LEWISTON — A charter commission vote may be a sure thing now, but backers of a combined Lewiston-Auburn effort say the hard work is just getting started.
“This is something that hasn’t been done in Maine since about 1922, and there are not many nationally,” Chip Morrison, Androscoggin Chamber of Commerce president, said. “It takes a lot of courage for people to say they want to do this, that this makes sense.”
Morrison and a group of Twin Cities residents completed collecting the signatures necessary to require the creation of a Lewiston-Auburn charter commission. Morrison said the effort needed 2,000 signatures in total to get on the ballot — 1,000 from Lewiston and 1,000 from Auburn.
“That’s what they certified,” Morrison said. “They didn’t even touch at least three petitions full of signatures — and maybe more than that. My personal guess is that somewhere around 2,500 people in the Twin Cities signed those petitions.”
Auburn city councilors accepted the nominations at their meeting Monday, and Lewiston’s councilors followed suit at their meeting Tuesday.
The two groups need to meet in January to figure out the rules for the commission — what it will be called and how many signatures would-be commissioners need to collect to guarantee a spot on the ballot.
Morrison said he expects those nomination petitions would be available in March, with a June 10 election to select the six commissioners — three from Lewiston and three from Auburn.
That group would begin meeting right away to draw up new founding documents to both cities under a single elected body. Their proposed charter would decide on a name for the new city, list each community’s debts and assets, a name and location for city offices, rules of government and rules for the transition.
“It’s more than just a charter, but a consolidation agreement,” Morrison said. “This is not an easy process. I guess a group of really intelligent people could put a charter together in a month if they worked really hard at it. But this will be merging the assets and the liabilities of the two corporations and there is a lot of work that goes into that.”
The charter commission will spend the next year writing the charter and the consolidation agreement, and voters could have their final say on the November 2015 ballot.
Morrison said he’s confident the voter response will be positive, based on his experiences gathering signatures. An Auburn resident, Morrison said he collected 65 signatures himself.
“That means that 2,435 signatures were collected by someone else,” Morrison said. “They were volunteers and most want to stay involved in making this a thoughtful process. And people told them that it will make us stand apart from others. It’s a good thing for the area.”
Lewiston is the second most populous city in Maine, with 36,460 residents, based on 2012 census estimates. That’s well behind Portland’s 66,214 residents and more than Bangor’s 32,817.
Auburn is the fifth most populous city with 22,972 residents, according to 2012 census estimates. That’s about 2,000 fewer than fourth place South Portland.
A combined Lewiston-Auburn, at 59,432 residents, would still have fewer people than Portland, but it would move well ahead of third place Bangor.
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