MILLINOCKET – The school committee is poised to hire a new bookkeeper, its fourth in two years, possibly as early as today, ending much of the controversy that clouded recent committee meetings, school officials said.

The committee might bring up the subject at its meeting at 4 p.m. today at Stearns High School, Chairman Thomas Malcolm said.

Superintendent Sara Alberts said she has a nominee to bring to the committee for review but she and Malcolm declined to identify that person, citing confidentiality afforded job candidates.

Malcolm described the candidate as a certified public accountant with extensive experience in school funding and bookkeeping.

“This is a person who should do a very good job for us,” he said last week.

Financial disarray over the last year was part of the reason committee member Arnold Hopkins said he would seek Alberts’ resignation if school board members cannot get enough financial data from which to make decisions.

He complained that the school board hadn’t been able to get full financial reports all year, impeding its ability to provide proper oversight to the school system. His statements came during a June 3 budget meeting with the Town Council at Stearns in which councilors voted to pass the $7.6 million budget in a series of votes that generally were 5-2.

Councilors Scott Gonya, Jimmy Busque and David Cyr also criticized Alberts. They implicitly sought her resignation when they discussed paying for a Millinocket-only superintendent, leaving vague whether they wanted Alberts, who is also Union 113’s superintendent, in that position.

Coming with about 100 people attending the meeting, the statements drew a mixed response from some audience members who felt the statements were a fair reflection of the school system’s problems and reproach from school board members, who felt such personal criticism of Alberts was inappropriate.

Malcolm thought the criticisms unfair. The school systems’ financial woes were caused, he said, by the turnover in bookkeepers and changing state accounting software that took months to install locally and debug.

“The bookkeepers were leaving for good reasons,” Malcolm said, “to better themselves or to deal with personal situations. Having four leave in two years had a lot to do with our problems.”

Hopkins disagreed with Malcolm’s rationale. All local school systems, he said, endured changes in state bookkeeping practices without Millinocket’s problems, and “there must be some reason why those people [bookkeepers] left.”

He declined to elaborate.

“Any public official is open to a degree of public criticism,” Hopkins added. “That includes me. I expect it. I don’t care what people think of Arnold Hopkins, because he’s not important, but when a sitting board member asks for information, he should be listened to.”

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