Public to mull term limits on school board

BANGOR – The public will have a chance to weigh in on what already has proved a contentious plan to limit school committee members to two consecutive three-year terms.

The City Council’s strategic issues committee on Monday voted, without dissent, to hold an Aug. 13 public hearing on the proposal, which would amend the city charter if approved by voters in November.

City Councilor Dan Tremble put forth the plan on Monday at the request of Bangor Citizens for Responsible Municipal Government, members of which were on hand to back the proposal.

“When you talk to the common folk on the street … they say that we have a city council with term limits and a school board with none, and they say, ‘What’s wrong?'” said Bangor resident Charlie Birkel, who stressed that the group had no problem with the members of the current school committee. “Why don’t we have some unity here?”

Even talk of the proposed limits – identical to those placed on the council since 1976 – have stirred up some recently strained relations between the school committee and the council, members of which have questioned the school department’s policy on declining state drug surveys despite a recent rash of drug use in the region.

In turn, school officials have wondered aloud if the term limits try is linked to longtime school committee chairwoman Martha Newman’s vigorous stance against a controversial methadone clinic, an idea generally accepted by the council after months of debate.

Both Tremble and members of the citizens group denied any link between the clinic and the call for term limits.

City Councilor Pat Blanchette, while not objecting to a public hearing on the matter, also questioned the reasons behind the proposal, the first since an unsuccessful try in 1994.

“I have a problem understanding why term limits would be necessary, and what the present school board has done to dissatisfy the general public,” Blanchette said. “I’m looking at a school department ranked extremely high in the state and I don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Blanchette said there was already significant turnover on the seven-member school board, three members of which are in their first term. Eighteen people have served on the school committee in the past decade.

Bangor resident Paul Shapero stressed that the measure wasn’t needed and called upon the committee to keep the measure off the ballot.

“The school board works,” Shapero told the committee Monday. “We have plenty of things to fix that are broken, and I don’t see wasting people’s time and energy on something that isn’t broken.”

Although he anticipated some opposition from some members of the public, Tremble said after the meeting that he believed there was enough council support to place the matter before voters in November. If approved, the amendment would become effective after the municipal election of 2003.

Approval of the charter amendment would require a voter turnout of at least 30 percent of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. In this case, that translates into 2,811 votes, a figure always bested in the city even during off-year elections with no pressing statewide referendum questions, city officials said.

But before the council allows the matter to go before voters, there are some questions to be answered and voices to be heard, council members said.

“I’m interested to hear what people have to say on this,” City Councilor Nichi Farnham said.