Lost Poland stocks gain in value

POLAND — An oversight proved to be an advantage for the town.

“The town has a fund called the Hackett Fund,” said Town Manager Dana Lee, “it is also known as the Winter Wellness Fund. Many years ago, going back to the 1970s and 1980s stocks were donated to the town for the Hackett Fund and all the shares were in a safety deposit box."

Over the course of decades, says Lee, the town lost track of the shares.

"Last June, when Northeast Bank moved out of Mechanic Falls and opened a new branch in Poland, they found a few safety deposit boxes and one of them belonged to Poland. We had forgotten that we had them,” said Lee.

There was no key for that safety deposit box and it had to be drilled open. Inside the box were stocks dedicated to the Hackett Fund.

“We just recently sent those stocks over to the brokerage account,” continued Lee, “and it looks like they're going to yield about $35,000 for the Hackett Fund.

Lee said that the oversight was due to a miscommunication between the  town and the broker.

“We set up the brokerage account last May or June, but for whatever reason the broker never said to us, ‘okay it is set up, where are the stocks? I need the paper stocks to cash them out,’" said Lee. "I guess we were waiting for him to tell us when he needed them and he was waiting for us to take the initiative to send them to him. We never finished the deal."

What might have been a costly mistake in certain economic times instead proved to be a boon for the town.

"In the seven months, the value of the stocks went up 26 percent over what they would've been worth if I had cashed them back when we first set up the brokerage account last June," said Lee. "Sometimes, I guess it's better to be lucky than smart.”

Lee said that the Hackett Fund also receives support from local businesses and many residents have been helped using the resources.

“We've had to use quite a lot of it due to the economy so this is really quite a blessing to have these stocks that were donated as far back as 1973,” he added. “If we’d cashed them in last June, we wouldn't have gotten as much as we did. Because we mistakenly held them until now, we ended up with 26 percent more because the stock market improved.”