Throughout Roger Thiberville’s long life, he never once visited the Normandy town in France that gave him his last name, reports The Guardian. Descended from a family of vineyard owners, he inherited property in Paris from his parents and worked as a meteorologist.

But when Thiberville died in August at the age of 91 leaving no descendants, the mayor of the town (population 1,773) received a phone call. Thiberville, the man, had left Thiberville, the town, most of his estimated €10 million fortune.

Guy Paris, the mayor of Thiberville, said astonished and delighted local people and officials were now considering how to spend the unexpected windfall, which is five times the municipality’s annual budget.

“It’s an exceptional sum of money. Obviously the amount is beyond imagination,” Paris told the local radio station, France Bleu. “We don’t yet know what we will do with it. We’re not going to spend it all. We’re going to manage this dowry as we’ve always done with our municipal budget—with prudence and responsibility."

The French commune is now looking to pay off a bank loan of more than €400,000 used to build a new primary school. Because the town is a public body it will not have to pay any inheritance tax.