POLAND – A scant handful of town officials from Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland attended the Union 29 Regional Planning Committee’s inaugural presentation of the plan to consolidate the three towns’ schools into one district.

Calling the meeting to order Wednesday night, Colleen Quint, RPC chairman, noted that officials in all three towns, those serving on elected and appointed boards alike, had been invited to the meeting so that any questions they might have regarding the reorganization plan might be directly answered.

“Townspeople look to you for insight on important local issues,” Quint said.

Commenting on the small turnout, Mechanic Falls town manager John Hawley noted that the 23 people who comprised the committee that compared the consolidation plan included selectmen and town council members, budget committee members, school committee members, and citizens from all three communities.

“In light of that, one could take the lack of participation as an indication that they are so comfortable with the plan that they have no questions or opposition to it,” Hawley said.

The meeting served as an informational precursor to public hearings scheduled for each of the three towns – Mechanic Falls on Oct. 14, Poland on Oct. 15, and Minot on Oct. 21 – and featured a PowerPoint presentation, narrated by Quint, that addressed significant features of the plan.

The only audience question came from Minot Planning Board member Candice Gilpatric, who, responding to word that some cost savings will be realized by the new district’s ability to rearrange school bus routes to cross town lines, wondered whether that meant the children in the younger grades might be attending school in another town.

School Superintendent Dennis Duquette answered that that would not be the case.

The meeting was the first of several scheduled to take place between now and Nov. 4 when voters in all three towns will decide the school consolidation plan’s fate.

Members of the 23-member panel that put the plan together who commented Wednesday included Norm Beauparlant of Poland, Carl Beckett from Mechanic Falls, and Steve Holbrook from Minot.

Beauparlant, who has served on one committee or another for the past 30 years, noted that going in he knew it would be a daunting task to pull a plan together and said that he was pleased with how the group had “worked incredibly well” in achieving a workable compromise.

Beckett, a longtime budget committee member, said that an “all-for-one-and-one-for-all” attitude had resulted in something that “would be for the benefit of all students from all three towns.”

Holbrook, nearly a decade on the school committee, said, “there was a lot of good give and take, we did what we had to do.”

The next public informational event will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 8, in the form of a call-in show broadcast in all three towns over local cable channel 11.