LEWISTON — The 12 candidates hoping to be the ones to guide a potential Twin Cities merger will meet with the public Tuesday at the Lewiston Public Library.
Candidates for the six open seats, three in Lewiston and three in Auburn, have been invited to discuss their opinions about consolidating Lewiston and Auburn, their vision for how new city could work and what they expect to be included in the discussion.
The forum is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. in the Callahan Hall in the Lewiston Public Library.
The forum is sponsored by the Sun Journal. It will feature introductory remarks by Executive Editor Rex Rhoades. The discussion will be moderated by Michael S. Malloy of Brann and Isaacson.
It’s scheduled to last for about 90 minutes, and the candidates have been invited to meet briefly with voters afterward.
Voters go to the polls June 10 to select the six people who will sit on the City Charter Commission. Those six will begin drafting a plan to make one larger city out of two medium-sized ones.
They’ll write a new charter as well as a plan for all the other details. Those include like what a new combined Lewiston-Auburn would be called, where its offices would be, how to divide it politically. Most importantly, they’ll decide how debt, city assets and services should be parsed up and paid off.
The commission has no deadline — they can argue and negotiate as long as it takes — no budget and no real authority beyond drafting the document.
When they finish, voters will have their say. A majority in both cities have to approve the charter and all of the plans that go along with it independently. And if either city says no, the matter ends there — until the next time residents bring it back up.
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