BREWER – The Brewer Education Association’s Meet the Candidates Night on Thursday was more about local ballot issues than it was about the four residents seeking positions in next week’s citywide elections.

Candidates who were introduced during the event, which drew about 30 people, were Manley DeBeck Jr. and Gail Kelly, who are unopposed City Council candidates, unopposed incumbent school committee candidate Mark Chambers, and Alan Kochis, who is unchallenged for re-election to his post on the high school district board of trustees.

Local elections here will be conducted in conjunction with the statewide referendum election Tuesday. The polls at the Brewer Auditorium will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

With no contested races this year, most of the talk centered on two local issues voters will decide on Tuesday.

One of the questions is a request to increase the Brewer High School District’s debt limit from $2.5 million to $5 million, which advocates say is critical to keeping the city’s aging school buildings safe and in good repair.

The debt cap for the district, which is responsible for maintaining buildings and grounds at all of the city’s six public schools, was last increased in 1973. Construction and repair costs have since risen dramatically.

Next Tuesday marks the second time voters will consider the increase, which failed in a particularly close referendum last fall when residents voted 2,396-2,376 against it.

During the time period set aside for questions from the public, City Clerk Arthur Verow asked what advocates of the increase have done to promote their cause and encourage voters to support it.

Regardless of whether the request receives support from a majority of Brewer voters, Verow said, the referendum results won’t be valid unless at least 649 residents, or 20 percent of total voters in 1998 gubernatorial election, take part. The 2000 presidential preference primary, he observed, drew only 439 voters.

Kochis, who is completing his first five-year term with the high school district, said trustees and other school officials have issued a fact sheet in a citywide mailing and discussed the issue with the local media. On Saturday, he said, supporters of the increase plan a door-to-door informational campaign during which they will encourage residents to support the request at the polls.

The other local ballot issue is a proposed city charter amendment that would give city councilors the authority to remove one of their own under specific circumstances. Verow said that at least 973 voters, or 30 percent of the total who took part in the 1998 gubernatorial election, must participate to make that referendum valid.

If the charter amendment is approved, a city councilor could be ousted by a unanimous vote of the other members – after notice and a hearing – for failure to qualify for office under the city charter or any state or federal law; committing an action expressly prohibited under the city’s charter, codes and ordinances; knowingly disclosing information that is confidential under state or federal law; being convicted of a crime of moral turpitude; or being convicted of a felony.