situation and it is our opinion it has been wrongly associated with this situation due to fraud perpetuated by a Darren Stover, Harrow wrote in the letter. My client essentially does landscaping and plowing. It does not perform nor has it ever done roofing work.

According to Harrow, Stover may have falsely indicated to Viking that he was associated with Northeast Facilities Management in order to be approved for a line of credit by the lumber company.

Harrow said Monday that Stover never worked for his client and that NFM had no knowledge of the roofing projects until Viking sought payment for the materials it had given Stover.

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Towns settle with Viking Lumber over roofing materials