WINTER HARBOR – Local representatives will have less of a say in school affairs than they do now if Gouldsboro consolidates with neighboring Winter Harbor, according to local officials.

If the towns do not consolidate and Winter Harbor ends up sending all of its pupils to school in a neighboring town, however, its residents will have no say in the operation of whatever school their children attend, Union 96 Superintendent Donald LaPlante said Thursday.

LaPlante, at a public meeting on whether Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro should consolidate their school services, told roughly 50 Winter Harbor residents that he favors the idea. Residents in each town will vote on the proposed merger next week – those in Gouldsboro on Tuesday and in Winter Harbor on Thursday.

State law requires the membership of consolidated school boards to reflect the populations of that district’s member towns, according to Portland attorney Richard Spencer, who attended the public meeting to answer technical legal questions about the proposal. This could be done with a ratio of board members that reflect the populations of the member towns or by giving the voting power of some members of the board greater weight than others, he said.

The population figures that determine the voting formula must come from the most recent federal census of the towns involved, according to Spencer.

Roger Barto, Winter Harbor’s town manager, said that the town’s current population is about 500 but that in 2000, when the most recent census was taken, roughly 1,000 people lived in Winter Harbor. The population of Gouldsboro, both in 2000 and now, is approximately 2,000, Barto said.

Jeff Alley Jr., chairman of the Winter Harbor School Committee, told residents at the meeting that the school boards in each town were in favor of sticking to the current membership of three members per town as much as possible. He said that however a consolidated school board between the two towns may be composed, he is confident the board would make decisions based on what is best for the pupils, not based on what town may benefit from any particular decision.

“I don’t think they draw that distinction at the town line,” Alley said.

LaPlante, when asked, was reluctant to guess whether Gouldsboro residents would approve the measure, but said that he thought most people in Gouldsboro support the idea.

Because the presence of mold forced the closure of the Gouldsboro Grammar School late last year, all pupils now attend classes in Winter Harbor, which has seen its pupil population plummet in recent years with the closure of the town’s Navy base.

Though all the pupils are under one roof, the two towns technically have maintained their separate schools by adhering to separate budgets and voting on school matters separately.

LaPlante said that the issue of legal consolidation should not be confused with the issue of Gouldsboro’s mold problem. The two towns were considering consolidation before the mold issue came up, he said, and should decide the consolidation proposal regardless of whether the pupils are in one building or divided among two.

If the towns consolidate, the issue of building a new school – possibly with the neighboring Washington County town of Steuben – can be decided at a later date, he said.